What is Virtual Machine Manager?
Welcome to System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)! VMM is part of the System Center suite used to configure, manage, and transform traditional datacenters. It helps to provide a unified management experience across on-premises, service provider, and the Azure cloud. VMM capabilities include:
Datacenter: Configure and manage your datacenter components as a single fabric in VMM. Datacenter components include virtualization servers, networking components, and storage resources. VMM provisions and manages the resources needed to create and deploy virtual machines and services to private clouds.
Virtualization hosts: VMM can add, provision, and manage Hyper-V and VMware virtualization hosts and clusters.
Networking: Add networking resources to the VMM fabric, including network sites defined by IP subnets, virtual LANs (VLANs), logical switches, static IP address, and MAC pools. VMM provides network virtualization, including support for creating and managing virtual networks and network gateways. Network virtualization allows multiple tenants to have isolated networks and their own IP address ranges for increased privacy and security. Using gateways, VMs on virtual networks can connect to physical networks in the same site or in different locations.
Storage: VMM can discover, classify, provision, allocate, and assign local and remote storage. VMM supports block storage (fiber channel, iSCSI, and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) storage area networks (SANs)).
Library resources: The VMM fabric retains a library of file-based and non file-based resources that are used to create and deploy VMs and services on virtualization hosts. File-based resources include virtual hard disks, ISO images, and scripts. Non file-based resources include templates and profiles that are used to standardize the creation of VMs. Library resources are accessed through library shares.
- Azure management: Onboard to Azure Arc-enabled SCVMM to manage your VMs in a self-service mode using Azure Role-Based Access Control. Azure Arc-enabled SCVMM enables the construction of automation and self-service pipelines using Python, Java, JavaScript, Go, and .NET SDKs; Terraform, ARM, and Bicep templates; Azure REST APIs, CLI, and PowerShell. Azure Arc-enabled SCVMM also provides access to Azure management services such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Monitor, Azure Update Manager, and Azure Policy, enabling you to secure, govern, and manage your SCVMM VMs from the cloud.
Resources
- To read blog posts from the VMM engineering team, see System Center Blog.
Next steps
- Learn about system requirements.
- Get started with Arc-enabled SCVMM.