Discovering SCVMM and Its Most Important Features

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) is a management tool for Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization platform. It is part of Microsoft’s System Center product suite, which also includes Configuration Manager and Operations Manager, among other tools. SCVMM provides a single pane of glass for managing your on-premises and cloud-based Hyper-V infrastructures, and it’s a more capable alternative to Windows Server tools built for the same purpose.

What Is SCVMM?

Windows Server includes built-in tools for managing your Hyper-V virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), including Hyper-V Manager, Hyper-V module for Windows PowerShell, Virtual Machine Connection, and Windows PowerShell Direct. These tools have specific roles and are often used in combination with each other and other tools. For example, Hyper-V Manager requires PowerShell for creating scripts and Failover Cluster Manager for managing multiple Hyper-V hosts. In short, the built-in tools are complementary but may be more complicated to use.

SCVMM is a feature-rich and more comprehensive management tool for your Hyper-V infrastructure. If you use SCVMM, you do not need another tool to manage your Hyper-V hosts. Thus, it simplifies managing your Hyper-V infrastructure greatly. However, it requires System Center licenses, the costs of which may vary depending on the number of physical cores in your Windows servers.

What Can You Do with SCVMM?

With SCVMM, you can:

Configure and manage virtualization servers, networking components, storage resources and other datacenter components.
Add and provision Hyper-V hosts and clusters.
Add and provision VMware ESX servers and VMs (VMware vCentre is required for managing VMware VMs).
Migrate VMware VM to Hyper-V VM.
Add networking resources such as networks with IP subnets, virtual local area networks (VLANs), static internet protocol (IP) addresses and media access control (MAC) pools.
Create and manage virtual networks and network gateways, making it ideal for very large or complicated environments that can benefit from network virtualization.
Discover, provision, allocate and assign local and remote storage, including fiber channel, Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) and Serial Attached Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) storage area networks (SANs).
Maintain file-based and non-file-based resources for creating and deploying VMs and services on hosts. Examples of file-based resources include virtual hard disks and ISO images while non-filed-based resources include templates and profiles used to create standard VMs.
Allow administrators to grant users granular control over Hyper-V resources. For example, specific users may connect to VMs and reboot them but are limited in what they can do with VM settings.

SCVMM is supported on Windows Server 2012 R2 and up. Initially, Microsoft only supported Windows Server 2016 and up, but it added support for Windows Server 2012 in later releases. For the database, you will need to install SQL Server 2016 and up.

What’s New in SCVMM 2019?

First introduced in 2007, Microsoft has expanded SCVMM’s feature set in subsequent releases. SCVMM 2019 is the latest version, already having three updates since release date.

The latest SCVMM 2019 version supports:

Upgrades of operating systems of Hyper-V clusters from Windows Server 2016 to Windows Server 2019 without stopping currently running workloads.
Windows Server 2012 Release 2 (R2) hosts.
VMware ESXi hosts.
IPv6 software-defined networks.
Software load-balancing virtual IPs, deployment of multi-tier applications using service templates, and public and internal load balancing.
End-to-end encryption of VM networks, securing the traffic between two VMs on the same network from prying eyes.
Nested virtualization, which allows Hyper-V to run inside another Hyper-V instance. This feature can now be used both for deployed VMs and while creating new ones.
Various Linux distributions, including Red Hat 8.0, Centos 8, Debian 10 and Ubuntu 20.04.
Provisioning and configuration of shielded Linux VMs, which protect against malicious administrator actions when data is at rest or untrusted software is running on Hyper-V hosts.
Configuring a Layer 3 forwarding gateway, enabling connectivity between physical and virtualized infrastructures.
Azure Stack hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) operating system.

SCVMM 2019 version includes features such as:

Storage provisioning for Hyper-V hosts and clusters.
Dynamic optimization of compute and storage on Hyper-V and VMware host clusters. Dynamic optimization includes power optimization, which saves energy by turning on or turning off hosts on demand.
Integration of Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) with an Azure automation subscription, allowing convenient patching and updating of on-premises VMs.
Trunk mode support for VM virtual network interface cards (vNICs). Trunk mode allows traffic over multiple virtual local area networks (VLANs) and is used in virtual firewalls, software load balancers and virtual gateways, among others.

Options and Limitations in Managing Azure Resources with SCVMM

SCVMM can also be used for the basic management of VMs in your Microsoft Azure cloud. After linking SCVMM to your Azure account, you can start using it to perform the following:

Add or remove an Azure subscription
View a detailed list of deployed VMs associated with your subscriptions
Refresh the list of VM instances that appear on the VMM console
Start, stop, shut down and restart VMs
Connect to VMs using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)

For more advanced tasks, you still have to use Azure Management Portal, which you can access by clicking a link on the SCVMM console.

When to Consider SCVMM Alternatives?

While SCVMM’s benefits are obvious, it may be far from ideal. The disadvantages of SCVMM include:

Higher costs: If you only need to manage VMs and do not require the other System Center products, using SCVMM can be costly, since System Center Licenses are expensive.
More complex requirements: SCVMM requires an application to be installed on a server, preferably a dedicated one. It stores all of its data on SQL Server and requires agents to be installed on your Hyper-V hosts.
High expertise levels: SCVMM requires your IT staff to ramp up its skills, as it is neither easy to install nor use. The blame may lie on its extensive feature set. For instance, while networking virtualization is not easy to implement, simple network designs are also quite complex to configure. If you run a small Hyper-V network, the work required to set it up may be too much.
Automatic fixes that may lead to more problems: SCVMM applies fixes automatically when it detects issues in your environment. While this feature sounds great, in reality, the supposed fixes tend to worsen the situation, leaving your IT staff to spend precious time troubleshooting the aggravated issues.
Version incompatibility: You cannot manage Hyper-V in Windows Server 2019 with SCVMM 2016. Since Windows Server and SCVMM have different release schedules, you will have to wait for a new SCVMM release before you can use Hyper-V in the latest Windows Server release.

Parallels RAS Helps Reduce Cost and Complexity of VDI Management

Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) streamlines the delivery of virtual desktops and applications across your organization and reduces the costs and complexity of maintaining your VDI. Using a single pane of glass, Parallels RAS simplifies administrative tasks with smart wizards and automation tools that make for more efficient application delivery, increasing the productivity of your IT staff.

Parallels RAS requires less hardware and resources to set up compared to other virtualization solutions. Since it does not require a hardware upgrade every few years, it extends your organization’s hardware lifecycle. It even allows you to configure old PCs as locked-down thin clients. In case you do decide to replace your old hardware, you can opt to use low-cost thin client devices.

Parallel RAS offers a single license model that provides full access to its capabilities, freeing your organization from the complexity of license evaluation.

To evaluate Parallels RAS for your VDI, download the trial.