What You Need to Know About Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

Most of VMM 2008’s advanced tools are accessible via simple wizards. The Migrate Virtual Machine Wizard rates potential target hosts in a migration and lets you easily pick an appropriate destination. Migration of Hyper-V–based VMs is not instantaneous, but is nearly so; migration of ESX Server VMs, however, is instantaneous thanks to that system’s live migration facilities. (Live Migration is coming to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2.) Every wizard has a View Script button, so you can see the PowerShell code that’s being generated under the hood and apply it to your own scripts.

In use, VMM 2008’s library is a veneer over the underlying file system. As you navigate through subfolders such as ISOs, Scripts, Templates, and VHDs, you’re seeing a representation of these objects as they are literally stored in Explorer.

The VMM 2008 Self-Service Portal is interesting as well. This web application lets end users start, stop, and pause VMs, make check points, and perform other related actions, all without involving a support call. Available VMs can be shown in a text-based list view or a more graphical thumbnail view, which provides a live glimpse into the running VMs.

A primary advantage of VMM 2008 over VMware tools is that Microsoft can see further into each VM than can its competition. Thanks to the System Center management pack integration, you can dig into each VM and manage the underlying workloads as well.

So whereas VMware is limited to identifying the OS utilized by the VM, VMM 2008 can go further and, for example, determine whether Microsoft IIS is installed. Then you can view the event log and perform other lower-level work.

Recommendations
VMM 2008 is a sophisticated solution and is far more capable than the freebie Hyper- V Manager, as expected. But what makes VMM 2008 so compelling is its interoperability prowess: It works with all of Microsoft’s virtualization servers and with VMware ESX Server. It integrates with System Center and provides a seamless, centralized management interface for physical and virtual machines. And it can utilize the failover and high-availability features of Server 2008 to provide data-center–ready virtualized environments. Ultimately, VMM 2008 will most interest those who manage large data centers. But it will make deploying and managing virtualized environments easier for businesses of all sizes.

Paul Thurott (thurrott@windowsitpro.com) is the news editor for Windows IT Pro. He writes a weekly editorial for Windows IT Pro UPDATE (www.windowsitpro.com/email) and a daily Windows news and information newsletter called WinInfo Daily UPDATE (www.wininformant.com).