Additional Design and Planning Tasks

Beyond performing server consolidation planning, a server virtualization project must also focus the planning and design phase to address operational changes that virtualization will introduce into an environment and the impact the changes may cause. A complete solution that can manage Hyper-V servers and virtual machines, monitor the health of the virtual environment, and address virtualization management issues is crucial to the operation of a healthy virtualization infrastructure.

Virtualization Infrastructure Management

Although Windows Server 2008 provides a Microsoft Management Console (MMC), called Hyper-V Manager, to administer the Hyper-V role and virtual machines, the interface is not designed for central management of a virtualization infrastructure that contains dozens, hundreds, or thousands of Hyper-V servers. In addition, the Hyper-V Manager console allows you to manage only a single Hyper-V server at a time. The Hyper-V Manager console is perfectly acceptable to manage up to about 10 Hyper-V servers. If your virtualization project will have more than 10 Hyper-V servers, or if you require advanced features such as a virtual machine library or advanced management features, you should investigate System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM).