Features of VMM

Article
01/17/2008

This article provides brief descriptions of key features of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) that can help you manage your virtual environment.

Windows PowerShell

For greater automation and control, VMM is fully scriptable by using Windows PowerShell. By using this tool, Information Technology (IT) administrators can run remote scripted services against multiple virtual machines, thus avoiding labor-intensive manual processes performed in a graphic user interface. For example, IT administrators can use Windows PowerShell scripts to perform batch physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversions.

Fast and Reliable Physical to Virtual (P2V) Conversions

VMM helps improve the P2V experience by integrating the P2V conversion process and by using the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) of Windows Server 2003 to create a virtual machine faster and without needing to interrupt the source physical server.

Intelligent Placement

When a virtual machine is deployed, VMM analyzes performance data and resource requirements for both the workload and the host. This analysis allows the VMM administrator to fine-tune placement algorithms to get customized deployment recommendations.

Centralized Resource Management and Optimization

The VMM Administrator Console provides a central work area for performing resource tuning. Resource settings can be changed on virtual machines without interrupting workloads and virtual machines can be migrated from one host to another to optimize physical resources.

Rapid Deployment and Migration of Virtual Machines

VMM provides rapid provisioning of virtual machines by VMM administrators and by authorized self-service users.

VMM enables quick provisioning of new virtual machines. By using a wizard-based user interface, VMM administrators can rapidly deploy virtual machines across the entire enterprise. VMM also allows management and migration of existing virtual machines among multiple hosts, giving VMM administrators a complete view of their virtual infrastructure.

Centralized Library

The VMM library contains all the building blocks for virtual machines, such as virtual hard disks, ISO images, post-deployment customization scripts, hardware profiles, guest operating system profiles, as well as virtual machine templates that can be used to rapidly and repeatedly create standardized virtual machines.

Templates represent standard virtual machine configurations similar to the mini-setup and System Preparation Utility (Sysprep) commonly used in Windows Server deployments. Templates also encapsulate best practices regarding hardware and guest operating system configuration, helping IT administrators manage their virtual infrastructure uniformly across the environment.

Centralized Monitoring and Reporting

Once workloads are consolidated onto a virtual infrastructure, VMM provides VMM administrators with reports and monitoring data from within the VMM Administrator console by integrating with Operations Manager 2007. These capabilities can be extended even further by using Operations Manager 2007 directly.

Self-Service Provisioning

The VMM administrator can designate self-service end-users and to grant them controlled access to specific virtual machines, templates, and other VMM resources by way of a Web-based portal. This controlled access enables end users, such as test and development users, to quickly provision new virtual machines for themselves, according to controls set by the VMM administrator through self-service policies.

Take Advantage of Existing SAN Networks

Virtual machine images can be very large and therefore are slow to move across a LAN network. You can configure VMM for use in an environment that has either a Fibre Channel or an iSCSI storage area network (SAN) and perform SAN transfers within VMM.

Once it is configured, VMM automatically detects and uses an existing SAN infrastructure to transfer virtual machine files. This transfer facilitates the movement of very large virtual machine files at the fastest speeds possible and reduces the impacts on your LAN network.