- Topics Mentioned
- Software:
- Microsoft System Center
Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for its System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 product. As usual, the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 service pack includes a rollup of previously released hot fixes and performance enhancements.
However, the VMM 2008 R2 SP1 also brings some new features and support for the latest features for Hyper-V that were released in Windows Server 2008 R2. VMM 2008 R2 SP 1 works with Virtual Server 2005 R2 and VMware ESX through Virtual Center as before, but now also fully supports the features offered in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager is a comprehensive management suite for data centers utilizing high-end virtualization. VMM 2008 R2 SP1 brings management of a network of virtual machines to a centralized administrator console.
VMM 2008 R2 SP1 can directly create and manage virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V hosts. On servers without Hyper-V enabled, VMM can enable the Hyper-V role on the target server when a virtual machine is created via the console.
Windows Sever 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V Feature Support
Windows Sever 2008 R2 SP1 introduced two new features that further extended the performance and scalability of the Hyper-V virtualization platform. Dynamic Memory allows administrators to utilize virtually all of a server’s physical memory across multiple virtual machines. On VMM 2008 R2 all memory is allocated in fixed amounts for virtual machines and hardware profiles.
On VMM 2008 R2 SP1 Dynamic Memory is now fully supported.
With Dynamic Memory enabled, machines demanding more memory are allocated unused memory dynamically from other machines that are not using their allotted memory, which allows higher consolidation and more efficient memory usage. VMM 2008 R2 SP1 now supports continuous reporting on how much memory is currently in use for each VM with Dynamic Memory enabled. The Dynamic Memory settings, priorities and ranges can now be configured through the VMM administrator console. Startup memory, maximum memory, memory buffer percentage and memory priority settings are some of the parameters that can be configured via the VMM administrator console.
To use the Dynamic Memory features both VMM 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 must be installed.
Another feature that rolled out with SP 1 for Windows Server 2008 was Microsoft RemoteFX. RemoteFX provides a scalable, consistent virtual desktop environment over the network. VMM 2008 R2 SP1 now supports administrators creating and deploying Virtual Machines with RemoteFX enabled onto Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V hosts.
RemoteFX settings that can be configured through the VMM 2008 R2 SP1 console include the maximum number of monitors and the maximum monitor resolution rate.
VMM 2008 R2 Support for Windows Server 2008 R2
VMM 2008 R2 also continues to enhance support for features offered with the R2 release of Windows Server 2008.
VMM 2008 R2 offers both Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney. Coupled with NICs that support VMQ a unique virtual network queue is created for each virtual machine on a host. Packets are then passed directly from hypervisor to the virtual machine. TCP Chimney offloads TCP/IP traffic to the physical NIC on the host computer to relieve the host CPU of that processing overhead.
Live migration through the VMM console enables administrators to move a virtual machine between clustered hosts without any noticeable impact on the end-users connected to the virtual machine. No changes are needed on existing virtual machines to move from Quick Migration to Live Migration if both Windows Server 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2 SP1 are running.
Likewise, VMM 2008 R2 supports live hot addition or removal of storage.
Enhanced Disk and Storage Management
Additional disk management support and performance enhancements have been updated from their first appearance in VMM 2008 R2.
Virtual Machines can be migrated into and out of clusters using a SAN transfer so that the virtual machine’s disk does not need to be replicated across the network.
VMM 2008 R2 eliminated the previous restriction where on one LUN could be bound to each iSCSI target. Now, multiple LUNs can be mapped to a single iSCSI target. More hardware and configurations are supported under SP1.
VMM 2008 R2 also brought support for VMware storage vMotion allowing the storage of a VMware VM to be transferred without downtime while the VM stays on the same host.
Upgrading to VMM 2008 R2 SP1 from VMM 2008 R2
Upgrades to VMM 2008 R2 SP1 can only be done from an existing VMM 2008 R2 installation. Upgrades from VMM 2007 and VMM 2008 (non-R2) cannot be performed. Administrators wanting to upgrade those platforms will need to follow the upgrade path through VMM 2008 R2 prior to installing the SP1 for VMM 2008.
In addition to the VMM server, the service pack must be installed on all instances of the VMM Administrator Console and the VMM Self-Service Portal that communicate with the upgraded server. Components that are not upgraded will not connect to a VMM Server running SP1.
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