Category Archives: System Center

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 Upgrade Walkthrough

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Some people downloading the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 seem to be confused that it is the entire product ISO. It’s a big download but the upgrade itself, when you have a healthy environment is fast and easy. To my knowledge there is no SP1 upgrade file only, you get one package for all needs.  I’ve provided a screenshot walkthrough of the process below and it really only takes a couple of minutes on the servers deployed it on. There is both an evaluation version available or a licensed version via the licensing site or the TechNet subscribers downloads.

Do note that the below process is for those who are upgrading from  System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2  to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1. If you have the RC installed take a look at the following blog post by  Maarten Wijsman to see how to upgrade the SQL database used by SCVMM2008R2 SP1 Release Candidate with the UpgradeVMMR2SP1RC.exe tool. The download is here at the Microsoft Connect site  (Live ID).

Run the setup.exe and click setup VMM Server or any other component you need to upgrade. If you click VMM server it will detect other components as well.

The installation files are extracted …

Accept the license agreement and click next

As you can see it detected that I’m also running the Virtual Machine Manager Administration Console. Click on ‘Upgrade” to continue.

If the account you’re using doesn’t have the needed SQL Server permissions you can provide alternate credentials that do have those. Click “Next” to continue.

It will then upgrade all detected components one by one ….

… until you reach the Completion form. That’s it you’re done.

You have to go through this process for all servers where you have Virtual Machine Manager components installed to complete the entire upgrade. When you have you can now configure Dynamic Memory from your SCVNN administrator Console.  Nice

My First Hands On Experience With The System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta

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Today I made some time to take System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (SCVMM2012) Beta for a little test drive. Nothing fancy yet. Just some first impressions and experiences. Is already had to VMs standing by. One running SQL Server 2008 R2 to take care of the database needs and one for installing SCVMM2012 on to. Normally, in further testing, I will install the self-service Portal on a separate machine for more flexibility but for now, it’s one host deal with a separate database server.

The documentation is already available on TechNet. I’m pretty sure this will grow a lot but the Installation guidelines are already pretty good. But as this is a test drive and I want to see how it behaves I didn’t get all the prerequisites ready from the start just to get a feel how the install behaves.

From the start we run into a symptom you need to take into consideration when using Dynamic Memory in a VM guest that was already discussed by Aidan Finn in Software Setup Does Not Meet Memory Requirements with Dynamic Memory Enabled. Just make sure you have plenty of memory during install time and afterward you can tweak it a bit to get some more breathing room on for the lab hosts.

The VMM 2012 setup wizard adds one prerequisite automatically for you if it isn’t installed and that’s the .NET Framework 3.5.1 feature is not installed (it is not installed by default).

Ok people, this is a bit rough and way pack with screenshots but here we go!

Start the setup and accept the License Agreement.

I opt to install on the roles on a single host

I provide the needed information, the key can wait, don’t worry about that here.

I’m opting into the Microsoft Update to keep my lab server running healthy & protected

I’m happy with the default installation location

It’s checking the prerequisites

And it complains. I’ve been too cheap on memory and the Dynamic Memory settings are not bailing me out as already indicated above.

So I fix both issues by installing more memory and installing IIS. Make sure you read the TechNet documentation for all the IIS components you need.

  • .NET Extensibility
  • ASP.NET
  • Default Document
  • Directory Browsing
  • HTTP Errors
  • IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility
  • IIS 6 WMI Compatibility
  • ISAPI Extensions
  • ISAPI Filters
  • Request Filtering
  • Static Content

Then we rerun the prerequisites checks and we get another issue. We need the WAIK. You can avoid all these warnings or errors by reading the docs and preparing the server but as stated I wanted to get a look at how the process behaves. So we get the WAIK downloaded en install it.

The installer still thinks I’m too cheap. But it’s only a warning now. I did end up giving the VM 4GB with a limit of 5 GB of RAM.

The next error is just because I was to fast to launch the setup, we need to give the winRM service some time to start. It’s a service that as a delayed start

We didn’t do our prerequisites homework so we get nagged about the SQL Command Line Utilities. We can continue without them but when you do install these you’ll need to get the SQL Native Client installed on which the SQL Command Line Utilities depend.

I have my database already up and running so I have no worries there. The account here needs to have permissions to install and configure the database. It ‘s used for that purpose only. As you can see I use the default instance and create a new database. Make sure your SQL Server is set up right for remote access, the firewall is configured, etc.

I’ve prepared a nice and shiny new domain account for the SCVMM2012 service to run under. I don’t use a manage service account because I’m not sure whether I might use this account on multiple machines in more elaborate fault-tolerant installations.

As I’m not very creative and don’t want to use non=default ports I’ll forget is elect to keep all the default ports.

I also leave the default settings for the self-service portal.

But I do change the location of the library share to a separate large disk Smile

OK the installer is ready to rock.

The install goes very fast by the way. Went to get some coffee, called a colleague and voila …

In my environment, it took about 6 minutes

And after all that I got my reward SCVLL 2012 up and running

To which I add my test cluster

I need to provide some credentials that can discover the hosts and install the agents

I add some cluster hosts

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SCVMM2012 picks up that it’s a cluster

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And I add it to All hosts group I created. neatly organizing already (neurotic behavior is widespread in the IT world)

The cluster and hosts are added to SCVMM 2012

For fun, I put a host into maintenance mode.  It offers to use live migration as that is available

And that went just fine.

Well there you have it, a first rough hands-on experience with SCVMM2012 Beta.  We’re off to a very good start with this. More to follow later without any doubt.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 & 2012 Béta Available

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Good news, today March 2nd, 2011 System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1 went RTM. I’ll update this short post with the download link when it becomes available ==> UPDATE: download it here from Microsoft (Evaluation) or from your TechNet subscription or licensing site. Seems like we got all host & guest updates to W2K8R2SP1 done exactly on time to get this one installed and have a state of the art, up to date infrastructure. Today the 2012 Beta version became available for download (here) and the documentation site went life (here). Things are moving in the system center space. Busy times ahead! Yet 2 more  VMs to test with I the lab … and than Denali is coming.

New Functionality in Virtual Machine Manager Self Service Portal 2.0 SP1 Béta

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It’s playtime! Via the Microsoft Connect site (you can get an invite to join the Connect site from TechNet page What’s New in System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self Service Portal 2.0 SP1 Beta, it below under “Join the Beta”) you can get your hands on the Virtual Machine Manager Self Service Portal 2.0 SP1 Béta. Some new features to highlight are the ability to import virtual machines (VMs that were removed from the self-service portal or VMs that are managed by SCVMM but are not created & available in the self-service portal). There are notifications available now for events using SQL mail so you can keep an eye on what is happening. Virtual Machine Templates can now be added to infrastructures (fast, no need for the entire request/provision process). You also get the option to move infrastructure between business units while in maintenance mode and even delete business units when they don’t own infrastructure. But the one I like best is the fact that we can expire virtual machines.

No, the last one doesn’t mean I want to be the bastard operator from hell that hates everyone and is so out of touch with the reality of “enabled” or “empowered” users or customers that he wants to seek & destroy them all. But when you’ve been in infrastructure for a while you’ve probably come across situations where the orphaned, abandoned, forgotten, virtual & yes even physical servers are working very hard on becoming a majority instead of an exception. This puts an enormous burden on the infrastructure, workload and it drives up costs very fast while it’s isn’t providing any ROI or other benefits to the business. Unless you’re getting paid to maintain infrastructure by the VM  (congrats!) and you just smile when you find 50% superfluous guests as this means the sound of your cash register ringing in your ears.

The thing is “Horror Vacui” comes into play and the inevitable desire of the universe for maximum entropy. So any environment will need some managing and it will be a welcome tool to help automate that management & enforce some decisions. You can even delegate this all via roles, so people can be empowered to set or change expiration dates. That way you can try to go for self-regulation. This can work.