What does ‘manage VMware’ mean to Microsoft?
Virtualization January 14th, 2008
By now you’ve all heard the announcement that Microsoft SCVMM vNext (the one that betas 45 days after Hyper-V) will manage VMware Virtual Infrastructure.
Well Rakesh Malhotra (the Group Program Manager for SCVMM) has posted some info on what managing VMware Infrastructure means to him and his team.
You can read more in his post “Why we decided to manage VMware and what that means“, and a heavily edited snippet is below:
We think we can do a better job - …It’s about managing applications and services and today, many if not most of those run on Windows. Understanding the application in detail is absolutely critical to making intelligent management decisions. For example, migrating a VM when the CPU spikes to 80% for 10 minutes is not a particularly smart way to make that decision but if the VM is a ‘black box’ to you, it’s the only choice that you have. With our management tools, you’ll be able to set policies and rules based on application specific criteria. For example, if the average amount of time it takes for your order entry system to process an order exceeds 10 seconds and CPU is the reason, add more CPU capacity to the VM.
….Finally, I want to emphasize that when we say “manage VMware“, we mean that day to day, you’ll be able to use our console and command line interface to fully manage your Virtual Infrastructure environment (including live migration), Virtual Server and Hyper-V environments seamlessly. In addition, we’ll be able to extend the management capabilities that VMware offers today so you’ll get an enhanced solution even on a non-Windows OS.
It’s sounds pretty snazzy, I’m looking forward to road-testing then net version of SCVMM and putting it through it’s paces. Anyway, as I find out more about screenshots, demos and stuff I’ll post back.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Yes, but people still have to pay an OVER-priced $5,000 for Virtual Center because this M$ software requires Virtual Center, rather than replacing Virtual Center, which is what most rational people would expect it to do.
April 26th, 2008 at 5:59 am
Tom - this is very delayed but I just saw your comment. I work within Microsoft’s Server & Tools Business group, and can tell you that the SCVMM team would love to allow you to manage ESX/VI3 without Virtual Center. Nothing would make them happier to do so, and it would make alot a MS customers using SMS/SCCM and MOM/SCOM very happy. BUT, VMware doesn’t publish the API to ESX Server so that the SCVMM team can write directly to ESX Server. Their only route is the Virtual Center API. And yes, Virtual Center is expensive.