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Microsoft Announces Virtual Machine Manager Beta 2

Wednesday, 28 March 2007 by Michel Roth

From Virtualization.info: "As expected Microsoft announced System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) beta 2, which will be publicly available within 45 days. In this new beta Microsoft introduces most wanted features like:"

Virtualization Candidates Recognition
System Center Virtual Machine Manager leverages historical performance data in the Operations Manager 2007 database to identify and list underutilized physical servers that are good candidates for consolidation

Capacity Planning
When a virtual machine is deployed, Virtual Machine Manager analyzes performance data and resource requirements for both the workload and the host. This allows an IT administrator to fine-tune placement algorithms to get the best matched deployment recommendations. First, historical performance data is used to understand actual resource requirements of the workload. Next, minimum CPU, disk, RAM, and network capacity requirements in the virtual machine?s configuration are checked. After determining the virtual machine?s requirements, performance data is gathered for candidate virtual machine hosts. Finally, pre-selected business rules are factored in to optimize placement recommendations either for resource maximization or for load balancing, and to weight the importance of different resource types for the workload.

Physical to Virtual (P2V) Migration
Virtual Machine Manager improves the Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) experience by integrating the conversion process and by using the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) of Windows Server 2003 to create the virtual machine faster and without having to interrupt the source physical server

Dynamic Workloads Placement
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

Complete Scriptable Environment
Virtual Machine Manager is built on Windows PowerShell, a new administrator-focused command shell and scripting language. Easy to adopt, learn and use, Windows PowerShell?s architecture enables the quick construction of ad-hoc integration solutions. Windows PowerShell scripting features allow administrators to integrate System Center with established tools and procedures in the data center.

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