What is SCVMM 2012 R2?

What is System Center Virtual Machine Manager aka SCVMM? As MSFT says, it is a management solution for the virtualized data center. What does this mean? Well, with this solution, you will be able to control your virtualization host which includes networking and storage resources in order to deploy virtual machines.

For those who are not familiar with this kind of technology, this is a “central point” where you can administer your virtual machines in a very easy way.

In a SCVMM deployment, there is a set of roles to install. These are:

• VMM management server: It is in charge of controlling communication with the VMM database, the library server, and virtual machine hosts.
• VMM database: This server stores configuration and information related to virtual machines.
• VMM console: It is a central console where you can connect to host servers and manage all available resources.
• VMM library and VMM library server: This is a catalog of resources available in order to deploy virtual machines and services (e.g., virtual hard disks, templates, etc.).
• VMM command shell: It just a command shell that makes available a set of cmdlets to perform all functions in VMM.

Usually, in a production environment, you will have to deploy and distribute these roles across different servers, and in some cases, duplicate some of them so that you have fault tolerance. Installing and configuring SCVMM is not a difficult challenge, but you must be aware of some considerations before starting with the deployment. In the following link you will find all needed information: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610610.aspx

On the other hand, if you just plan to deploy an environment in order to have your own lab, I will try to help. These are the main considerations:

1. You will need a server with Windows 2012 R2 and Hyper-V installed. This server will be the host server which stores all virtual machines. We will also use the host server to deploy virtual machines which will be part of our needed infrastructure.
2. A server as Domain Controller (tenant virtual machine on the host server).
3. A server as SCVMM 2012 R2 and SQL backend (tenant virtual machine on the host server).
4. Accounts which we will create in our domain:

• SCVMM Service Account
• SCVMM RunAs Account
• SCVMM Admin Account
• SCVMM Administrators Security Group
• SQL Service Account

Well, it seems like it's not too much, and it's totally affordable to deploy at home just to play.

 

So far, that’s all I have to tell you as far as SCVMM is concerned. Please wait for further posts where I will show you step-by-step how to deploy all the components.

 

See you soon!

You might find misconceptions in this blog. If so, please feel free to reach out to me and I will be more than happy to discuss about it.