A Virtually Great Day

“Friday the 13th?”

No.. I’m talking about the availability of a new Beta ("New Beta?"  Yeah, I know.. redundant):

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.

This beta is full of features that coincide with the up-coming version of Windows Server 2008 (Windows Server 2008 R2) and the new Hyper-V therein (also currently in Beta).  Many of the new features of Hyper-V, and benefits of new clustering capabilities, will need and greatly benefit from improvements in SCVMM.

“So what are the new features?”

The following comes from an e-mail from a Principal Program Manager Lead…

Key new features in R2

Live Migration support

• Windows 2008 R2 supports Live migration, and now so does SCVMM 2008 R2.

Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV) support

• Ability to place multiple VMs on a single LUN is a key customer request that is enabled by CSV.

SAN enhancements:  

• SAN migration in and out of clusters
• Multiple LUNs per single iSCSI target which provides support for iSCSI products from Network Appliance and EMC.

Networking enhancements:  

• Support for VMQ & Chimney
• Support for MAC spoofing
• Support for reusable port groups in VMWare VirtualCenter.

Maintenance mode support

• Maintenance mode is supported across all platforms: Hyper-V, VS and VMWare ESX hosts
• Putting a host in maintenance mode, triggers evacuation of all VMs on the host via live migration on Windows 2008 R2 and VMWare.
• PRO migrations to the host are disabled.

Disjoint domains support

BITS compact server support

“Where do I go to get it?”

You can download either the full install or a pre-built VHD from https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=799

And if you want help with the beta you should definitely participate in the public forums for SCVMM.