I wanted to send out this quick note to update everyone on our continued focus on and commitment to portability and interoperability using OVF.  We have gained valuable on-the-ground experience to ensure interoperability with our partners such as Citrix and VMware for Open Virtualization Format (OVF).  Portability and interoperability of virtualization technologies across platforms using Linux and Windows virtual machines is important to Microsoft and to our customers.

Interoperability for core scenarios using the SC 2012 VMM OVF Export/Import tool and partner products, such as Citrix XenServer and XenCenter, and VMware Workstation and vCenter, helps realize our goals to benefit our individual and mutual customers, and guides development of OVF in DMTF. Citrix [blog], Microsoft and other industry players remain committed to standards such as OVF in DMTF.

Thanks for reading & have a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday, everyone!

Cheng

Since System Center 2012 SP1 Beta was released last week, we’re super excited to receive raving interests & feedback just over the past few days.

I’d like to briefly talk about one of the major investment areas in System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager - overall system scalability and performance, and what changes you can expect.

To enable your VMM environment to scale up to hundreds of hosts and thousands of VMs, and at the same time, to make our system and your admin console experience “snappy”, we’ve made some significant improvements in how VMM reacts to changes.

• In the past (System Center 2012 RTM and prior versions), changes that are made outside of VMM (say, if you go to Hyper-V console and stop or start a VM) are discovered through a refresher model, which periodically queries and brings updates to the VMM server and then publish to the admin console.
  • This model implies that out of band changes will show up after a delay.
  • In some cases, it could take up to 30 minutes, before you see the new state of the VM appear in the admin console.
  • However, user can always manually trigger a refresher run against a certain object (VM or host) through our UI or cmdlets. For example, if you click on a VM in VMM console, your “clicking on the VM” action will trigger an on-demand refresh job for the VM object.
• In SP1, we added eventing channel in our system for business critical events, which include
  • VM state change (start/stop/move,etc.),
  • Cluster node state change (add/remove/pause)
  • Hyper-V service state change.
• The intent of this new eventing model is to allow critical changes to the system to be propagated up to our users in a much faster manner.
• This new eventing channel works in concert with the periodic polling model. To take advantage of this new eventing feature, you will need either Windows Server 2012 edition host OS, or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with this WMF 3.0 update. For systems without WMF 3.0, VMM will automatically fall back to the polling refresher model as what’s in System Center 2012.

At the same time, in order to increase our scale support and server performance, we’ve relaxed cadence for some refreshers. For definition and purpose of each refresher, check out this post. Below is a table to show what has changed:

Note: There is no change in Cluster Refresher, Library Refresher, Perf Refresher, VirtualCenter Refresher, User Role Refresher, PRO Tip Refresher and Storage Full Refresher. Check this post for what they do and how frequent they run.

Now, what does this mean to you and what can you expect from this set of changes?

• As always, we recommend and hope you perform most of your VM / host operations through VMM (admin console or PowerShell cmdlets).
  • If this is what you do, all changes should be reflected throughout the system immediately and you are not impacted by any of these SP1 changes. However, we hope that you will notice and enjoy the new “snappiness” of the system. :-)
  • If you need to manage VM / host outside of VMM and introduce changes to VMs/host properties, based on the scope of the change, you may need to decide how you want VMM admin console to react to that:
    • If the changes belong to one of those event-monitored changes, you should now be able to see the change updated in VMM system momentarily.
    • If the changes do not fall under those event buckets, you can either expect the changes to be reflected within 24 hours or trigger a refresh job (Read-SCVM or Read-SCVMHost) to pull in the updates on demand.

As always, I’d love to hear your feedback on our SP1 Beta release and hope this information is helpful.

Cheers!

Cheng

After we released our System Center 2012 SP1 CTP2 release, we've received a lot of feedback. Thank you very much for trying out our latest preview on our exciting SP1 release!

Among all new features / improvements in SP1, Service Provider Foundation (SPF) is one new component that received a lot of attention from both hoster community as well as enterprise customers.

As folks start trying to deploy SPF in CTP2, we've heard some feedback on deployment issues. John Ballard from SPF team has posted this blog to explain what you need to watch out before installing SPF and what prerequisites there are. Note that VMM 2012 SP1 CTP2 (specifically, the Admin Console of VMM 2012 SP1 CTP2 release) is required for SPF. The same information is also available in the release note, which I highly recommend to give it a read. Our technical writers and engineering teams have spent significant amount of time to ensure the accuracy and usefulness in those documentation.

Enjoy your reading on that  blog & trying out our latest pre-release, and please keep the feedback coming!

Cheers,

Cheng

Microsoft is committed to interoperability and openness in the products and services we provide, as evidenced by our multi-hypervisor and standard-based storage management features in System Center 2012. Today, we have taken this even further with the release of the System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) OVF Export/Import Tool, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.

The Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an open standard for packaging and distribution of virtual appliances to run in virtual machines developed in the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), Inc.  Microsoft and other industry partners are focused on the development of OVF.  As a company we have been involved in OVF development from the outset.

OVF 1.1 is an international standard important to customers and partners, who are looking for strategies to effectively enable and speed their on-ramp of virtualization technologies in an interoperable way.

Adding OVF and the OVF Import/Export tool to the cache of advanced infrastructure, configuration and service management capabilities to SC 2012 is another milestone in Microsoft’s plans to deliver ongoing value to our customers and partners.

With the release of this tool, System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) users can now import and export a virtual machine in an OVF 1.1 format packaged from other virtualization platforms – for example, VMware vCenter and Citrix Xen Server.

The OVF Import/Export tool is a set of cmdlets for use with VMM. Use of OVF promotes portability and interoperability of a virtual machine across Microsoft, VMware and Citrix hypervisors.  We’ve gained valuable implementation experience with Citrix and VMware using OVF and successfully tested with vCenter and Xen Server.

For more information about this tool and other System Center products and solutions, visit System Center website for more details.

Cheers!

Cheng

As you're all busy getting ready for the holiday season, I'd like to introduce you another Christmas gift idea for a "VMM geek". :-)

My colleagues, Michael Michael and Hector Linares, just finished writing a new book "Mastering Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2", and it's available for order now at Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Virtual-Machine-Manager-2008/dp/0470463325/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260507554&sr=8-1-catcorr#noop. I also helped write one of the chapters in the book. :-) Michael and Hector put a lot of time in writing the book, and they spent time in putting in tons of tips, best practices, and samples to make sure the book be a useful tool for every VMM administrator. So, I highly recommend giving it a read, if you are an VMM user or planning to deploy VMM.

Here are the words quoted directly from the publisher:

"This book shows you how to use Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager to effectively manage both the virtual and physical assets of your enterprise. Learn from two virtualization insiders at Microsoft how to install, configure, deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot VMM; handle backup and recovery; and much more. Going well beyond the basics, this book provides the technical know-how, best practices, and actual code you'll need to tailor a VMM deployment and keep things running smoothly.

Coverage includes:

• Understanding the big picture, including Hyper-VTM 2.0 and Operations Manager 2007
• Thoroughly examining all features, capabilities, and architecture you'll need for a successful deployment
• Interacting with VMware's vCenterTM for management of ESXTM hosts
• Deploying virtual machines to Hyper-V hosts
• Building rich automation through Windows PowerShellTM and extending the capability of your VMM
• Using the Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) infrastructure to create new PRO packs and dynamic IT
• Backing up and planning for recovery of the VMM server; also backup and recovery of Hyper-V hosts using Hyper-V VSS Writer "

Thanks for reading and happy holidays!

Cheng

I'm pleased to let you all know that our documentation team has just published the doanloadable version of SCVMM 2008 R2 documents at here:  https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=162764

Available documents for download are:

·         Deployment Guide

·         Guide to Operations Manager Integration

·         Security Guide

·         Operations Guide

·         Scripting Guide

·         Cmdlet Reference

·         Building PRO-Enabled Management Packs

Go check them out today, download them onto your favorite device, print them out or just read them wherever / however you want. 

Feedback on these? Please send it to:

scvmfdbk@microsoft.com.

Cheers!

Cheng

This is one of the very exciting mements that I have to drop whatever I'm doing and tell you about this. :-)

I've been busy on a few things. So sorry for not able to post much information lately. And I'll tell you about what I was working on in a few months. We're baking something big. :-)

Unlike last time when we released VMM 2008 (which was a few months after Hyper-V RTM), we're tying our VMM 2008 R2 release schedule right together with Windows Server 2008 R2. And it comes with a big load of goodies (Live Migration support, CSV support;Storage Migration; Rapid Provisioning; Host Compatibility Check; Support for 3rd party CSF; Support for Veritas Volume Manager; Integration with Visual Studio Lab Manager; etc.).

Go download a trial and give it a try, go get it now, and unleash the virtualization power that Microsoft brings to you.

Here are more information on this exciting RTM announcement:

https://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/08/24/system-center-virtual-machine-manager-vmm-2008-r2-rtms.aspx 

Cheers!

Cheng

=================== 

Hi everyone,

My name is Kerim Hanif. I am a program manager here at VMM product team, today I want to explain the paths you can upgrade to VMM 2008 R2 RTM. The purpose of this blog is to give you a general idea on how the upgrade works, for more detailed information please see the VMM 2008 R2 Deployment Guide in VMM TechNet https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139191

Upgrading from VMM 2008 RTM to VMM 2008 R2 RTM

This is an in-place upgrade, you don’t need any extra tools, it is build right in the product.

One caveat for this upgrade - You can’t restart any of the prior jobs after the upgrade, after upgrading all jobs that were run prior to the upgrade will appear in the job history; however, those jobs cannot be restarted. It is recommended that you allow all jobs to complete before upgrading the VMM server. Jobs that are canceled during the upgrade cannot be restarted after the upgrade is completed.

Pre-upgrade tasks;

1.       Perform a full backup your VMM 2008 RTM database, this way in an unlikely case that something goes wrong you can always reinstall VMM 2008 RTM using this database.

Upgrade tasks;

1.       Start the VMM 2008 R2 RTM setup (with elevated privileges) on a machine that contains a VMM 2008 RTM component and select any one of the components from the splash screen that comes up.

2.       Setup will detect that you have a VMM 2008 RTM bits installed and will automatically start the “upgrade wizard”

3.       In the wizard we will show you which components are installed on the box the setup is currently running and ask you to confirm that we will go ahead and upgrade all of these components. Note: You may ask what happens if I select a component from splash screen that is not installed on the box. Let’s say you have admin console and server installed on this box and you have selected Self-Service Portal. In this case the behavior is that we will first upgrade all the components (admin console and server for this example) and then start the installation of Self-Service portal.

Post upgrade tasks;

1.       You will need to perform this procedure above on all computers that has a VMM 2008 RTM component installed (admin console or SSP)

2.       Refresh all hosts and library servers from the admin console.

1.       Go to hosts view (also Library view), select machines and select refresh from the actions pane. We are doing this manually so that we don’t have to wait for the host refresher to run. By doing this all the agents on these machines will find out that the db version has changes and they will go to “needs attention” state.

3.       Now you will need to go to the “managed computers view” in admin console and right click all the agents (both on hosts and library servers) that are in “needs attention” state and select “update agent”. Note: You can multi select here but do these in batches of 10-25.

Upgrading from VMM 2008 R2 RC to VMM 2008 R2 RTM

This upgrade will require the “UpgradeVMMR2RC.exe” tool (this tool is available on the Microsoft Connect site under VMM 2008 R2 connection - https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/Downloads.aspx?SiteID=960 );

Pre-upgrade tasks;

1.       Perform a full back up your VMM 2008 R2 RC database, this way in an unlikely case that something goes wrong you can always reinstall VMM 2008 R2 RC using this database.

Upgrade tasks;

1.       Uninstall VMM 2008 R2 RC with “retain db” option

2.       Open a command prompt with elevated privileges and run “UpgradeVMMR2RC.exe” tool against the “retained” db in the previous process.

a.       Command usage: UpgradeVMMR2RC.exe –server <computername[\instancename]> -database <database>

                                                               i.      E.g.  UpgradeVMMR2RC.exe –server VMMDB01\MICROSOFT$VMM$ -database VirtualManagerDB

3.       Install VMM 2008 R2 RTM using this upgraded db above.

Post upgrade tasks;

1.       You will need to uninstall all components with RC code and install new components with RTM code (admin console, SSP)

2.       Refresh all hosts and library servers from the admin console.

a.       Go to hosts view (also Library view), select machines and select refresh from the actions pane. We are doing this manually so that we don’t have to wait for the host refresher to run. By doing this all the agents on these machines will find out that the db version has changes and they will go to “needs attention” state.

3.       Now you will need to go to the “managed computers view” in admin console and right click all the agents (both on hosts and library servers) that are in “needs attention” state and select “update agent”. Note: You can multi select here but do these in batches of 10-25.

a.       If you have machines that are in ‘access denied’ state, you will need to ‘reassociate’ these first before upgrading the agents; so right click those machines, select reaccociate then when it is complete right click again and select “update agent”  

You may also have clustered hosts, you may still be on VMM 2007, created PRO configuration (OM integration) with VMM 2008 RTM and wondering how to migrate, for these topics please see VMM 2008 R2 Deployment Guide in VMM TechNet https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139191 there are great step-by-step guidance provided in that document.

Thank you and I hope this information helps you in your migration.

Kerim Hanif

Hope you had a good Mother's Day weekend (if you celebrate that holiday)!

Since VMM R2 Beta was released, the team has been working hard in incorporating feedback from customers. Here is a nice blog from Vishwa that explains the new set of features we’ve added in the upcoming VMM R2 RC release:

·         Storage Migration

·         Queuing of Live Migration

·         Rapid Provisioning

·         Host Compatibility Checks

·         Support for 3^rd Party CFS

·         Support for Veritas Volume Manager

Enjoy your reading,

Cheng

Today I got a guest poster, my colleague, David Armour. David is a senior program manager responsible for SCVMM 2008's Networking feature. Based on the questions he has seen on the Technet SCVMM forum, he wanted to post this information out to help clarify the concepts and usage of Network Location and Network Tag in SCVMM.

Here is the post in David's words:
=============================================

When you specify a template or VM’s network connection requirements, you can supply a Network Location and a Network Tag.  You have undoubtedly seen this screen:

What do these things mean and how are they used?

Network Location and Network Tag are used when placing a VM on the host - the VM's connection requirements are checked against the networking capabilities provided by the host.  This helps you place the VM onto a host that can provide the network connection requirements of the VM.  When you set the requirements in the VM, you select from a list network locations and tags which the hosts provide.  So for example if your VM should be in your DMZ, you can select the DMZ network as the network location.

In most cases, the Network Location is determined on the host using the Windows Network Location Awareness (NLA) feature.  Windows determines a name for the network based on the DNS settings for the network.  You can learn more about how the Windows Network Location Awareness (NLA) feature works here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms740558(VS.85).aspx.

Sometimes VMM cannot determine the Network Location from NLA.  This happens with loopback adapters since they are not participating in a network and on ESX servers since OS on these hosts does not have the NLA feature.  In these cases you can manually add the network location.  You can do this by going to the host properties.  On the Hardware tab, find the loopback adapter.  Check the "Override discovered network location" checkbox and type a name for the network location.

We just covered Network Location, now let’s look at the Network Tag. 

The Network Tag provides you with another property to set up applicability when placing a VM on a host.  You can use the network tag on the Hosts’ virtual networks to differentiate networks on some other criteria than just network location, such as on the VLAN or network throughput or security (IPSec for example).  This is a custom tag that you create.  The network tag is set on the host’s Virtual Network and the VM/Template can then select this tag in its network connection requirements.  To set the Network Tag on a Host’s Virtual Network, go to the host properties.  On the networking tab, find your Virtual Network.  You will find the Network Tag under the Virtual Network name. 

Once you have set up the Network Location and Network Tags on your hosts, each unique Network Tag and Network Location will show up in the combo boxes under the VM/Template's connection requirements.

Thanks,

David 

============================================= 

Hope this helps and thanks for reading!

Cheng