Today is Christmas Eve and soon everyone will go for long holiday. Let have a sneak preview on new virtualization management on SCE 2010 before Christmas.
Essentially a scaled down and integrated version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), this adds host management, Intelligent Placement and Physical to Virtual conversion (P2V). Both Windows Server 2003 with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 with Hyper-V are supported hosts. The missing part is the management for Vmware Virtual center/VSphere. If you need to manage Vmware, you need to get the full version of SCVMM.
Let start by designate a host for Virtualization management.
1. Similar as SCVMM, the first task is add a host into Essential console. In the Essential console, click the Computers button and then Click computer Group. On the tasks, select "Designate a host".
2. Select a computer to use as a host. During intial configuration, SCE has discovered "server and client" and installed the agent.
3. On Provide account credentials, enter a valid user account with administrator privileges.
4.A dialog box will appear notifying you that the process of designating a host computer may require the computer to be shut down and restarted. Click Yes to continue.
5. The wizard will start to add designated as a host and a successful page as display below.
6. In the All windows Computer, you will see the host has marked as "Host".
7. In the Essentials console, click the Computers button, click Computer Groups, and then click All Virtual Machine. You will see all Virtual Machines on the designated host is displayed.
Now you can manage Virtual machine via System Center Essential 2010. We will look deep into virtualization management on SCE 2010 after Christmas.
Last but not least, Merry XMas to all MS4U visitor!
