Virtual Center vs. MS SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)

[jfierberg]

I have seen a slide deck today of SCVMM 2008 and its claims to be able to provide the same functionality as VirtualCenter as well as integrate with SCCM. Is there any validity to this? Can SCVMM actually do the vmotion\HA\DRS that VC does?

[RParker]

NO. No vmotion, no HA. Maybe DRS.

Key things to remember about SCVMM 2008 is the management of VMware ESX servers through VirtualCenter (VirtualCenter is still required to manage ESX servers via SCVMM 2008) as well as Virtual Server and Hyper-V. SCVMM supports intelligent placement, at startup only since there is no live migration support within any MS virtualization product. SCVMM 2008 also provides P2V and V2V support.

You can use SCVMM’s P2V to convert a VMware VM to a Hyper-V VM live.

[daivu]

RParker's comments are inaccurate. Let me address:

1. Live migration capabilities are tied to the platform. This isn't a limitation of SCVMM. SCVMM can manage quick migration with Hyper-V and VMotion with ESX+Virtual Center. Additionally, Microsoft announced Hyper-V live migration capabilities will be available with WS2008 R2 (CY2009-2H). SCVMM will support Hyper-V live migration at that time.

2. SCVMM has much stronger HA features than Virtual Center -- SCVMM provides seamless integration with WS2008 enhanced failover clustering...It is cluster-aware, and will automatically configure all required high availability settings when WS hosts that are part of a failover cluster SCVMM are added. SCVMM can also automatically create appropriate resource groups and dependencies for virtual machines created on Windows Server 2008, as long as these hosts are nodes in the Failover Cluster.

3. Re: DRS, SCVMM has a much stronger feature called Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO). Whereas DRS leverages generic metrics such as host CPU and memory utilization to initiate VM migrations, PRO supports hardware, OS, and workload- and application-aware resource optimization. Based on performance and health data provided by PRO-enabled management packs and pre-defined policies, PRO can automatically initiate VM migraions, provision new VMs, etc.. Better yet, PRO is partner extensible and Microsoft has several key OEM, storage, and ISV partners developing the management packs to leverage the PRO features. initial list of partners can be found here:

4. SCVMM does manage ESX hosts through Virtual Center. Although there are management APIs for ESX, there are som functions (e.g., VMotion) that cannot be managed without Virtual Center. When ESX hosts are managed by SCVMM, you have full VMware VM management capabilities (e.g., VMotion) but you also get several key additional features from SCVMM management. This includes Intelligent Placement, comprehensiive library store, full Powershell integration, and PRO. Customers can fully leverage PRO-enabled scenarios with their ESX hosts -- e.g., using intelligent placement, and VMotion, etc.

Lastly, it is important to note that SCVMM is part of the comprehensive System Center family of management products. System Center allows you to patch, monitor, back up, deploy and manage your entire physical and virtual infrastructure. Net-net, System Center with SCVMM is superior managemt platform vs. Virtual Center.

[egray]

Woah, my FUD alarm just went off...

R2 in CY2009-2H? That is not what all the other Microsoft presentations say. 2010.

SCVMM HA stronger than VMware's? Have you heard of "one LUN per VM?"

PRO better than DRS? You would prefer to automatically introduce a service disruption (Quick Migration) because a redundant power supply has failed. No thanks.

Take a look at some of my articles on this topic: http://www.vcritical.com/tag/scvmm/

[RParker]

RParker's comments are inaccurate. Let me address:

I AM?!??

Hmm.. from your article, MS won't be available until 2009, and another user contradicts that, 2010.. So I say again.. There IS (meaning today) no DRS, VMOTION capabilities.. and this hypothetical argument about being tied to the platform and not limited to SCVMM.. I beg to differ, that's like saying vmotion is tied to the platform and not a function of VC service! Au Contraire! You can't do it UNLESS VC service is running your cluster.

So SCVMM is the driving factor, and since that other stuff you wrote isn't available TODAY my statements stand! VM is NOW and MS is Vapor... until it's complete, which is 14 months... MAYBE

[christoph_wegen]

Eric,

Thanks for your scvmm posts on vcritical.com. Very good stuff.

Christoph