SCVMM 2008 R2: Resources for Hyper-V management

Understanding how to sell customers on the benefits of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 and how it compares to other tools is crucial when you're helping customers choose the right virtualization management strategy.

Some of these resources will teach you how to assess the need for SCVMM 2008 R2 in customers' environments and how to up-sell Hyper-V customers to SCVMM 2008 R2 by explaining its requirements and top considerations for installation. New features, such as Live Migration support and improved LUN management, can go a long way toward closing deals with customers.

Other resources will explain how SCVMM 2008 R2 stacks up against Citrix Essentials and VMware vCenter. An important aspect of SCVMM 2008 R2 is task management. Read the best ways to configure user access and take advantage of PowerShell in SCVMM 2008 R2 to automate tedious tasks.

Before you can start selling customers on SCVMM 2008 R2, you need to know how both you and customers will benefit from the virtualization management product. Read the best way to tackle sales and the considerations to keep in mind when selling a customer on SCVMM 2008 R2.

How solution providers can profit from SCVMM 2008 R2 upgrades
Check out the selling points when discussing an SCVMM 2008 R2 upgrade with your customer. This Q&A outlines the direct benefits for your customers, such as using live migration. When selling SCVMM 2008 R2, you need to know its system prerequisites to ensure it’s a good fit for your customer’s environment. Determining the amount of RAM they have available and which SQL server database edition they have is key information in the recommendation process.

Up-selling Hyper-V virtualization: Justifying SCVMM 2008 R2
Looking to expand your service offerings? Talk to customers about investing in SCVMM 2008 R2 as part of their Hyper-V virtualization deployments. SCVMM 2008 R2 can manage every host from one console, quickly create new VMs and store operating system images for later use in its library. The SCVMM Jobs node helps you and your customers keep track of who logs on to VMs as an administrator.

Upgrading to Microsoft's SCVMM 2008 R2: The top seven considerations
A great deal of planning is necessary before customers decide whether to upgrade to Microsoft's SCVMM 2008 R2. To help them decide if it's worth the extra cost and if Hyper-V meets their requirements, consider these factors: First, find out if a customer's environment needs SCVMM to manage virtual hosts and their VMs as a pool of resources, rather than physically separate equipment. Pricing is another important factor in a customer's upgrade decision, and the server management license costs $869 for each server.

Knowing the ins and outs of the features and installation requirements that come along with SCVMM 2008 R2 will go a long way in explaining to customers why they need it in their environment.

SCVMM 2008 R2 task management, features: Study guide
SCVMM 2008 R2 can be a costly option for your customers, but being able to explain its value will go a long way toward selling the virtualization management tool. This quiz offers questions and related resources on the features that help manage Microsoft Hyper-V and its relationship with Microsoft PowerShell for task automation.

Installing SCVMM 2008 R2
Solutions providers should have a good understanding of the prerequisites before installing SCVMM 2008 R2 for their customers. For example, you need to download Hyper-V updates on each host prior to SCVMM registration. And customers with up to 10 virtual hosts must have a dual-core, 2 GHz, x64 server. More requirements include installing the five different components that manage your Hyper-V hosts, such as SCVMM's self-service portal. Verifying server configuration prior to SCVMM also calls for the Configuration Analyzer tool.

New features in Microsoft's SCVMM R2 improve Hyper-V management
Customers have found Hyper-V lacking in several areas, but SCVMM 2008 R2 can help fill these gaps. A critical problem with Hyper-V 1.0 was that the Hyper-V management console dealt with individual VMs instead of groups of VMs. SCVMM 2008 R2 addresses this problem by allowing solutions providers to create large LUNs containing more than one VM through the use of Cluster Shared Volumes and LUN-masking support. Maintenance mode also marks another improvement in SCVMM 2008 R2.

What can SCVMM 2008 R2 help accomplish for customers that Citrix Essentials or VMware vCenter can’t do? Read here how SCVMM 2008 R2 can help your customers in some areas but other tools may be more beneficial for other customer needs.

Managing Hyper-V with Citrix Essentials vs. Microsoft SCVMM
Before making a decision in the Citrix Essentials vs. Microsoft SCVMM debate, solutions providers should consider their VM provisioning and storage management features as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each tool. For example, SCVMM 2008 R2 gives you the ability to set up a self-service website for customers who want to do self-deployment to hosts on different types of systems. And Citrix Essentials contains the StorageLink feature.

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 vs. vCenter
When your customers approach you about purchasing virtualization management tools, it helps to know the pros and cons of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and VMware vCenter. For example, the simplistic nature of some SCVMM tasks, such as selecting hardware profiles and using the self-service portal, will appeal to some solutions providers -- and customers -- more than others. Compare each tool's ability to check task progress (with SCVMM's Jobs view and vCenter's event logging) and other features.

One of the biggest benefits of SCVMM 2008 R2 is the help that it provides with task management. Learn which tasks the tool can help your customers with and the role that it plays in your customer’s Hyper-V R2 environment.

SCVMM 2008 R2 for Microsoft Hyper-V R2 management
Deploying new virtual machines (VMs) from templates is in important aspect of Hyper-V R2 management for solutions providers. Using SCVMM 2008 R2 makes this process quicker. This tip delves into the ins and outs of SCVMM 2008 R2, including the new interface designed to make Live Migration easier. You will also learn about SCVMM 2008 R2 pricing and licensing details, as well as storage management and configuration enhancements.

SCVMM 2008 R2: Configuring user access
With SCVMM 2008 R2, solutions providers can now centrally configure user access. That means you can set access policies for customers' entire virtual infrastructures and not worry about permission changes when VMs move between Hyper-V hosts. Configuring user access with SCVMM 2008 R2 begins with creating a user role and deciding whether the "Delegated Administrator" or "Self-Service User" profile type fits best. Then use the Create User Role wizard to assign permissions to SCVMM 2008 R2 library servers.

New virtual machine management using VMM and PowerShell
SCVMM makes virtual machine management easier for solutions providers, but PowerShell is still an important asset for tasks that are hard to automate. One such task is the process of adding a managed host to SCVMM, because administrative credentials are required on the physical computer. Luckily, you can use different PowerShell cmdlets to save and store credentials for later use. This chapter excerpt also covers maintenance mode in SCVMM R2 and how to configure CPU settings.

SCVMM PowerShell scripts simplify administrative tasks
SCVMM PowerShell scripts can make a solutions provider's day-to-day tasks less complicated. Automating SCVMM 2008 R2 administrative tasks, such as Get-VM, helps you get information about a single VM or to find multiple VMs with snapshots. You can have in-depth control over multiple virtualization platforms, and the overall time you take to perform tasks will be reduced after learning these PowerShell scripts.

Systems Center Virtualization Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2

SCVMM 2008 R2 TechCenter

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2

First look: System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2