Manage Your Virtual Environments with Virtual Machine Manager 2008
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Virtualisation In this article, I will examine VMM 2008 The red box on the upper-left represents At a glance: and the new features it brings to IT adminis- the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 server Support for VMware VMs trators. I’ll then look at the requirements and service. Above it are the different interfaces Windows PowerShell- based scripting and the steps involved with a VMM installation. into the service: the Administrator Console, automation Finally, I’ll take a closer look at how to use the Windows PowerShell interface, and the Consolidated, centralised some of the new features of VMM 2008. management Installation procedures An introduction to Virtual Machine There are significantly Manager 2008 System Center Virtual Machine Manager more interfaces to 2008 is a standalone application that provides centralised, enterprise-class management of the VMM system in virtual machines running under Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, Windows Serv- VMM 2008 er 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server Manage your virtual 2008 and VMware Infrastructure 3 (ESX/ ESXi) servers. Together with other System Self-Service Web Portal with delegated user Center products, VMM provides end-to-end access. Windows PowerShell forms the basis physical and virtual infrastructure manage- for all access to the VMM server. The VMM environments with ment. Figure 1 shows the architectural lay- Admin Console is built entirely on Win- out of Virtual Machine Manager. dows PowerShell, so you can simply create As those familiar with VMM 2007 will Windows PowerShell scripts that the VMM note, there are significantly more interfaces server service runs. Thus, the public API for Virtual Machine to the VMM system in VMM 2008 (see Fig- VMM 2008 is Windows PowerShell, and any ure 1). The boxes in the upper-left represent program can leverage VMM using Windows VMM 2008; the boxes in the upper-right rep- PowerShell. A great example of this is the in- resent System Center Operations Manager tegration of Citrix’s XenDesktop Desktop Manager 2008 2007, and the managed systems and interfac- Delivery Controller with Virtual Machine es are shown below. The red boxes indicate Manager, which is done entirely through Edwin Yuen the management servers, the blue boxes Windows PowerShell. show the system inputs, and the green box- Supporting VMM is a SQL Server 2005 or es are the managed host systems with their SQL Server 2008 database. You can run it ei- Last year, Microsoft introduced System Center managed objects shown in yellow. ther on a full installation or on SQL Server Virtual Machine Manager 2007, which provides Administrator’s Self-Service a consolidated interface for managing a virtual Console Web Portal Operator’s Web Windows Console Console PowerShell Windows PowerShell infrastructure running Microsoft Virtual Server Connector 2005. Now, to coincide with the release of the VMM supports all the traditional vir- Virtual Machine Manager Operations Manager Server Server new Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V hypervi- tualisation tasks, such as rapid virtual ma- sor, a new version of Virtual Machine Man- chine (VM) deployments from templates Management Interfaces ager (VMM) has been released. Not only does and pre-configured VMs, physical-to-virtu- System Center Virtual Machine Manager al (P2V) conversions, a centralised library Virtual Server VMM Library VMware VI� 2008 manage Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 of virtual infrastructure objects, and even Host Server and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V installa- virtual-to-virtual (V2V) conversion of VM- Virtual Center Server tions, but support has also been extended to ware virtual machines (VMX configuration VM VM Template VM VM VM VM ESX Host This article is based on a VMware Infrastructure 3 (ESX/ESXi) serv- files plus VMDK virtual disks) to Hyper-V prerelease version of Virtual ers. With VMM, you now have an integrated VMs. Moreover, VMM integration with the VM ISO VHD Script VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM Machine Manager 2008. All management interface that works with your rest of the System Center family brings the Figure 1 System Center information herein is subject entire virtual infrastructure, including both management of physical and virtual systems SAN Storage Virtual Machine Manager to change. Microsoft and VMware systems. to a single pane of glass. 2008 architecture 20 To get your FREE copy of TechNet Magazine subscribe at: www.microsoft.com/uk/technetmagazine TechNet Magazine November 2008 21 Virtualisation Express Edition if no other database is avail- agement of Hyper-V hosts is done through sole is not an MMC snap-in; it’s a completely into virtual machines without having to re- able. While the diagram shows both Opera- Windows Remote Management (WinRM) new application built using the Microsoft install those machines. This is especially use- tions Manager and Virtual Machine Manager and the Windows Management Instrumen- .NET Framework and is built on top of Win- ful when converting machines that have low pointing to SQL Server, the two programs do tation (WMI) interface. In fact, when a po- dows PowerShell 1.0. In fact, as noted earli- utilisation for their hardware, so you can not share a database. They simply both run tential Hyper-V host is added, if the Hyper-V er, any action in the Administrator Console maximise resources by placing several low- on the same version of SQL Server. The ac- role is not enabled in Windows Server 2008, calls the associated Windows PowerShell tual integration between Virtual Machine VMM can automatically enable that role for command, so the UI actually uses Windows Manager and Operations Manager is through the administrator. This feature is also avail- PowerShell. Any command or function done VMM 2008 provides a a connector that is available through VMM. able to potential Virtual Server hosts for in the Administrator Console can be done This connector allows VMM and OpsMgr Windows Server 2003 systems. through the command line in Windows single view of all hosts to share data, which brings virtualisation in- The management of VMware VI3 ESX PowerShell. formation into OpsMgr and brings OpsMgr hosts is actually done through a VMware Each wizard in the Administrator Console and virtual machines data to VMM for actions. VirtualCenter server. VMM 2008 interfaces has a View Script button that can show the The bottom half of the diagram shows with VirtualCenter through the VirtualCen- associated Windows PowerShell script for and allows you to set the managed hosts. VMM 2008 still man- ter Web Services API. Thus, a VirtualCenter the command about to be run – a great start- ages Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 virtual ma- server is required for VMware management, ing point for learning Windows PowerShell parameters to filter chine hosts and a centralised library share, and most enterprise installations of VMware as it relates to VMM. New in VMM 2008, the as it did in VMM 2007. It should be noted will have at least one VirtualCenter server. View Script action now opens these scripts and view your systems that in VMM, the library share is not a spe- What is unique to VMM 2008 is the ability in Notepad, so you can easily edit them right cial file store or server. It’s simply a Windows to manage multiple VirtualCenter servers. from VMM. You can also easily save the ed- file share that VMM manages. You can man- VMM can add multiple VirtualCenter serv- ited scripts, which you can then reuse right utilisation machines together on one piece of age the library through VMM or you can eas- ers, allowing an administrator to aggregate from the VMM library – another new fea- physical hardware. P2V is an integrated fea- ily copy and delete files out of the file share the entire VMware infrastructure and pro- ture in VMM 2008. The cmdlets from VMM ture of VMM and doesn’t require additional and let VMM discover the changes. You can vide a single enterprise view, which was not 2007 have been updated for VMM 2008, in- software or servers. For VMM 2008, support also have multiple libraries, which is useful possible before. cluding support for VMware servers. The for a greater number of physical systems has for delegated sets of servers and for servers As part of the System Center family of same cmdlets work across virtualisation plat- been added, including Windows Vista, Win- in remote offices. products, VMM uses the System Center or forms, so that cmdlets like New-VM work on dows Server 2008 and x64 hosts. The P2V New to VMM 2008 is the ability to manage Outlook®-style interface in the Administra- both Microsoft and VMware systems. IT ad- functionality of VMM is a great companion the Hyper-V and ESX hypervisors. The man- tor Console. The VMM Administrator Con- ministrators can thus use one set of cmdlets to planning tools such as the Microsoft As- to manage Virtual Server, Hyper-V, and VM- sessment Planning (MAP) tool (discussed in ware ESX hosts. the article by Baldwin Ng and Jay Sauls in Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is designed this issue of TechNet Magazine), which helps to provide three important benefits for IT identify candidates for server consolidation. administrators: If you already have virtual machines in VMware’s VMDK format, VMM allows you • Maximise resources to use V2V to convert your existing VM- • Achieve better agility DKs into the VHD format. This is an offline • Leverage existing skills process – the VMware VM has to be shut A number of features and functions promote down as the V2V process converts the actu- these benefits. First, VMM helps maximise al VMDK file to a VHD. You can also con- your resources by integrating the manage- vert a running VMware VM by using the ment of your entire virtual infrastructure, P2V function.