This document discusses System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager. It provides an overview of VMM, including its key components and benefits. It also covers the VMM database, including supported SQL Server versions and hardware requirements. High availability and clustering options for VMM are also summarized. The document concludes with an overview of next steps, such as planning design sessions.

1. System Center 2012
Virtual Machine Manager
Norman W. Mayes, CISSP MCSE MCITP-E ITIL-F
July 2013
Identity Management | Data Protection | Authentication Strategies
© 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved

2. Table of Contents
System Center – VMM
Introductions
Overview of VMM
VMM Database
Clustering
1
2
3
4
Next Steps5

3. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
Introductions
Business-Aligned Security
3
Edgile aligns security with the strategy, goals and demands
of the business; allowing us to redefining security in terms
of Strategic Capabilities and transform the perception of
security from a risk reduction activity into a Strategic
Imperative for the company.
Aligning Security
with the Strategy,
Goals and Demands
of the Business

4. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
Established in 2001 by Partners and Senior Managers from Deloitte
to Deliver Security Solutions to Leading Companies:
 Microsoft Security Solutions from the boardroom to the network
 Addressing the most challenging
security issues confronting
our customers
 Long-term relations drive solutions
from strategy to deployment
Edgile Exceeds Big-4 in Quality
and Style:
 Senior resources with real
world experience
 Small, focused and capable teams
 Senior technologist
Introductions
Edgile Background
4
Professionalism
MS
Expertise
VARS
Big 4
High
Low
Competitors
Junior Resources,
High % of Clients Not
Reference-able
Low High
Boutiques

5. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
Virtual Machine Manager Overview
 Brief overview of System Center 2012, SP1 – Virtual Machine Manager
(VMM)
VMM Database
 Discuss the deployment options and placement of SQL Server to
support Virtual Machine Manager and future System Center products
Clustering
 Discuss High Availability (HA), Failover and Clustering
Introductions
Session Goals

6. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
OVERVIEW

7. Development
Production
Configure &
Deploy
Cloud
Abstraction
Delegated
Capacity
Standardized
Services
Assign dedicated and shared resources
Windows Server 2012/2008
R2 Hyper-V,
VMware, Citrix XenServer
Intel, AMD,
OEM hardware
Fiber Channel,
iSCSI
Overview
Virtual Machine Manager 2012

8. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
Overview
Virtual Machine Manager Fabric
STORAGE
Discover, classify, and
allocate storage for use by
the private cloud. Provide the
correct storage for use with
appropriate access.
COMPUTE
Deploy your compute
resources, taking them from
bare metal to fully deployed
for your physical and
virtualization hosts.
NETWORK
Abstract your complex
networking infrastructure into
logical networks for cloud
use. Assign IP, virtual IP, and
MAC addresses from pools
and integrate with load
balancers.
CLUSTER
Consolidate your fabric
elements for use in a private
cloud.

9. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
Overview – 2012 Feature
Automated Bare-Metal Hyper-V
Bare-metal
server
WDS server
VHD
Drivers
Host profile
contoso
Library server
Hyper-V server
1
3
24
5
67
8
9
OOB reboot
Boot from PXE
Download VHDInject drivers
Authorize
PXE boot
Run generic command
execution scripts and
configure partitions Customize and
domain join
Enable Hyper-V
Download WINPE
Hyper-V server
Host Group
Hyper-V serverHyper-V server
Host Group
VMM server
Hyper-V serverHyper-V server
Host Group

10. SMI-S
Provider
Virtual Machine Manager
Gold Silver
Assign existing LUNs to
hosts and clusters
Create new LUNs from
pool and assign to hosts
and clusters
Allocate storage to
specific host groups
Create storage
classification pools and
associate with storage
Discover storage
through SMI-S provider
Host Group
Industry Standard API
Overview – 2012 Feature
Storage Allocation & Management

11. Server Virtualization
 Run multiple virtual servers
on a physical server
 Each VM has illusion it is running as a
physical server
Hyper-V Network Virtualization
 Run multiple virtual networks on a
physical network
 Each virtual network has illusion it is
running as a physical network
 Realized via Windows Server and VMM
Blue VM Red VM
Virtualization
Physical
Server
Blue Network Red Network
Physical
Network
Overview – 2012 Feature
Hyper-V Network Virtualization

12. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
Overview
VMM vs VMM SP1
System Center 2012
Virtual Machine Manager
SQL ServerWindows Server
Manages
Microsoft
Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2008 R2
Microsoft
Hyper-V Server 2012
SP1
2008 R22012 2008 R22008 R2 or 2012

13. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
Reliability and Predictability: Applications are highly available and
fault-tolerant.
Highly Automated: Infrastructure is highly automated to complete
tasks for provisioning new systems and configuring
storage, networking, and applications on its own without any manual
intervention.
Agility of Speed: Applications are deployed faster, and changes are
made much easier.
Focus of Applications and Services: Applications and
services, uptime, and quality of the service (QoS) as a measure for
success of a private cloud.
Overview
Virtual Machine Manager Benefits

14. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
VMM DATABASE

15. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
Virtual Machine Manager Database
SQL Supported Versions
SQL Server for System Center 2012 –
Virtual Machine Manager
Service Pack Editions
SQL Server 2008 R2 (64-bit) Service Pack 2 or earlier Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter
SQL Server 2008 (64-bit) Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3 Standard and Enterprise
SQL Server for VMM in System Center 2012 SP1 Service Pack Editions
SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter (64-bit)
SQL Server 2012 With or without Service Pack 1 Enterprise, Standard (64-bit)
System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager
System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager SP1

16. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
Virtual Machine Manager Database
SQL Hardware Requirements
Hardware component Minimum Recommended
Processor Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz Dual-Core 64-bit, 2 GHz
RAM 2 GB 4 GB
Hard disk space 80 GB 150 GB
Hardware component Minimum Recommended
Processor Dual-Core 64-bit, 2 GHz Dual-Core 64-bit, 2.8 GHz
RAM 4 GB 8 GB
Hard disk space 150 GB 200 GB
Managing up to 150 Hosts
Managing more than 150 Hosts
Note: Recommend a dedicated SQL Server for environments hosting more than 10 VMs

17. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
VMM encrypts some data in the VMM database (for example Run As
account credentials and passwords in guest operating system profiles)
by using the Windows Data Protection API (DPAPI). The encryption of
this data is tied to the specific computer on which VMM is installed
and the service account used by VMM. Therefore, if you need to move
your VMM installation to another computer, the encrypted data will not
be retained.
Distributed key management, however, stores the encryption keys in
AD DS. Therefore, if you need to move your VMM installation to
another computer, the encrypted data will be retained, because the
other computer will have access to the encryption keys in AD DS.
Virtual Machine Manager Database
Distributed Key Management

18. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
 The AlwaysOn feature is a high-availability and disaster-recovery
solution that provides an enterprise-level alternative to database
mirroring.
 Introduced in SQL Server 2012, AlwaysOn maximizes the availability
of a set of user databases for an enterprise. An availability
group supports a failover environment for a discrete set of user
databases, known as availability databases, that fail over together.
 An availability group fails over at the level of an availability replica.
Failovers are not caused by database issues such as a database
becoming suspect due to a loss of a data file, deletion of a
database, or corruption of a transaction log.
Note: Requires SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition
Virtual Machine Manager Database
SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn

19. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
In System Center 2012 SP1, SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn is supported in the
following components:
 App Controller
 Operations Manager
 Orchestrator
 Service Manager
 Virtual Machine Manager
AlwaysOn is not supported in the following components:
 Data Protection Manager (DPM)
 Configuration Manager
Virtual Machine Manager Database
AlwaysOn and System Center 2012

20. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
CLUSTERING

21. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
Clustering
Virtual Machine Manager - HA

22. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
NEXT STEPS

23. © 2013 Edgile, Inc. – All Rights Reserved
3-Day Planning Session
 Identification of systems management and/or virtualization goals and
assessment of organizational requirements
 A workshop covering Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine
Manager with an architecture design session including
recommendations.
5-Day Planning Session
 Analysis of existing infrastructure using the Microsoft Assessment and
Planning (MAP) Toolkit with an architecture design and technical drill
down sessions followed by a Proof-of-Concept.
Next Steps
Planning Design Sessions