I downloaded and installed SCVMM 2008 today and installed it to check out the VMware integration. I created a new virtual machine with Windows Server 2008 x64 with 1,5GB of RAM and started the installation from an attached ISO. When I did that the installation failed during WAIK installation. I copied the WAIK files (from \Prerequisites\WAIK\1033) to the server and installed WAIK from there. I than reran the setup procedure and SCVMM installed fine.
The first thing you do after installation is to add some hosts. This beta of SCVMM 2008 supports the following virtualization hosts:
- Virtual Server 2005
- Hyper-V (on Windows Server 2008)
- VMware VI3 (with VirtualCenter)
To manage ESX you need to add a VirtualCenter server. SCVMM cannot connect to ESX servers directly. The result (click to enlarge):
In the screenshot above at the right, you'll see an action called Add VMware VirtualCenter. That action launches a wizard that asks you for the name of your VirtualCenter box and your credentials. Upon completion, the wizard adds folders to SCVMM for each VMware datacenter object and then adds the ESX boxes.
If you look at the screenshot further, the Summary tab shows some information about the ESX host like CPU, memory, storage and the virtual machines on the host. The Storage and Networking tab shows the following info:
When you click on the Virtual Machines button and select the ESX host you get a list of virtual machines:
From that list you can do what's expected: stop, start, suspend, modify the virtual machine settings, VMotion, etc... You can also connect to the console of virtual machines. The first time you do this you need to install an ActiveX control. The console looks like this:
That's all I have time for today. Next I will check out how SCVMM works with ISOs and virtual machine templates and how that ties in with VirtualCenter. I will report those findings later.
