Quick Review 5nine Manager v9 Beta

Hey folk,

We just got a hand on 5Nine Manager v9 Beta version which can support Windows Server 2016 and Nano Server. At the moment of writing, this product is still under development and testing. We are gladly to participate in public preview to check out the product. [ Do not ask us a copy of the beta software.] We cannot distribute to public but allow to share some screenshot about the upcoming 5nine Manager v9.

[ Disclamer ]

The public release of 5nine Manager v9 and earlier does not support Nano Server or Windows Server 2016. Please contact info@5nine.com if you are interested in joining our private evaluation program to review or test Nano Server or Windows Server 2016. 

[Quick Review]
5nine Manager v8 product is available (http://www.5nine.com/5nine-manager-for-hyper-v-product.aspx) to public. You can use it as part of your Hyper-V Management tool to replace Hyper-V Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

It has been quite long since we review about 5nine product. Therefore we cannot recall on how 5nine Manager v8 look like. Anyway, we will check out v9 instead and we will include some screenshot on how 5nine assist system administrator on managing Hyper-V host.

[Installation] 
Straight forward without any issue. Just need to take note on the database.
Two database can choose to store monitoring data:

• Local SQLLite
• Not more than 2 host, number of VMs less than 20 and performing monitoring data less than 7 days
• MS SQL
• for bigger Hyper-V environment and require more than 7 days historical performance data

[Fabric Management]

The first part that we always will do before configure virtual machine is configure default Hyper-V Settings. 

The cool part is we can just modify one Hyper-V Setting then copy all these settings to the remaining Hyper-V Host without re-configure each individual host.

You can create Host Group - similar concept as VMM to group your infrastructure.

Then you can perform Host action such as listed below:

Easy to configure most frequent use Remote Management without RDP/use Powershell. This come handy especially you're deploying Hyper-V in Server Core installation mode.

On Notification via email is working fine and we able to set criteria to send an alert.

On Monitoring, it provide the flexibility to set threshold on Hyper-V Host and Virtual Machine.

Here is a sample screenshot of monitoring result. You can monitor per host and per virtual machine level.

Here is a summary of about our test environment Hyper-V host and Virtual Machine health. Look unhealthy with so many error.

In term of virtual machine management, you can perform same action as Hyper-V Manager and VMM: start, stop, turn off, shutdown, save, pause, check point, console, etc. No missing action that we can find and basically you can get most action as Hyper-V Manager and VMM Console.

It included with Library (similar concept as VMM Library, where you can get VM Template, ISO, virtual disk and you can sysprep a VM and create as VM Template for future deployment.

During VM provisioning, you can use VM template, virtual disk and iso from library.

Next, how about when delete virtual machine? If you delete from Hyper-V Manager, the Virtual disk will still remain on the host and you need to manually delete it.
But if you are using VMM Console to delete, the entire VM configuration and virtual disk will get deleted as well.
So when use 5nine Manager, you have an option: To delete or maintain it. The choice is your.... (flexible right)

How about a glance to get know about your virtual disk type and size? Just select your Hyper-V Host and Show Virtual Disk. You can view entire virtual machine virtual disk and able to perform action to edit the disk (compact, expand, shrink, convert) and inspect it as well.

For those who would like to get an inventory about your Hyper-V host and virtual machine, you can generate a report and export to excel, PDF and Word format.

How sure are you when deploy Hyper-V host and following Microsoft best practice? Well, it included with Best Practice Analyzer and provide compliance result at the end of the scan.

5nine Manager included with capacity planner to evaluate/predict your Hyper-V and virtual machine potential future problem and capacity issue so you can do planning for further action.

Lastly, how about event logs? We can select event log, filter it and view what logs as well.

After using 5nine Manager v9 for couple of hours, we found the product is

• Easy to use
• A single console to perform the job to manage Hyper-V Host and Virtual Machine as exactly like Hyper-V Manager and Virtual Machine Manager.
• Do not require to open different console. Just 1 will do... (use 5nine Manager ...lol)
• Included monitoring 
• Included notification and alert
• Included Capacity Planner for future prediction
• Included inventory report to understand your infrastructure setup

Too bad, we cannot test Antivirus as it require us to perform an upgrade. :(

Do give it a try and test 5nine Manager v8 (http://www.5nine.com/5nine-manager-for-hyper-v-product.aspx).

Till next time , we will setup Nano Server and write a quick review soon on using 5nine Manager v9 to manage it.

Stay tuned!