This book provides the scenarios to get you started with VMM as a beginner as well as the in-depth knowledge necessary to implement advanced virtualization solutions. The biggest value of the book comes in the form of documented best practices, real-world examples, and in-depth explanations of advanced features of VMM. With virtualization being such a hot topic today, there aren’t many books on the Microsoft virtualization technologies. We hope this book will fill in the gap and become a valuable aid in creating the best virtualization architecture for your company.
Who Should Read This Book
As the title implies, this book is intended for people who want to learn and master Virtual Machine Manager. Such people probably fall into these basic groups:
- IT administrators who are starting to think about virtualization and want to gather more knowledge about the existing management software.
- Seasoned IT administrators who have used Virtual Machine Manager and want to get a more detailed view of the product.
- IT architects who want to better understand the Microsoft virtualization products and create the virtualization architecture for their company.
- VMware administrators who are evaluating the Microsoft virtualization products and want to compare VMM with Virtual Infrastructure.
- Third-party vendors who would like to develop a PRO management pack for Virtual Machine Manager and Operations Manager.
What YouWill Learn
This book is the technical foundation you will need to help you manage your virtualized environment at scale. Going beyond the basics, this book brings together the technical know-how, best practices, and actual code required to tailor your VMM deployment to the needs of your organization. The details and insight collected in these chapters will serve you on an ongoing basis as you explore new capabilities of the product. The heart of this book is around the management of a virtualized environment. The goal is to make you more productive in your day-to-day activities of managing hypervisor hosts and the virtual machines that reside on these hosts.
The exciting technologies available with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V allow you to host multiple virtual machines on a single storage location and migrate them between hosts with no perceived downtime. If you have VMware ESX in your environment in addition to Microsoft Hyper-V, this book also covers VMM’s in-box capabilities to manage multiple hypervisors. Managing the life cycle of a virtual machine with VMM is really about how you as an administrator add value to your organization through standardization of practices and procedures, building rich automation through Windows PowerShell and proper delegation of your environment. This is especially true when you decide to integrate VMM with System Center Operations Manager and enable Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO). As of the writing of this book, no other resource details how to write a PRO pack.
All examples and code samples in this book are provided as is, with no warranties, and confer no rights.
What Is Covered in This Book
Mastering Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 is organized to provide you with all the necessary information to use VMM to deploy and manage virtual machines across Hyper-V, Virtual Server, and ESX.
- Chapter 1, ‘‘Introduction to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2,’’ builds the necessary context regarding the features, architecture, and capabilities of the product.
- Chapter 2, ‘‘Planning a VMM Deployment,’’ discusses the architecture, features, and infrastructure components you need to understand and successfully plan your deployment strategy.
- Chapter 3, ‘‘Installation and Configuration,’’ details how the various VMM components get deployed into your environment.
- Chapter 4, ‘‘Managing VMware ESX Using VMM,’’ details how VMM and VMware vCenter interact to manage ESX hosts and the core building blocks available to you for deploying virtual machines to ESX hosts.
- Chapter 5, ‘‘Managing Hyper-V Using VMM,’’ details how VMM manages Hyper-V hosts and the core building blocks available to you for deploying virtual machines to Hyper-V hosts.
- Chapter 6, ‘‘Managing Virtual Server Using VMM,’’ details how VMM manages Virtual Server hosts and the core building blocks available to you for deploying virtual machines to Virtual Server hosts.
- Chapter 7, ‘‘Virtual Machine Management,’’ discusses how VMM can help maximize the positive impact of virtualization while reducing the negative, through improved management capabilities that center on the life cycle of a virtual machine.
- Chapter 8, ‘‘Automation Using PowerShell,’’ delves into the details of the extensibility of VMM through automation. The VMM Administrator Console and Self-Service portal are built on top of the same Windows PowerShell interface already available to you. Through PowerShell, you have even greater control and flexibility to build the necessary custom solutions tailored to your environment.
- Chapter 9, ‘‘Writing a PRO Pack,’’ discusses in great detail how VMM integrates with System Center Operations Manager for end-to-end service management and how to use the Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) infrastructure to create a new PRO pack. PRO is the enabler for dynamic IT.
- Chapter 10, ‘‘Planning for Backup and Recovery,’’ explains how to protect the VMM server, including the VMM database, and how to back up and recover Hyper-V hosts using the Hyper-V VSS Writer.
- Chapter 11, ‘‘Troubleshooting,’’ covers VMM from a troubleshooting perspective, including troubleshooting tools you should be familiar with and common issues with VMM components. Appendix A gathers together all the Master It problems from the chapters and provides a solution for each.
- Appendix B includes listings that are directly related to the content in Chapter 8: ‘‘Automation Using Powershell,’’ the Virtual Machine Manager Cmdlet descriptions, a listing of the VMMServer object and its properties, a listing of the VM object and its properties, and a listing of the VMHost object and its properties.
- Appendix C provides a hyperlinked catalog of the many URLs listed throughout the book.
About the Authors
Michael Michael is a software architect on the Virtualization & Data Center Management team at Microsoft, working on the development and future direction of System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Michael is primarily focused on partner interactions and ensuring that a healthy ecosystem exists for virtualization products. He joined Microsoft Corporation in August 2002 as a software design engineer and has since worked on management products in the Windows Server division. Such products include previous releases of Virtual Machine Manager, Virtual Server 2005 R2, Windows Storage Server, and Data Protection Manager. During this time, he held various roles from senior software design engineer to senior development lead and focused on the research, design, and development of new features and functionality. For the past three years, Michael has been telecommuting from Houston, Texas.
Michael holds a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University, a technology MBA from the University of Phoenix, and a bachelor of science degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin. He moved to the United States from the beautiful island of Cyprus in 1997 to study computer science with the goal to go back upon completing his academic studies. Twelve years later, he is still in the United States working with the best engineering team on some of the most exciting and innovative products. Michael lives in Houston with his wife, Liberty, his 20-month-old daughter, Aliki, and his English Staffordshire bull terrier, Yogi. In his spare time, Michael enjoys spending time with his friends and family, watching TV, playing a competitive game of basketball, and watching mixed martial arts fights.
Hector Linares is a senior program manager on the Virtualization and Data Center Management team in the Management and Solution Division at Microsoft. Primarily, Hector is focused on the feature sets that enable the provisioning of virtual machines in Virtual Machine Manager. Hector has also developed strong relationships with several key Microsoft partner teams that rely on Virtual Machine Manager, including Visual Studio Lab Manager, Customer Support Services, and Global Foundation Services.
Hector is a ‘‘born-and-raised’’ New Yorker, originally from Brooklyn. He studied with several top jazz and classical musicians and was honored with several opportunities to perform at Carnegie Hall and several other famous New York venues. In 1998, Hector moved to Boston and attended Boston University. After earning his bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 2002, Hector moved back to New York City and started working full time on Wall Street. Three large financial institutions later, Hector joined the Virtual Machine Manager team in 2007 and moved to Bellevue, Washington. He married another native New Yorker, Anna Cristina Cardenas, in May 2008. He loves to travel, play video games, and spend time with his wife and two dogs.
Product Details
- Paperback: 600 pages
- Publisher: Sybex; 1 edition (December 21, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0470463325
- ISBN-13: 978-0470463321
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
List Price: $59.99