Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

Virtual Windows

Article from ADMIN 01/2010

By Björn Bürstinghaus

In theory, virtualizing all your old servers is a good idea, but managing them won't necessarily become any easier. Virtual Machine Manager gives Windows administrators an easy option.

Service virtualization is no longer just an interesting topic for large corporations and data centers. In fact, virtualization of multiple server systems on a single physical machine has become an affordable option for small and medium-sized businesses, too. With virtualization and the consolidation benefits that it offers, system management also changes. The machines you are managing are only available as virtual entities and as the number of virtual machines and virtualization hosts continues to rise, administrators need to consider centralizing their management.

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM) is a management solution for Hyper-V (R2) hosts, Virtual Server 2005 R2 hosts, and VMware ESX hosts that use the VMware VCenter. SCVMM [1] offers excellent scalability, easy management of hosts and virtual machines and many benefits for the administrator. A Workgroup Edition is available for deployment in small and medium-sized businesses: If you use a maximum of five hosts, this version is a cost-effective way of managing an unlimited number of virtual machines.

System Requirements

To install SCVMM, you need a 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 (R2), which you can run as a virtual machine in smaller environments (with a maximum of five hosts). The system on which you install SCVMM must be a member of an Active Directory domain, but you can use it to manage host systems in non-member networks. In this case, you'll need to install the agents manually because automatic installation only works inside the domain. SCVMM relies on Microsoft SQL Server to store data. Depending on the size of your environment, you can use the free SQL Server 2005 Express Edition supplied with the bundle, which has a database size limit of 4GB, or you can use an instance of SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server

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