Windows

Yes, yet another System Center VMM session…it’s pretty clear that System Center is a major component of Microsoft’s server virtualization strategy. This session is VIR350, System Center VMM Advanced Integration, so I suppose we will be seeing more PowerShell and more integration with other System Center family members. As with the other liveblogged sessions, I’ll try my best to weed out duplicate content.

The presenter for this session is David Armour, a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft.

(Side note: what exactly is a Program Manager, anyway? Microsoft must have thousands upon thousands of them. I think that every single presenter so far this week has been a Program Manager or a Senior Program Manager.)

The focus of this session will be on how to extend or customize System Center VMM, and most of the information presented here will apply to both VMM 2007 and VMM 2008 (currently in beta). The key technology used in this case is PowerShell, which can be used either against Hyper-V directly or against VMM. VMM, however, vastly simplifies the PowerShell code required to perform a task when compared to doing the same task against Hyper-V directly.

As has been stated elsewhere, VMM is built on PowerShell, and the GUI represents only a subset of all the functionality of the overall feature set available via PowerShell. Note that the self-service web portal is also built on top of PowerShell. David goes on to discuss the various ways in which a client, like the VMM GUI, interacts with the PowerShell layer.

David then moves into a demo of VMM. He walks through the creation of a new VM, and one thing I noticed that I hadn’t seen before was the idea of a “hardware profile.” This is a set of hardware properties like number of CPUs, amount of RAM, number of NICs, etc. This is a nice feature, as it separates common hardware configurations from the OS installation. Typical VM templates combine the hardware configuration and the OS installation together.

In the demo, David shows how the automatically-generated PowerShell script can be easily modified to use a variable and prompt the user for information so that you can create a script that quickly and easily creates a new virtual machine with the name of your choice. That’s fairly handy.

The next few slides described the hierarchical nature of the VMM PowerShell objects, and how the PowerShell Cmdlets always generate a job in VMM. This allows VMM to audit jobs, provide a job history, and store changes invoked by a job. Security can also be applied to a job, so as to enforce ACLs. This also allows long-running jobs to be asynchronously monitored over time via the job.

David recommends using the PowerShell button in VMM; this automatically loads the appropriate snap-in so that all the VMM Cmdlets are available for use. He then launches into a fairly in-depth demo and review of PowerShell, how to interrogate a snap-in to determine its commands, how to sort or filter output to show only the desired results, how to view the details on a particular command, and how to use some simple pipes. He also showed some ways to get more information or help or to view detailed documentation on a command or a command’s parameters.

The next little while was spent walking through a series of scenarios of using PowerShell to perform various tasks. First is a series of tasks to provide a report (or a group of reports) to management. Next David walks through scenarios involving the creation of new VMs, including creating a hardware profile, attaching hardware, and using intelligent placement for the new VM.

Tired of the boring old PowerShell command prompt? David moves into a demo of PowerGUI, a way of turning PowerShell commands into a GUI application. He also demonstrated PowerGadget Creator, which allows one to create a Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget using PowerShell. This would allow users to create tools to display VM or VM host information in the Vista Sidebar. Finally, David shows how to use Visual Studio to extend VMM using PowerShell. Frankly, this level of extensibility and customization is probably beyond most users, but I suppose it’s useful functionality to have nevertheless.

The next topic was….(drum roll please)….PRO! That’s right, another discussion of the integration between VMM and Operations Manager which is built upon PowerShell. Fortunately, David didn’t spend a great deal of time covering PRO yet again (thank you!).

David closed out the session with a quick summary of the material covered and pointed attendees to a few online resources. I found the session reasonably helpful, even if only from the perspective of getting more familiar with the VMM object model so that I can write my own PowerShell scripts.

After the conclusion of VIR358, I went up to the front to speak with the presenters about the question I had during the session: what about NIC bonding or NIC teaming? You’ll recall that I wondered about that during the VIR358 session.

Well, it turns out that Hyper-V does not support any form of NIC teaming or NIC bonding. Yes, you read that right: you can’t link more than one NIC to a virtual switch in Hyper-V.

If you follow my del.icio.us linkstream, you will probably have noted that I recently bookmarked a Microsoft KB article that describes how using HP’s Network Utility can cause Hyper-V to stop responding. I guess this just goes to further support Hyper-V’s lack of support for NIC teaming or bonding.

In my opinion, that is a huge problem. How does one go about providing network link redundancy to guests hosted on Hyper-V? Surely using Failover Clustering and Quick Migration isn’t the answer here, is it? One of the presenters offered to get back to me with more information; I’ve already sent him an e-mail so he has my contact information. As soon as I hear something back, I’ll be sure to update this post.

Day 3 of Tech-Ed 2008 is upon me, and the first session of the day is another session with Jeff Woolsey. This session, VIR358, is titled “Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Architecture, Scenarios, and Networking.” I suspect there will be some duplicate content from Jeff’s Day 1 session, and I’ll try to weed that out wherever possible. I’m particularly interested in the networking discussions, as I was unable to gather any real information on Hyper-V networking from the Day 1 session or from my private discussion with Jeff.

As the session begins, Jeff reminds everyone of the MAP 3.1 beta. I described MAP in more detail in a session yesterday. This new version adds some additional functionality and features, primarily around Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Jeff went into some additional detail about MAP, but I won’t worry about covering that again here.

Jeff’s agenda lists a virtualization comparison. I’m guessing that will mean a comparison of Hyper-V with other virtualization solutions. Will that comparison be against other vendors’ products?

According to IDC, virtualization penetration is estimated to be only 17% in 2010, up from 5% in 2005.

(The session is very crowded, perhaps the most crowded session I’ve attended thus far.)

With regards to system requirements, Hyper-V requires hardware assists (Intel VT or AMD-V) and hardware-enabled data execution prevention (DEP; in the form of AMD NX or Intel XD). Without these features, Hyper-V will not operate. Hyper-V is 64-bit also, meaning that you must use x64 processors.

Jeff describes the hypervisor itself as running in “Ring -1”, which he explains as less than Ring 0 due to the hardware assists provided by Intel VT or AMD V. This allows child partitions (guest VMs) to run at native Ring 0.

The architecture slide that Jeff takes some time to walk through contains much of the same information as VIR367 on Day 1. Going back to I/O again, Jeff revisits the concept of emulation (used in Virtual Server) vs. synthetic devices. Emulation provides great backward compatibility, but performance was awful. Hyper-V uses “driver enlightenment,” or synthetic devices, which leverage VMBus. VMBus is a point-to-point high-speed connection between a child partition and the parent partition. Note that synthetic devices are only available to “enlightened” guest operating systems. You can consider Hyper-V’s synthetic devices and their corresponding drivers to be the equivalent of VMware Tools, VI Tools, etc. Some vendors also call these paravirtualized drivers. Virtualization Service Providers (VSPs) and Virtualization Service Clients (VSCs) are part of this synthetic device architecture and VMBus.

The partnerships between Microsoft and Linux vendors (like Novell) allows for enlightened drivers to be available for Linux distributions as well, preventing them from having to use emulation and suffering the performance penalty that results.

Hyper-V features checklist includes support for up to 64GB of RAM per VM, up to 4 logical CPUs per VM, integrated cluster support (this provides both HA and Quick Migration functionality), support for BitLocker (earlier sessions seemed to question Hyper-V support for BitLocker), live VM backups through integration with Volume Shadow Service (VSS), pass-through disk access for VMs, VLAN and load balancing support, and snapshots. For the most part, this puts Hyper-V on par with most other virtualization solutions, with the glaring exception of live migration. Live migration is supported by VMware, XenServer, and Virtual Iron, among others. Microsoft does have an advantage with the VSS support for live VM backups.

Jeff references a white paper due to be published soon that details how to use BitLocker with Hyper-V.

Jeff did cover one slide on Hyper-V security. I won’t reproduce that stuff again; refer back to my coverage of Jeff’s discussion on Day 1 in VIR367.

Next, Jeff reviews the results of the TAP, RDP, and MSIT deployments. Based on thousands of VMs running on Hyper-V running in production across a variety of industries, Jeff says there have been zero performance blockers, zero deployment blockers, zero application compatibility bugs, and zero scalability blockers. According to Jeff, “the little red phone” that TAP or RDP customers can call if there’s a problem hasn’t rung even once. He also revisits the use of Hyper-V for the TechNet and MSDN web sites.

Mike Sterling then takes over to provide a demo of Hyper-V. Following the demo of Hyper-V, Mike also provides a brief demo of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008. I’ve covered that product extensively in other sessions, so I won’t cover that material again here.

Once Mike concludes his demo, Jeff starts into a discussion of networking. Microsoft recommends at least two network adapters; obviously, more would be better. If you are going to use iSCSI, use another dedicated NIC for storage. That brings it up to three NICs at a minimum. I recommend an absolute minimum of three adapters with other virtualization solutions, so this is nothing surprising or unusual. In terms of connecting the NICs, connect one NIC to a management network (this is where the parent partition will communicate) and separate NICs connected to storage and production networks. Only VMs should be exposed to production networks.

We now move into some networking examples. In example 1, we have 4 adapters. One adapter will be assigned to the parent partition for management, and the remaining three NICs will be used for VM networking. Storage in this case will not be iSCSI; it will be Fibre Channel or direct attached. In the Hyper-V configuration, selecting these three NICs for use with VM traffic creates three separate virtual switches. What about NIC bonding for virtual switches?

In example 2, we have 4 adapters again, but this time 1 NIC will be used for iSCSI traffic. This leaves only two NICs for VM traffic. This example shows multiple VMs sharing a single virtual switch, but I still don’t see anything with multiple NICs assigned to a single virtual switch.

When looking at the properties for NICs assigned to the parent partition, all the typical components will be bound. Conversely, for NICs assigned to virtual switches, only the Virtual Switch Protocol will be bound to the NIC.

When looking at a VM, emulated NICs will be listed as “Legacy Network Adapter,” whereas the new synthetic adapters will be listed simply as “Network Adapter.”

If you’d like to run Hyper-V on a laptop (perhaps for demos or testing), Hyper-V does not provide any support for wireless networks. It also doesn’t support sleep or hibernation, and multiple spindles (multiple physical hard disks) are highly recommended. You also need a laptop that uses the Santa Rosa chipset or a later chipset. These newer chipsets will allow you to use 4GB of RAM or more in the laptop.

Jeff went through a few more slides, describing his personal laptop configuration (dual-boot Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista with dual hard drives), a cheap test/dev system, and the overall procedure for creating new VMs. I believe I described the process for creating new VMs earlier, but if you’ve used a virtualization solution before there’s nothing new here. Jeff speaks highly of the rapid deployment capabilities that are possible now with Hyper-V, SCVMM, and VM libraries; I would dare to say this kind of functionality is pretty standard with most every virtualization solution out there. That’s not a knock against Hyper-V, just a “level set” that this isn’t something that doesn’t exist with other platforms. This just brings Hyper-V on the same level with other products.

The next few slides were all material that’s already been covered else, like SCVMM, SCOM integration with SCVMM, other System Center components, etc. I won’t bore you with all the details again. If there is one thing that I’m tired of hearing here at Tech-Ed this year, it’s the story about bringing all of System Center together with Hyper-V. Every single session says it.

The virtualization comparison first compares Hyper-V with Virtual Server 2005 R2, and then moves on to compare Hyper-V with ESX 3.5. I don’t necessarily agree with the way in which Jeff makes the comparisons with ESX; for example, he lists Hyper-V as having “unified physical and virtual management” but ESX as having only “virtual management.” It’s not Hyper-V that provides this functionality; that’s System Center Operations Manager. That kind of comparison is, in my opinion, playing loose and fast with the boundaries of the products and related products. I may just have to perform and publish my own comparison…

That wrapped up the session. They gave away three copies of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server, Visual Studio, but I didn’t win. Bummer.

This session couldn’t be published live because I had no wireless signal and no cellular signal in the breakout room. However, I did want to capture the information and publish it at the next available opportunity for the benefit of the readers.

This session was hosted by Luis Camara Manoel, Satish Mathew, and Jay Sauls (he was also one of the presenters in the session prior to this one). The focus of the session, quite obviously, is the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool, which is designed to help in the maintenance and patching of offline VMs. Offline VMs are typically cited as one of the major security concerns with virtualization projects, in that they likely will not as up-to-date with patches and malware protection as online VMs; thus, when they finally do come online they could present a security risk to the organization.

The session starts off with an overview of the various Solutions Accelerators that are available from Microsoft, and then Jay Sauls takes over and begins to talk about the MAP toolkit again. Of course, I’ve just finished an extensive session on the MAP toolkit, so this is completely redundant and absolutely useless for me. I tuned him out until the session changed focus again to the Offline VM Servicing Tool.

When the session switches focus back to the Servicing Tool, the question is asked: Why are offline VMs such a problem? Many attendees in the session indicate that they have sizable numbers of offline VMs sitting in a library. The typical problem, as I mentioned earlier, is that the offline VMs miss patches, miss compliance scans, and miss other updates.

The solution to this problem is the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool. This tool is designed to automate the application of OS patches as well as application patches. This is accomplished by integrating with existing System Center products like System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). I appreciate the fact that Configuration Manager is not required; otherwise, this tool would be far less useful.

Note that “true offline” patching will be available in the next version of Configuration Manager, but it will only service VMs running Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

The Offline VM Servicing Tool takes four steps in its operation:

1. Identify
2. Assess
3. Patch
4. Report

The overall process of how the Offline VM Servicing Tool works looks something like this:

1. The tool reads the SCVMM library and gets a list of VMs
2. A VM group is created
3. The user must select a group of maintenance hosts; these maintenance hosts will be where the offline VMs will be moved to be patched
4. It will schedule a job on these maintenance hosts
5. The VMs will be moved from the library to the maintenance hosts and started
6. The VMs will be patched using Configuration Manager or WSUS (see below)
7. Upon confirmation of the patching of the VMs, they will be shut down and moved back to the SCVMM library

The tool works by utilizing PowerShell to automate a series of tasks like starting the VM, moving the VM, applying patches, etc. The UI screens for the tool were developed to match the SCVMM UI screens. Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows Vista are currently supported; Windows Server 2008 is not yet supported.

The requirements for using the tool:

• All VMs must be under SCVMM control
• It’s strongly recommended to setup a separate VLAN for the maintenance hosts
• If using Configuration Manager, all VMs must have the Configuration Manager client
• If using WSUS, all clients must be configured to use WSUS
• The server running the Offline VM Servicing Tool must be dual homed to talk to both SCVMM and Configuration Manager/WSUS

At this point Satish, one of the presenters, took over with a demo of the tool. As mentioned earlier, the tool looks and acts a lot like SCVMM.

The presentation consistently referenced SCVMM 2007, the currently shipping version; support for SCVMM 2008 will be included in the next version of the tool. Also slated to inclusion in the next version is support for Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Configuration Manager 2007 SP1, and WSUS 3.0 SP1. Unfortunately, this next version isn’t due until 2009, leaving quite a sizable gap in time between the availability of Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V and the ability of the tool to work with those products. It seems to me that the Offline VM Servicing Tool, while useful right now, will become much less relevant and much less useful once Hyper-V and SCVMM 2008 go RTM.

At this point, Stephen Anderson with Compellent took the stage and began to discuss his company’s products. I’m not really clear why Compellent was given time to advertise their products, unless it was by virtue of the fact that Compellent provided Microsoft with some tools and equipment to assist in the development of the Offline VM Servicing Tool. In any event, I found this to be completely inappropriate and left the session.

Based on rapidly dwindling battery life, I thought that I might not be able to liveblog this session. Fortunately, I was able to find a power plug between the last session and this session, and I was able to find a seat near a power plug in this session. You’re in luck!

This session is hosted by Jay Sauls and Baldwin Ng. Jay is a Senior Program Manager; Baldwin is a Senior Product Manager. This session will focus on the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Solution Accelerator for Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, and Virtual Server 2005 R2. The MAP Toolkit bears some similarity to Capacity Planner from VMware, as I understand it, so I’m very interested in learning more.

Both the MAP toolkit and the IPD Guides (discussed yesterday) fall into the Plan phase of the IT lifecycle as defined by Microsoft.

What are some challenges when considering a migration to Windows Server 2008 and virtualization? These include the accurate number of servers (some organizations, believe or not, actually have a problem having an accurate count of servers), compatibility (Does the hardware support Windows Server 2008? What about device compatibility? Does any of the hardware need BIOS or firmware upgrades?), and overall consolidation ratios. The MAP toolkit is designed to help address these questions.

The MAP toolkit consists of automated discovery tools and guidance. It provides an agent-less inventory of PCs, servers, applications, devices, and roles to provide migration readiness reports. Two ways in which the MAP toolkit might be used are 1) to assess hardware and device compatibility for Windows Server 2008; and 2) to assist with server placement in virtualization/consolidation scenarios.

MAP runs agent-less but does use WMI to gather information, so you will need to be sure that host-based firewalls (or network firewalls) allow the proper traffic to/from the systems, and you will need proper credentials on the host systems from which information is being gathered. After meeting these requirements, MAP can generate a report for different migration scenarios.

There are generally two types of documents that are produced by MAP. One is a migration proposal, which is a Word document that contains an executive summary and detailed data gathered from the environment. The second report is an Excel document that provides detailed information on every system discovered in the environment. This Excel document contains details on system components, configuration, installed devices, etc., and is intended to provide “deep detail” to back up the proposal document.

Next, Jay moves into a demo of MAP for three different scenarios. In the first scenario, we are using MAP to discover and document the existing environment. In the second, MAP will gather performance and utilization information to assist in recommendations for server consolidation/virtualization candidates. The third scenario involves some capacity planning, where we can specify a hypothetical host system and MAP will place virtualization candidates onto the hypothetical host in order to determine how many hosts will be needed.

MAP uses a local instance of SQL Server Express on the system on which it is installed. A separate database can be used for each instance that MAP is run.

For the first scenario, we need to discover the servers in an environment. There are a couple different ways to discover the servers, including enumerating Active Directory, IP address scanning, Windows networking (for servers in workgroups), or importing from a flat file. MAP should reconcile servers found in multiple methods, so a server found in AD as well as discovered via an IP address scan should be reconciled to the same server object.

Once the systems are discovered or imported, we need to specify credentials used to connect to the list of systems. These credentials need sufficient permissions to query WMI. It’s not clear if this means administrative credentials.

MAP currently does not have any scheduling functionality. This is being considered for a future version.

MAP also gathers a list of all the device drivers installed on all the assessed systems, and attempts to identify if those device drivers are compatible with Windows Server 2008. Updates are published by Microsoft that are automatically downloaded by MAP with the latest device driver information.

The Word and Excel documents produced by MAP are rather extensive and detailed, and of course can be easily customized.

MAP can also gather performance statistics so as to be able to provide guidance in a server consolidation/virtualization scenarios. Much like with the discovery process, you can specify how you want to provide the systems that should be monitored and how long it should gather information. While you can schedule the stop date/time, you can’t schedule the start date/time.

Once that data is gathered, you can use MAP to prepare a report that will make recommendations for how workloads will be consolidated onto either Virtual Server 2005 R2 or Hyper-V. During this wizard, you can select what types of CPUs, how many, how many cores per CPU, the L2/L3 cache amounts, and the bus speed. The wizard also allows you to specify the disk storage subsystem. This part of the wizard allows you to select from some predefined disk types, the number of disks, the RAID type (if you are using RAID), and the size of the disks. MAP uses this information to attempt to estimate the throughput of the disk subsystem. This method may or may not be applicable to SANs, since the predefined disk types and their corresponding information don’t really map to most SAN types, especially Fibre Channel SANs and arrays using Fibre Channel drives.

The presenter answered a few questions regarding storage subsystem estimates by referring attendees to the System Center Capacity Planner application, which apparently could do a better job of estimating how a disk subsystem operates and how it responds to particular applications.

Continuing along with the wizard in MAP, we can specify the number and type of Ethernet adapters in the projected systems (the system upon which we will consolidate or virtualize candidates that have been identified earlier by MAP).

An artificial limit can be assigned to limit the number of VMs per host.

Finally, MAP will ask for a list of computers that should be considered virtualization candidates. I believe this list can be easily produced or exported from MAP based on earlier steps in the application.

As in other tasks with MAP, it produces a Word document and some matching Excel workbooks with supporting detailed information. In one of the Excel documents is a breakdown of which workloads are assigned to which virtualization hosts. This is all very useful information to have, and while the MAP toolkit does have a fair number of limitations, it is free. (Of course, VMware Capacity Planner is now free as well.)

The MAP toolkit can use the full-blown version of SQL Server, and it is possible to run multiple MAP instances against the same database so as to scale out to larger environments.

Looking forward at the future of MAP, version 3.1 will add new support for Hyper-V server placement (version 3.1 is in beta right now) and will also provide information on migrations to SQL Server 2008 from earlier versions of SQL Server. Some basic desktop security assessments will also be provided. MAP 4.0 may expand into disaster recovery and business continuity assessments as well as hardware assessments for next-generation Windows (Windows 7?) deployments.

That wraps up this session. My next session is MGT374, Offline Servicing of Virtual Machines.

I’ll do my best to liveblog as much content from this session as possible, but I arrived late (you’ll understand why soon) and my battery is running low. Sorry all!

I arrived in the session as the speaker was reviewing some Hyper-V architecture with regards to the placement of the storage drivers and the use of Virtualization Service Clients (VSCs) and Virtualization Service Providers (VSPs). I think I covered those in my earlier liveblogging session from Day 1; if I didn’t, I’ll revise this post with more information later.

One key limitation with virtualized servers with regards to storage is how to handle Fibre Channel; you can’t really have multiple VMs using the same HBA because they would all share the same WWPN (World Wide Port Name), and SAN zoning is all built on the use of WWPNs. NPIV (N_Port ID Virtualization) is the answer here, which allows an HBA to register multiple fabric addresses. Each VM can use one of those multiple addresses. This allows us to return to zoning on a per server/per VM basis and eliminates this problem.

Next the presenter discussed the idea of virtual fabrics, a T.11 standard implemented by Cisco as VSAN and by Brocade as LSAN. Each HBA can only reside in a single virtual fabric, but traffic can be routed to other fabrics as needed.

Regarding virtual HBAs and fabric QoS, this is handled on a per-initiator WWPN basis. (I guess this means we can apply QoS to individual VMs when using NPIV, then?) I’m not exactly sure why the presenter is discussing this particular topic; it doesn’t seem to tie back to the main topic of storage connectivity for virtual machines.

So what is required to do virtual HBAs (again, I’m assuming this means using NPIV to present a virtual HBA to a Hyper-V hosted VM)? Next month, a newer version of Emulex VMPilot and the Storport Miniport driver will provide support for Windows Server 2003 SP2 and Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008. This will be compatible with 4Gpbs HBA from Emulex. Depending upon the HBA, the number of virtual ports (VPorts) may be limited (only 16 VPorts on midrange 4Gbps HBAs, for example).

There is no performance impact for using virtual HBAs, by the way. The number is so small as to defy measurement.

You also need FC switch support for NPIV. This requirement only applies to “edge switches” where NPIV-enabled HBAs will actually connect. There are also no other requirements on storage devices.

Best practices for storage access:

• For consolidating file/print servers or desktops, place all the VMs on a single shared LUN. (Note that this prevents Quick Migration.) You can’t use fabric QoS on a per-VM basis also, because all the VMs share the same WWPN of the physical HBA.
• For virtualizing application servers, use a dedicated LUN for each VM. This will allow the use of Quick Migration and can used virtual HBA, LUNs can be masked only to this specific VM, and you can create single-initiator zones using the virtual HBA and the applicable storage targets.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) supports VDS (Virtual Disk Service) for Fibre Channel and iSCSI. VMM allows partners to extend built-in functionality by exposing NPIV WMI interfaces and allowing NPIV WMI methods to enumerate, create, and delete VPorts. In addition, VMM automatically manages VM and VPort migration in SANs.

Emulex VMPilot is the UI for SAN configuration with VMM. The current version is version 1.1; version 1.2 will be released next month and will provide support for Hyper-V. VMPilot with VMM enables VPort creation according to the T.11 NPIV standard, provides a graphical and command line interface, and provides automatic generation of virtual WWPNs. (I need to stop by the Emulex booth downstairs to get more information on this.) VMPilot also supplies a VMM PRO pack to report HBA health up to System Center Operations Manager and then back to SCVMM.

Recapping the benefits:

• LUN optimization through VM to LUN assignment
• Fabric QoS and prioritization at the VM level
• Single-initiator zoning possible, returns to a storage best practice
• Array-level LUN masking to control LUN access on a per-VM basis
• Accelerated VM migration (not sure about this one)
• VSAN integration and routing
• Eliminates duplication of storage administration tasks

I think that’s about going to do it for this liveblog; my battery is almost gone. I’ll be back with more information as soon as possible!

We’re getting ready to start VIR360, the second of two sessions this morning on System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008. The first session was liveblogged here. The wireless network in this room isn’t nearly as reliable as the signal in the last room, so I may not be able to publish this until after the session ends. We’ll see.

This session is being presented by Alan Goodman, Senior Program Manager for Microsoft. The idea behind the presentation is to focus on the advanced features of SCVMM 2008, building upon what was presented earlier in VIR253. The presenter for VIR253, Edwin, alluded to the possibility that this session might be heavily focused on PRO, one of the integration points between SCVMM and System Center Operations Manager (SCOM). I’m hoping that’s not the case.

As the session starts, Alan outlines the three areas that he will focus on: VMware management, PRO integration with SCOM, and Hyper-V failover cluster integration.

Alan starts out with VMware management. The reason behind Microsoft tackling VMware management with SCVMM 2008 is in response to customer demand. This allows customers to leverage management processes and the System Center family for a complete management solution. It’s also nice to see Microsoft admitting that the co-existence of virtualization platforms is a reality. ESX and Hyper-V will co-exist in customers’ data centers, and customers want to be able to manage both with a single console.

As a result of customer demand, some of the goals for SCVMM 2008 were:

• Cross-platform virtualization management (managing VI3, Hyper-V, and Virtual Server)
• Streamlining operations and automating with PowerShell
• Enhanced management of VMware, including PRO, intelligent placement, library support, and integration conversion tools

Alan refers again to using SCVMM as the “manager of managers”, bringing together multiple VirtualCenter environments and Microsoft virtualization environments into a single management console. SCVMM uses the existing, published VI3/VirtualCenter interfaces, and operations performed in either tool will reflect in both environments in real-time. A single set of credentials is used between SCVMM and VI3; to fully exploit SCVMM’s capabilities, full privileges must be granted to the credentials used by SCVMM.

Alan moves into a demo of VMware management. To add VMware management, you click a link labeled “Add VMware VirtualCenter server” and supply the name of the VC server and supply credentials. From there, ESX hosts will start adding to the SCVMM console, and then VMs will start populating in SCVMM as well. From there, Alan initiates a VMotion operation from within SCVMM. Upon initiating the process inside SCVMM, we see the task appear inside VirtualCenter, reflecting the real-time communication between the two environments.

All this talk about intelligent placement makes me wonder what Microsoft’s recommendation or requirement is regarding DRS on managed VMware clusters? Is there a recommendation to disable DRS? Would VC’s intelligent placement functionality conflict with the SCVMM intelligent placement capability?

I saw Alan supply some credentials during the SCVMM demo, and it looked like he used root credentials on the ESX host. Is that required? That implies that SCVMM communicates outside of VC, which would contradict some discussions with the SCVMM team yesterday. If anyone can provide any clarification, that would be great.

Alan next moves on to a discussion of SCVMM’s failover clustering integration. He does clearly define Quick Migration as a solution that does involve downtime, but he quickly repositions Quick Migration as an HA solution when used in conjunction with Windows Server 2008 failover clustering. Alan makes comparisons between Quick Migration and VMware HA, which in my mind are very applicable comparisons. I’m glad to see Microsoft owning up that Quick Migration is not equivalent to VMotion (live migration).

When placing VMs onto a failover cluster, SCVMM performs various permutations to ensure that the capacity requirements of the new VM don’t exceed the cluster’s ability to supply those resources in a failure scenario, based on the cluster’s configured cluster reserve. For VMware pros, think of this like configuring a VMware HA cluster and admission control. (Let’s hope that SCVMM doesn’t run into the same kinds of quirks as VC’s admission control.)

VMs are configured to be highly available on a per-VM basis, and SCVMM will automatically handle the placement of VMs on HA-configured hosts (either failover clusters with Hyper-V or VMware HA clusters). In some ways, I do like the per-VM ability to configure high availability.

Alan next moved into a more in-depth discussion of Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO), an integration point between SCVMM and SCOM. The integration with SCOM provides a number of reports pertaining to virtualization:

• Virtualization candidates
• Virtual machine allocation
• Virtual machine utilization
• Host utilization
• Host utilization growth

The ability for customers already using SCOM to then leverage the integration between SCOM and SCVMM to drive a P2V/consolidation effort is pretty powerful. It wouldn’t make sense for an organization to adopt SCOM just for consolidation assistance, but if an organization is already using SCOM then it’s a nice added feature.

The host utilization growth report could also be very useful in helping to determine capacity allocation and to project future resource needs.

SCVMM also leverages an SDK connection to SCOM to provide real-time updates to SCOM as VMs are created, migrated, or decommissioned.

So what is PRO? PRO is workload- and application-aware resource optimization. With PRO, we can create policies that act upon tips, provided by SCOM as part of its OS and application monitoring ability, to address potential resource utilization problems. In some ways, PRO is kind of like VMware DRS, but since Hyper-V doesn’t provide any live migration functionality. In that regard, it falls far short of matching the DRS functionality. However, where it exceeds VMware DRS is in more detailed knowledge about the applications and services running inside the VM, instead of acting only upon the “external view” of the VM’s resource requirements. This is why I think that the VMware acquisition of B-Hive is critical, because it begins to give VMware the same kind of “application awareness” inside the VM so that DRS can act upon service-level agreements or service-level status.

PRO also provides an extensible framework (assuming via SCOM’s management/monitoring capabilities) to allow hardware vendors to supply hardware monitoring information and other software vendors to provide more detailed information and extensions to PRO. Examples include Brocade (presumably to provide Fibre Channel fabric information), Emulex (Fibre Channel HBA information), EMC (storage array performance information), and HP (server hardware information).

Alan goes on to verify that PRO is built upon the idea of Management Packs (MPs) for SCOM. Microsoft provides their own PRO-enabled MP for SCOM that provides information for Hyper-V hosts, VMware hosts, and virtual machines; this MP provides information back to SCVMM in order to enable PRO tips and recommendations inside SCVMM 2008.

Moving into a demo, Alan shows how the feedback between SCVMM and SCOM creates a comprehensive service view that crosses the physical-to-virtual boundary, allowing administrators to drill down into clusters, then into hosts, then into VMs, and then finally into specific services inside VMs. That’s pretty handy.

Continuing the demo, Alan shows how PRO can resolve problems for you; he uses the example of a couple of VMs generating high CPU load on the host. By telling PRO to fix the problem, SCVMM’s intelligent placement is invoked and a new host is selected for the VM. The VM is then migrated to the new host. The only piece missing: live migration. Because this was done on a Hyper-V host, we had to use Quick Migration, which then caused some downtime for the end users.

At this point, Alan concluded the session and opened the floor to questions.

UPDATE: There’s some additional information that I need to add to this post as a result of the Q&A portion of the session. In that portion of the session, I asked Alan about two things:

1. Interactions between PRO and DRS when SCVMM is managing VMware hosts
2. Credentials required to “fully” manage VMware ESX servers from SCVMM

In response to the first question, Alan indicated that DRS and PRO can conflict with each other. The recommendation is to disable DRS in the VMware environment and allow PRO to handle the optimization of the cluster. Keep in mind, as mentioned in the comments below and as I mentioned above, that SCVMM can initiate VMotion/live migration operations when managing VMware hosts.

In response to the second question, an extra set of credentials are required in order to manage the file system on ESX servers. Currently you have to use either the root account or take advantage or configure the VM Delegate functionality to use a different account. This is also mentioned in the comments below. If you don’t need to manage file system operations, like copying files to or from ESX servers, then you don’t need this additional set of credentials.

Finally, I’ve heard mention from several Microsoft employees that VMware does not have intelligent placement. That’s not accurate. When DRS is enabled in a cluster of ESX hosts, VirtualCenter will both a) calculate the initial placement of the VM within the cluster and b) use VMotion to dynamically optimize the placement of the VM within the cluster while the VM is running.

It’s Day 2 of Tech-Ed 2008, and my first session of the day is VIR253, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Overview, Part 1 of 2. Part 2 will be later this morning. I’ve got a seat right by the doors to the breakout session, so I’m hoping that the wireless LAN will hold out for liveblogging the session.

I’ve actually been here at the conference center since 7:00 AM this morning; I spent some time in the Hands-On Labs this morning going through Hyper-V setup, configuration, Authorization Manager, etc. Useful stuff; I’ll blog more on that later.

The presenter, Edwin Yuen, starts with defining virtualization as the “isolation of one computing resource from the other.” This is a good generic definition and allows us to view virtualization as more than just server virtualization. It allows us to extend the idea of virtualization to things like VPNs (which I’ve long described as a form of network virtualization), virtual storage, virtual presentation (think Terminal Services). While virtualization creates flexibility, it can also create issues. Edwin states that “Virtual machines are machines first, virtual second.” That’s an important point to remember—while virtual machines can be very useful and extremely flexible, they are still machines that must be managed, monitored, and supported.

Edwin then reviews Microsoft’s virtualization product suite, encompassing server virtualization (Hyper-V), application virtualization (SoftGrid), desktop virtualization (VirtualPC), and presentation virtualization (Terminal Services).

In reviewing Microsoft’s “growing momentum” for virtualization, Edwin reminded attendees that as of last Friday, Microsoft released a patch that will fix SCVMM 2008 Beta 1 to allow it to manage Hyper-V RC1. There’s also a disk available in the Technical Learning Center (TLC) downstairs in the conference center.

Next we discuss the four major members of the System Center family that apply to a virtualization environment. SCVMM, of course, has already been mentioned. There’s also System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) for patch management and deployment, software upgrades, and OS and application configuration management; System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), which provides end-to-end service management, server and application health monitoring and management, and performance reporting and analysis; and System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM), which enables the VSS support for live VM backups with in-guest consistency. However, the focus of this session is SCVMM 2008.

Key things to remember about SCVMM 2008 is the management of VMware ESX servers through VirtualCenter (VirtualCenter is still required to manage ESX servers via SCVMM 2008) as well as Virtual Server and Hyper-V. SCVMM supports intelligent placement, although I believe at startup only since there is no live migration support within any MS virtualization product. SCVMM 2008 also provides P2V and V2V support. Edwin also mentions that you can use SCVMM’s P2V (what he likes to call “VP2V”) to convert a VMware VM to a Hyper-V VM live. There’s also application and service-level monitoring integration with SCOM; the idea of Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) came up again. More on PRO will be available in Part 2 later this morning. The presenter reinforced again that SCVMM 2008 is completely built on PowerShell, and that there are some things you can do in PowerShell that can’t be done in the SCVMM GUI. And the PowerShell scripts will generally work equally against both Hyper-V and managed VMware hosts.

(Note to readers: You may see some information overlap from sessions I attended yesterday. Sorry about that; I’m trying to present each session as completely as possible. Just ignore repeated information wherever you can.)

RTM for SCVMM 2008 is dependent upon the RTM for Hyper-V; projected RTM for SCVMM 2008 is expected in the Q3/Q4 timeframe.

Edwin next launched into a live demo of the SCVMM 2008 GUI. SCVMM allows you to maintain the VirtualCenter logical groups, allowing users to place Hyper-V hosts and ESX hosts in the same logical groupings. The list of hosts and virtual machines can be grouped by guest operating system, or date added, or a custom tag, and again this is true for VMs on either virtualization platform. SCVMM 2008 also offers a quick “snapshot” of the selected VM at the bottom, including a Windows Task Manager-style overview of current CPU usage. Many of the UI elements are hyperlinked and take you to other areas of the application for more information or more details. Overall, the UI looks pretty nice, although I’m not necessarily a huge fan of the three-pane interface that Microsoft has adopted with Windows Server 2008 and the latest version of MMC.

SCVMM integrates Sysprep, so that templates can be customized not only with regard to virtual hardware, but also with regard to the guest OS parameters as well. This brings SCVMM’s templates on par with VirtualCenter.

Edwin again shows off the automatic generation of PowerShell scripts. At the end of each wizard (and all GUI operations are wizard-driven) there’s an option to display the underlying PowerShell script. PowerShell scripts can be modified and customized, and then added to the SCVMM library to be run whenever needed.

As for SCVMM libraries, these are just ordinary file shares. This means that the placement of SCVMM libraries should be carefully considered in the design and implementation of SCVMM; you don’t want to be pulling library information across the WAN.

Next Edwin displays the conversion capabilities of SCVMM 2008 by performing a “VP2V”. This installs an agent into the VM that allows the conversion to take place while the source system is live. In the conversion process, we can select which drives we’d like to convert (the C: drive is always required) or we can modify the number of CPUs or the memory assigned to the VM. The P2V process, like everything else in SCVMM 2008, is driven by PowerShell and can optionally display a PowerShell script at the end of the GUI wizard.

SCVMM also has a web interface that allows for delegated administration, so that certain tasks can be delegated out to end users. This can allow business owners to have the ability to reboot a virtual machine, but not necessarily change the configuration of the VM. In addition, the web interface can also give end users console access to the VMs as well. VM provisioning, with limits via policy, is also available.

Next we moved on to discuss VMware management in more detail. It’s driven by customer demand and is intended to provide a unified management experience, for both physical and virtual, Hyper-V and VMware. The SCVMM feature set encompasses the ability to invoke VMotion, manage Resource Pools, etc. SCVMM can perform intelligent placement against VMware servers (I’m guessing that this does not leverage VirtualCenter’s existing intelligent placement algorithms), use PowerShell scripts, etc. SCVMM can manage multiple VirtualCenter instances, allowing users to consolidate multiple VCs and become a “manager of managers.”

When dealing with Windows Server-based hosts, SCVMM can remotely enable the Hyper-V role, which makes it easier to add Hyper-V hosts to SCVMM. Entire Hyper-V clusters can be added in a single step, and SCVMM will automatically detect node additions/removals. SCVMM also provides enhanced management of Hyper-V clusters.

The SCVMM library can contain VHDs, ISOs, offline VMs (difference between VHDs and offline VMs?), and PowerShell scripts. The SCVMM library is just a file share.

SCVMM’s conversion functionality supports live conversions for Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. Offline conversions are available for Windows 2000 Server. Both SMP and x64 sources are also supported. The entire process is automatable via PowerShell.

Edwin next presented some more detail on user roles, delegated administrators, self-service users, the default profiles available in SCVMM 2008, and how they are used. The scope for delegated administrators and self-service users can be modified, but the scope for administrators can’t be changed.

Intelligent placement uses some of the capacity planning functionality in SCVMM along with some weightings of the various resource requirements. SCVMM performs checks to ensure that potential target hosts are even capable of running the VM, i.e., it won’t recommend an x64 VM on an x86 host. The star rating is generated by comparing available resources, used resources, and the weightings to create the final recommendation. Based on this information, it looks definitely like SCVMM does not leverage any VirtualCenter intelligent placement functionality when managing VMware hosts.

PowerShell is the SCVMM API; that is how you access SCVMM functionality from other applications or from scripts. Edwin showed some simple examples of PowerShell scripts.

When deploying VMs via the LAN, BITS is used. Hyper-V uses Quick Migration; VMware uses VMotion. NPIV support is included, which will allow VMs to independently zoned. VDS support is included for both Fibre Channel and iSCSI SANs. I hope to get more information on the VDS support and NPIV in a session later today on advanced storage connectivity for VMs.

Part of the SCVMM integration with SCCM is the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool to provide automated patching of VM libraries. This provides integration with WSUS and SCCM. Real-time status reporting will be available as well. A beta of this is now available, and it will RTM after SCVMM 2008 goes RTM (which of course won’t happen until Hyper-V goes RTM). The tool works by moving offline VMs to “maintenance hosts”, where they are patched by WSUS/SCCM. Once the patching is complete, the VMs are powered back down and returned to the library.

Getting SCVMM 2008 is done by getting System Center Management Suite Enterprise. This includes VMM as well as Operations Manager, Data Protection Manager, and Configuration Manager.

Licensing is handled much like in previous versions of Windows. Standard Edition grants 1 additional VM instance; Enterprise Edition grants 4 additional VM instances; and Datacenter Edition grants unlimited VM instances. This is not a software limitation, this is a licensing limitation. Hyper-V does have an artificial limit of 256 VMs. Datacenter Edition is licensed per socket; Standard and Enterprise are licensed per server.

With regards to the virtualization roadmap, Hyper-V RC1 is available now and will RTM no later than August. SCVMM 2008 will RTM after Hyper-V goes final.

According to Edwin, management is the key. In his words, “Using virtualization with no management is worse than not using virtualization at all.”

Other SCVMM-related content at Tech-Ed 2008 includes VIR360 (I’ll be blogging that later this morning), VIR59-TLC, VIR350, VIR52-TLC, and VIR356. I’m not attending most of those sessions, but for those that I am I’ll blog as much content as possible.

At this point, Edwin wrapped up the session. I’m heading clear across the convention center to attend Part 2 of the 2 SCVMM series.

I had the opportunity today to spend a few minutes in a one-on-one conversation with Jeff Woolsey, Senior Program Manager for Hyper-V at Microsoft. During our conversation, Jeff and I discussed the Hyper-V architecture, comparisons to other virtualization solutions, and some common competitive arguments for or against Hyper-V. I’d like to publish a summarized version of our conversation here. (Jeff, if you’re reading and I’ve accidentally misquoted you, please be sure to correct me. I don’t want to misrepresent any information. Keep me straight!)

I framed the discussion around a series of questions. Each question is listed below, along with a summary of the discussion resulting from that question.

Question 1: What are the key architectural advantages of Hyper-V as compared to Xen or ESX?

Jeff indicated that Hyper-V and Xen are architecturally very similar. Both use a privileged VM; Microsoft calls it the parent partition, Xen calls it dom0. In both cases, I/O is routed through this privileged partition and only the privileged partition has access to the physical hardware. Microsoft believes the hypervisor should be as thin as possible; Hyper-V is only about 600K worth of code. The networking stack and the storage stack are pushed up into the parent partition to keep drivers out of the hypervisor. Jeff referred me back to his session earlier in the day, where he discussed the need for the parent partition (my summary of that session is here). ESX puts all the drivers in the hypervisor, which means that they have a harder time providing support for new hardware (the example given was 4Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs vs. 8Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs). In talking about the placement of device drivers, our discussion naturally led us to the next question.

Question 2: How would you respond to the concerns about the quality of the device drivers in the parent partition affecting the stability of the hypervisor?

Jeff doesn’t buy into this argument. Unlike desktops or workstations, administrators don’t typically go willy-nilly with drivers on production servers. Drivers are generally provided by the hardware vendors. In addition, because Hyper-V requires the x64 edition of Windows Server 2008, this is even less of an issue; it’s impossible to use unsigned drivers with x64 Windows. This means that any driver that can be used with Hyper-V will be WHQL-tested. Supposedly, this will keep out potentially faulty device drivers. Jeff pointed to the exclusive use of Hyper-V to power the MSDN and TechNet web sites at Microsoft as proof. I can see his point, but I still have to wonder if another level of qualification and validation shouldn’t have been established to ensure that everything works as expected with Hyper-V. It still seems possible to me that organizations stepping outside the “Big 3″ server vendors—Dell, HP, and IBM—could run into issues.

Question 3: How much interoperability is there between Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer?

Jeff admitted that this was outside his comfort area. I was specifically wondering about a Citrix claim of the ability to take a XenServer VM, move it to Hyper-V, and boot it right up. Jeff couldn’t confirm if that was possible. He did indicate that there would be a hypercall adapter that would support paravirtualized Linux kernels designed to run under the Xen hypervisor as well as non-PV Linux kernels. As for interoperability of Integration Components (ICs) or paravirtualized drivers, Jeff wasn’t sure. I should get more information on that soon and will post it here as soon as I receive it.

Question 4: What is your response to complaints about Microsoft’s support policy for third-party virtualization solutions?

This discussion really got Jeff animated. He pointed me to an announcement that I apparently missed from this morning’s keynote regarding the Server Virtualization Validation Program. This was mentioned in the official press release, but I really don’t recall seeing or hearing anything about it this morning. More information and more links about the SVVP, as I like to call it, is found in this Windows Server Division Weblog post. The idea behind the program is providing a framework to enable third-party virtualization solutions to qualify and validate running Windows Server 2008 on their hypervisor as well as providing a process for handling technical support cases, transferring cases between vendors, escalating cases, etc. Jeff tried to compare the idea of the Server Virtualization Validation Program to WHQL, which I can kind of see, but that analogy only goes so far. Without this program, I can certainly see Jeff’s points regarding the complexity of who will be supported, what versions will be supported, how they will handle patches to the supported versions, etc. With this program, other virtualization vendors have a clearly defined process they can follow to get the same support as Hyper-V (or close to it).

In my mind, Microsoft must strike a very delicate balance here. Lots of people—competitors, partners, customers, resellers—see Microsoft’s behavior here as anti-competitive, even if that isn’t the case. Again, I can certainly see the complexities involved; it just seems like Microsoft perhaps should have moved more quickly to address this issue.

Question 5: How would you address competitors’ complaints about how Hyper-V requires a separate LUN for each VM for which Quick Migration functionality is needed?

Jeff admitted that it is true that Hyper-V will require a separate LUN for each VM that needs Quick Migration functionality. Rather than spending time creating a clustered file system, Microsoft chose instead to allow storage partners to create those solutions. He referred me to Sanbolic, whose MelioFS clustered file system and LaScala volume manager will allow Hyper-V deployments to store multiple VMs on a single LUN visible to all hosts, just like VMFS. According to Jeff, this allows organizations to use both, if they so desire, instead of being “locked in.” Using a third-party clustered file system eliminates the “one VM per LUN” limitation imposed when using Quick Migration.

In my opinion, relying on partners to fill certain portions of the solution is certainly a valid approach. Lots of companies do this. In this situation, though, it seems a bit odd. For other areas of their virtualization solution, Microsoft likes to tout the completeness of the solution. Consider the tight integration of the various System Center components with Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V. But for this they want to rely on a partner? I have to wonder if a clustered file system developed by Microsoft isn’t somewhere on the road map.

And that was the end of our discussion. I’d like to thank Jeff for taking the time to talk with me, answering my questions, and sharing his thoughts on these topics.

My final session of the day is VIR353, Planning for Server Virtualization with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Using the New Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides. I got into this session about 15 minutes late as I was finishing up a one-on-one interview with Jeff Woolsey, Senior Program Manager for Hyper-V. I’ll have more on my interview with him later today or tonight. I’m not attending the next session of the day because it turns out that VIR366/VIR367 are essentially identical.

As I entered the session, the speaker was discussing the steps or tasks involved in creating the list of applications that will be run virtualized. He underscored the need to understand the applications’ requirements with regards to CPU, CPU type (32-bit or 64-bit), RAM requirements, and networking and storage requirements. The example given by the speaker is trying to run Exchange Server 2007 on Virtual Server. This won’t work, of course, because Exchange requires 64-bit support and Virtual Server only provides 32-bit support. Users also need to quantify support for applications running on a Hyper-V installation. Upon compiling the list of applications and their requirements, users will then need to identity the candidates for virtualization and prioritize them for virtualization.

The guide (I’m assuming this means the Infrastructure Planning and Design guide) makes the assumption that a single application on a physical server is transferred to a single application on a single VM. The guide does not take into account combining applications during the consolidation process.

After identifying the applications, users should then determine resource requirements. This includes CPU load, memory load, disk I/Os per second (IOPS), disk capacity, and network bandwidth. Users will also need to consider backup requirements and high availability requirements. Using the information on resource requirements, users can then group applications together and ensure that the aggregate requirements don’t exceed the capabilities of the physical host. This obviously can’t be done without first identifying the host platform, either by using company standards or by custom designing a virtualization hardware platform that suits your needs.

The speaker stresses the importance of mapping the five key resource requirements—CPU load, memory load, disk I/O per second, disk capacity, and network bandwidth—against the host hardware. This can be done manually or using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit. I’m attending a session on MAP tomorrow, so I’ll have more information on that later. It’s my understanding that MAP is similar to VMware Capacity Planner. The speaker also mentions that we can use System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to help with this process as well.

There are some considerations to keep in mind if using the tools. MAP currently does not include memory load or disk capacity in its assessments; SCVMM does not include disk capacity. The manual method will also typically not take CPU frequency scaling into consideration (i.e., 15% busy on a 2.2GHz CPU does not mean 15% busy on a 3.0GHz CPU).

The speaker announced that the IPD Guide for SCVMM is now available in beta.

SCVMM 2008, the next version of SCVMM that is currently in beta, is considered essential for managing a Hyper-V installation of any size. In this regard, it is very similar to VirtualCenter. Most companies installing any reasonable size implementation of VMware Infrastructure are also going to install VirtualCenter; the same goes for Hyper-V and SCVMM 2008.

A design consideration for deploying SCVMM is the placement of the VMM library. The VMM library is where ISOs, VM templates, Sysprep files, etc., are stored. Anytime SCVMM instantiates a VM, files must be copied from the VMM library to the host server, so good network connectivity is absolutely critical. In fact, the speaker said, “right next to each other” if at all possible.

In today’s keynote liveblog, you’ll recall that I mentioned PRO, which is an integration point between SCVMM and SCOM. If this is something that an organization desires, this is a decision to make early in the process. This decision can affect the number of SCVMM instances; this is due to the fact that multiple SCVMMs can connect to a single SCOM management group (MG), but a single SCVMM instance can’t connect to multiple SCOM MGs. If there are multiple SCOM MGs, then you’ll need to install multiple SCVMM instances (one for each MG), or you’ll need to forgo integration of the consoles.

The session wrapped up with an overview of what’s coming next in the Infrastructure Planning and Design guides. In particular, the speaker provided a list of the various IPD guides that are available from Microsoft. Some of them include:< ?p>

• Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology
• Windows Server Virtualization
• SoftGrid 4.2
• Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008
• Windows Deployment Services

There are about 10 IPD guides available, with more in the works.

And that’s it for today’s sessions! I have a few other posts to prepare; I’ll try to get them published tonight but it may be tomorrow. Hopefully readers are finding the coverage of the conference helpful. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for reading!