Microsoft announced the release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 which is publicly available at www.microsoft.com/scvmm. The product is expected to be generally available sometime in October.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (SCVMM) is a standalone server application that is used to manage a virtualized datacenter running Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. With SCVMM, customers can assess and consolidate suitable server workloads onto virtual machines, freeing up physical resources for repurposing or hardware retirement. SCVMM is tightly integrated in the System Center family of products which together provide comprehensive management of physical and virtual environments.
SCVMM delivers the following key features:
- Rapid and centralized virtual machine deployment and management
- End-to-end support for consolidating physical servers onto a virtual infrastructure
- Fast and reliable physical-to-virtual-machine conversion (P2V) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) conversion of VMware virtual machines to Microsoft’s VHD format
- Intelligent Placement of virtual workloads on the best suited physical host servers
- A complete library to centrally manage all the building blocks of the virtual data center
Microsoft is also introducing new licensing for System Center products. The System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise is a comprehensive management solution designed to let enterprise customers effectively manage server and application workloads across physical and virtual environments. Server Management Suite Enterprise is priced at $860 plus two years of SA, and will allow management of unlimited operating system environments (physical and virtual) per physical device. Available starting Oct. 1, System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise includes four key products to help customers manage their IT environment:
- Virtual Machine Manager 2007 license
- Enterprise server management licenses for System Center Configuration Manager 2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.
Microsoft also announced the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Workgroup edition, which will be available in January 2008. This edition is aimed at mid-market customers and allows them to manage up to five physical host servers and an unlimited number of virtual machines. The System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Workgroup will be priced at $499.
Looking at the product roadmap, the next version of SCVMM will support Windows Server virtualization, which will be coming out in Windows Server 2008, as well as select third-party virtualization software that includes VMware and Xen. Microsoft will update customers about these plans at the beta 1 milestone, which is scheduled for Q1 2008.