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Are you ready for the Microsoft Private Cloud?
On February 21 & 22 Microsoft is running a 2-day virtual training event to help the world learn about the upcoming enhancements with the Creating & Managing a Private Cloud with System Center 2012 Jump Start.
It is 100% free and open to the public, so register now!
Sign up today at: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=298
Event Overview
Adopting this exciting new computing paradigm provides a whole new landscape of technology and career direction for IT professionals. Microsoft Learning and the Microsoft System Center 2012 team have partnered to bring you an exciting opportunity to learn what you need to know to deploy, manage and maintain Microsoft’s private cloud solution. Leveraging the popular Jump Start virtual classroom approach, the industry’s most gifted cloud experts will show attendees why this new private cloud solution, based on System Center 2012 and Windows Server, has garnered so much attention. Presenters include Symon Perriman, Sean Christensen, Adam Hall, Kenon Owens, Prabu Rambadran & Chris Van Wesep and there will be a live Q&A during the event.
Event Agenda
Day 1: Deployment & Configuration (Feb. 21)
· Part 1: Understanding the Microsoft Private Cloud
· Part 2: Deploying the Infrastructure Components
· Part 3: Deploying the Private Cloud Infrastructure
· Part 4: Deploying the Service Layer
· Part 5: Deploying the Applications & VMs
Day 2: Management & Operations (Feb. 22)
· Part 6: Managing the Infrastructure Components
· Part 7: Managing the Private Cloud Infrastructure
· Part 8: Managing the Service Layer
· Part 9: Managing the Applications & VMs
Sign up today at: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=298
Jump Start Overview
This accelerated Jump Start sponsored by Microsoft Learning is tailored for IT professionals familiar with Windows Server technologies, Hyper-V virtualization, and the System Center management solutions. The course is designed to provide a fast-paced and technical understanding of how and why Microsoft’s approach to the private cloud delivers scalability, security, flexibility and control. Here are few unique benefits of this course:
· Students have the opportunity to learn from and interact with the industry’s best cloud technologists!
· This high-energy, demo-rich learning experience will help IT Professionals understand why Microsoft private cloud solutions are making a splash in the industry.
· Students will see with their own eyes how Windows Server 2008 R2 and System Center 2012 work together to provide the best combination of security and scale.
· Information-packed agenda! Day one of this two-day online course will focus on designing and deploying the right solutions for your organization, while day two will provide an in-depth look at the tools available to help monitor, secure and control the operational aspects of a private cloud.
Sign up today at: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=298
SCVMM 2008R2, awarded GOLD Product of the 2011
Gold : Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1
“The right systems management tool can save time, streamline operations, and help administrators proactively address potential issues before they become critical problems. An effective systems management tool is as critical to a data center as any server or air conditioning system – especially for larger data centers with high levels of workload consolidation.
For the purposes of this year’s awards, systems management products include any systems management appliances and software products designed to measure, benchmark, report, provision, plan and control servers and other data center devices. Entrants may include any systems management point products up through major management frameworks
The single pane of glass is the dream of all systems operations managers – to be able to effectively manage their entire environments through a single screen. The dream may not yet be fully realized, but as part of the System Center Suite of management tools, Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 SP1, is close enough to deserve the Gold Product of the Year award in systems management for 2011.
But what really makes SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 shine is that Microsoft decided to seamlessly integrate with other virtualization products and vendors. In addition to Hyper-V, SCVMM provides compatibility with VMware VI3 through Virtual Center integration. SCVMM supports VMware-specific features, such as VMotion, while also providing SCVMM-specific features like Intelligent Placement to VMware servers. It also provides a process that converts VMware VMs to virtual hard disks through the virtual to virtual (V2V) transfer process. There is also a very user-friendly self-service portal, which is compatible with multiple third party vendors and tools.
Microsoft has made some very significant strides with this latest release of SCVMM. The company is also freely admitting that there are actually other virtualization solutions out there, and that some of them are good (a hard pill to swallow for Microsoft). Their efforts to integrate with other system management products and tools make the newest version of SCVMM the realization of the single pane of glass dream come that much closer, and worthy of evaluation by data center managers. ”
TechNet Live! Meetings: Private Cloud Focused
All the details are below along with how you can register for these events. look forward to seeing many of you there!
Title: Delivering the Private Cloud with Microsoft Technologies
Date: Friday. 28th of October 2011 11:00am – 12:15PM (AEDT)
Speaker – Jeff Alexander
Registration: Click Here
Event Overview
Let’s face it. Everyone is talking about Cloud Computing and how it’s bringing a fundamental shift in the way that IT services are delivered. This is certainly true and there are many spins on what cloud is and how it can help your business. In this session, Jeff Alexander from Microsoft Australia will discuss what a “Private Cloud” is and how you can use it to deliver IT as a service. In fact you may already have many of the building blocks in place that make up a private cloud and not even realise. This session will cover the Microsoft technologies that deliver the private cloud as well as the components that make up the infrastructure.
Title: System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012: What’s in it, and how it enables building the Private Cloud
Date: Friday, 11th of November 2011 11:00am – 12:15PM (AEDT)
Speaker – Jeff Alexander
Registration: Click Here
Event Overview
SCVMM 2012 is designed to deliver industry leading virtual machine management, deployment, and configuration for services in private cloud environments. It features deep investments in server application virtualization, service design, and service modelling all of which can be used to build an on-premises private cloud. This session will include an overview of key SCVMM 2012 key new features that include SCVMM Fabric Creation and Management, Network and Storage support, Private Cloud Creation and Delegation, and Service Creation. Attendees will gain an understanding of VMM 2012 supported scenarios, along with an understanding of how to use these capabilities to build an on-premise private cloud.
Title: Cloud Management with System Center App Controller 2012
Date: Friday, 25th of November 2011 11:00am – 12:15PM (AEDT)
Speaker – Jeff Alexander
Registration: Click Here
Event Overview
As organizations move to deploying services and applications in the cloud, it is important that they have a common management experience for deployment, visibility and control in a manner that is abstracted from the underlying cloud. This session provides an overview of System Center App Controller 2012 and how it enables self-service of both public and private cloud infrastructures.
Title: System Center Operations Manager 2012: Technical Overview
Date: Friday, 9th of December 2011 11:00am – 12:15PM (AEDT)
Speaker – Jeff Alexander
Registration: Click Here
Event Overview
The next release of Operations Manager will introduce many exciting new and enhanced features sets to help organizations efficiently and effectively monitor their environments across their compute, network, storage infrastructure, while assuring attainment of service levels across their applications. In this session we’ll discuss how Operations Manager 2012 helps to monitor your existing infrastructures as well as cloud resources to deliver infrastructure as a service.
I hope to see you at these events and look forward to sharing this information with you
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012. What’s new in the RC version?
Microsoft is about to launch the SCVMM 2012 for those who tried the beta version and as myself enjoyed, we will now be able to try also the Release Candidate version.
To download : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/gg678609
My recommendation to managege for up to 150hosts:
2 Processor, Dual-Core, 4GB Ram ( minumum ), 40 GB free space. Remember SCVMM 2012 requires Standard,Entrepise or Datacenter version of SQL Server ( you CAN’T use SQL express anymore ) and you must use a case-insensitive instance of SQL Server
As with the previous release there are a number of improved features for you to take advantage of. With this release you will be able to do:
- Setup Upgrade
- *New in RC -Upgrade- Setup will support the following upgrade paths
- VMM 2008 R2 SP1 > VMM for System Center 2012 RC > VMM for System Center 2012 RTM
- VMM for System Center 2012 RC > VMM for System Center 2012 RTM
- *New in RC -Upgrade- Setup will support the following upgrade paths
- Fabric Management
- Hyper-V and Cluster Lifecycle Management – Deploy Hyper-V to bare metal server, create Hyper-V clusters, orchestrate patching of a Hyper-V Cluster
- *New in RC:
- ISO or CD-based OSD for environments with DHCP without WDS
- OSD will now convert dynamic to fixed type of VHD destination
- All network adapters on host can be configured during provisioning
- *New in RC:
- Ability to bypass cluster validation during cluster creation
- Run cluster validation reports on-demand
- New cluster status tab to view an aggregated status, plus the cluster validation report
- Ability to see current CSV owner in the properties of the cluster
- *New in RC:
- Third Party Virtualization Platforms – Add and Manage Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX Hosts and Clusters
- Network Management – Manage IP Address Pools, MAC Address Pools and Load Balancers
- *New in RC:
- Simplification of the logical networks in the Fabric workspace
- Ability to see IP addresses that are in use from a IP pool
- Added support for Microsoft Network Load Balancer
- Gateway and DNS are no longer mandatory fields for logical networks
- Load balancer can now support affinity to logical networks
- *New in RC:
- Storage Management – Classify Storage, Manage Storage Pools and LUNs
- *New in RC
- Create persistent sessions to iSCSI array and logon initiator to array
- Better scalability of storage operations – LUN create, snapshot, clone, masking, and unmasking
- Option to create storage groups per cluster (BETA only supported creation of storage group per node in a cluster)
- Enablement of MPIO feature when provisioning a new Hyper-V server
- Automatic MPIO device claim
- Support for arrays that implement OnePortPerView
- *New in RC
- Update Management- Keep your SCVMM Fabric Servers (SCVMM roles, hosts, and clusters) up-to-date with patches.
- *New in RC:
- Share a WSUS root server between System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2/ System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta
- Hyper-V Cluster Orchestration- Nodes put into VMM Maintenance Mode can be set to trigger Maintenance Mode in Operations Manager.
- *New in RC:
- Hyper-V and Cluster Lifecycle Management – Deploy Hyper-V to bare metal server, create Hyper-V clusters, orchestrate patching of a Hyper-V Cluster
- Resource Optimization
- Dynamic Optimization – proactively balance the load of VMs across a cluster
- Power Optimization – schedule power savings to use the right number of hosts to run your workloads – power the rest off until they are needed.
- *New in RC:
- Set Operations Manager Mode for powered down hosts
- *New in RC:
- PRO – integrate with System Center Operations Manager to respond to application-level performance monitors.
- *New in RC:
- Support added for System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta
- VMM will ship two sample PRO Packs: Cluster scale out and Service scale out MPs
- *New in RC:
- Cloud Management
- Abstract server, network and storage resources into private clouds
- Delegate access to private clouds with control of capacity, capabilities and user quotas
- Enable self-service usage for application administrator to author, deploy, manage and decommission applications in the private cloud
- Service Lifecycle Management
- Define service templates to create sets of connected virtual machines, OS images and application packages
- *New in RC:
- Service Designer and Specialization UI enhancements
- Added ability to use Service Template Patterns
- *New in RC:
- Compose operating system images and applications during service deployment
- *New in RC:
- IP-based provisioning
- New application instance view
- *New in RC:
- Scale out the number of virtual machines in a service
- Service performance and health monitoring integrated with System Center Operations Manager
- Decouple OS image and application updates through image-based servicing
- *New in RC:
- Streamlined ability to enable OS VHD updates to a Service Template
- Publish updated Service Templates in order to update Service Instances
- *New in RC:
- Leverage powerful application virtualization technologies such as Server App-V
- Define service templates to create sets of connected virtual machines, OS images and application packages
I hope you enjoy as much as I enjoyed!
Post comments about your SCVMM 2012 experience!
Recommended Books
System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Cookbook
Cloudtidings.com 