In our environment we have VC managing over 30 ESX servers, and an instance of Lab Manager allowing self-service. How do we determine what should be used and when?
Now that the Lab Manager URL is available for developers and administrators, we need to provide a ‘best-practice’ procedure on when to use Lab Manager and when to follow our company’s standard VM provisioning work-flow.
In the past a new VM request would require the customer to complete a provisioning sheet, get management approval, and then one of the VM admins would build the VM. Turnaround time could be several days. With Lab Manager the customers can use pre-defined templates and self-service themselves.
We think it is great, however where do we draw the line…. What would stipulate the requirements of a provisioned VM compared to using Lab Manager?
The current understanding of our VM policy is Lab Manager is just for short-term, buildup and teardown work.
Has anyone been in this situation? What policy / procedures did you come up with?
In order to deter long-term usage of Lab Manager created VMs we do not provide backups, and limit the run-time to about 20 days.
