So I’m back on the System Center track, this time I’m going to continue with SCVMM which basically is the frontline product for Microsoft’s “Cloud” concept.
What is SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager) ? is it Microsoft’s management product to manage Hyper-v, it is the Microsoft equivalent of vCenter.
Of course with it you can also manage other type-1 hypervisors such as Xenserver and VMware ESXi, from one console.
SCVMM has come along way since the first release in 2007, and there are tons of new features available in the latest release such as.
- Defining logical networks, IP pools, MAC address pools, VIP pools for load balancers
- Service Templates
- Power Optimization
- Hyper-V and Cluster Lifecycle Management – Deploy Hyper-V to bare metal server, create Hyper-V clusters, orchestrate patching of a Hyper-V Cluster
- Storage Management – Classify storage, Manage Storage Pools and LUNs
- New Self-service portal
- Service Creation Designer
- + More
So if you haven’t touched SCVMM yet, I suggest you download it and try it on a VM.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/datacenter-management-trial.aspx
SCVMM consists of the following roles.
1 * DB
1 * Management server (Which is the brain behind the operations
1 * Self-service portal (Which is the web site where users can operate their own vms or order new ones)
And 1 or more Hyper-V servers
Now during the typing of this post I had some trouble with one of my home-lab servers so I don’t have a hyper-v server to connect to VMM, but all the hyper-v hosts that you want to manage via vmm needs to have the vmm agent installed. Which you
can find on the installation media of vmm. But I’m going to go trough the installation of vmm and setup the basics and setup the self-service portal. First of have a Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 installed before you continue.
The setup menu is the same as the other SC products, in my case I remove the mark from “Get the latest” and click Install.
I wish to install the VMM management server, console and the Self-service portal on the same server.
Click next here, this will set the product in evaluation mode.
Accept the terms and click next.
Click yes or no here.
I choose no here since I have my own WSUS server that will handle updates for this product.
Select the installation location and choose next,
Now you will get a prerequisite check,
note that the management servers needs.
.Net 3.5
Windows AIK for Windows 7 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=194654
(in my case I get a warning since I only have 2 GB of ram for my server, but since its just a warning I can continue)
Next I choose the database configuration, enter the server name of your sql server, and with credentials that you know has access to the db server, and click Next.
Now we have to configure an service account for VMM, (You should create a new account for this purpose)
If you want to have HA management server choose to store the keys in AD.
(NOTE: After the installation is done you can view the encrypted information in AD Users & computers ) 
Click next on the setup, 
Review the port setup and choose next,
This is the self-service portal setup, since I have the Management server on the same server as the self-service portal I just have to enter the host name of that server in the vm server name.
And also I don’t have any other web sites on this server so I just click next.
Now I enter the information regarding the library I don’t have a lot of storage available so I just choose the local drive.
NOTE: .The library contains files stored on library shares, and it contains operating system, hardware, and template configurations stored in the VMM database. Library resources are added, created, used, and managed in Library view here –>
The best practice is to have this on a SAN, so other VMM servers can access the same library.
Then click next and install.
If everything completed successfully you should see this screen.
If you bump into some errors, check the event log and/or under c:program data vmmlogs.
If not choose close.
Now we can start the console from the start menu.
NB: If you altered the port settings during setup remember the port nr for “communication with the vmm console” and click Connect.
So this is the console of VMM, now its just a pretty empty shell. Before we continue exploring the console I want to finish setting up the self-service portal. Enter the IIS management and change the authentication setup of the self-service portal to Windows Authentication, so that we get SSO for internal users. 
After that Is done you can open the Web site.
When you open it you will get the following message, note that the account you use to install vmm automatically becomes a full administrator, but!
even thou my account has full administrator It is not allowed access to the self-service portal. So before we continue we have to add my account to access the self-service portal. So open the VMM console,
Goto Settings –> User Roles –> And choose Create User Role
Give the role a fitting name and choose next,
Choose Self-service user, then click next,
Add a user from AD to the role, in my case I want my administrator account. And click next.
now choose what rights this user gets inside the self-service portal, then click next, next – finish.
Now this time when I open the Self-service portal I get access.
NOTE: You should use https for the self-service portal using an external cert for improved security.
That’s part 1, when I get my Hyper-v server up and running again I will continue on creating services, templates and clouds