XenServer Management on Steroids with SCVMM 2012 Part 3

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Glad your still with me for Part 3,  In Part 2 we discussed how to create  Runas account’s, and adding your host’s to SCVMM 2012. Now that your host’s are added it’s time to dig into creating your private cloud!

Creating your private clouds – Delegation of administration

I would like to first start off by saying, my main focus of this article was to show how I am using SCVMM 2012 to fill the XenServer management gaps. SCVMM’s 2012 private cloud functionality has a lot more features and benefit’s than I will be touching on.

The beautiful thing about SCVMM 2012 and private cloud’s is it not only provides self-service, and advanced delegation of administration, but it also provides you the ability to receive carved out resources from the “XenServer Pool”. Essentially from an end user perspective you’ve taken the need out for them to care about the back end plumbing involved, and your able to just provide a service. SCVMM 2012 enables the ability for you to pretty much become your own service provider to your internal organization.

Throughout Part’s 3,4, and 5 I’m going to dive into the self-service / delegation of administration functionality and put it together with a school based scenario.

Creating your Private Cloud

In this section I’m going to walk through creating your private cloud.

1. Our first step is to to achieving self-service administration is to create you Private Cloud. As you can see in Figure 26 on the left viewing pane click “VMs and Services” This will bring us to “VMs and Services” pane.

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Figure 26
– Creating a Private Cloud

2. Once we are in the “VMs and Services “ section, you will see at the top of the screen the option for “Create Cloud” which is shown in Figure 27click this to open up the “Create Cloud Wizard”

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Figure 27
– Creating a Private Cloud

3. Enter a Name and Description for your new Cloud as seen in Figure 28.Click “Next” to continue.

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Figure 28
– Creating a Private Cloud

4. Here is where we select the “Resources” or Physical Hosts that will be carved up in this Private Cloud. As you can see in Figure 29 I selected “XenServer DEV” which was a host group I created referencing back to Figure 19 in Part 2 . Click “Next” to proceed.

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Figure 29
– Creating a Private Cloud

5. Network’s defined in XenServer Resource Pool are pulled into SCVMM 2012. The names of these network’s can be changed under the “Settings” and “Logical Networks” section in the SCVMM console. As you can see in Figure 30 I have a logical network called “VLAN 55-Lab” I’m selecting this network for the Private Cloud. If other networks are chosen they will be available as networks which can be attached to existing, and newly created Virtual Machines.

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Figure 30
– Creating a Private Cloud

6. If your looking to add a load balancer to your Private Cloud it can be added from this section. You can always add one in the future by editing the properties of your Private Cloud. As you can see in Figure 31Microsoft NLB (Network Load balancing) is pre added into SCVMM 2012 as an option.

For more information on Load Balancer’s and Citrix integration see NS VPX + SCVMM

Additional Resources: Supported Fabric Providers & Adding Hardware Load balancers

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Figure 31
– Creating a Private Cloud

7. If you have pre-created VIP profiles they can be selected in Figure 32 dialog box. For more information on VIP profiles see TechNet Docs – VIP ProfilesClick “Next” to move on.

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Figure 32
– Creating a Private Cloud

8. If you have storage classifications pre-configured you can add them here in Figure 33. Click “Next” to continue. For more Information see: Storage Classifications Overview

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Figure 33
– Creating a Private Cloud

9. Here is in Figure 34 is where you can change your stored VM path, as well as add read only Library shares to your private cloud. I left defaults for purposes of this post. Click “Next” to continue.

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Figure 34
– Creating a Private Cloud

10. As you can see in Figure 35you have the ability to set the capacity for your Private Cloud. Essentially this is where you can carve up resources from your host’s chosen under the “Resources” section. Under “Assigned Capacity” you can see I made some adjustments.

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Figure 35
– Creating a Private Cloud

11. In Figure 36, you have the ability to select your “Virtual machine capability profiles” Since I have a vanilla install, I’m presented with the defaults. I chose XenServer, you have the ability to create custom capability profiles under the Library section of SCVMM. Click “Next” to continue.

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Figure 36
– Creating a Private Cloud

12. At last… Figure 37– The confirmation page, If all looks good, click “Finish” If there are mistakes click previous until you get to your desired window.

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Figure 37
– Creating a Private Cloud

13. If all is a success you will see a green check box shown in Figure 38 Under the jobs section of the SCVMM 2012 console.

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Figure 38
– Creating a Private Cloud

There you have it… You now have a private cloud built! Next up in Part 4 – Assigning resources & Defining roles in your Private Cloud we will dig into assigning resources to your private cloud. This is where we will start digging into  delegation of administration.

As always, feel free to comment and make suggestions. I look forward to your feedback!

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  1. EvanEvan05-08-2014

    Hi!

    Great blog 🙂

    I’m wondering if SCVMM can live migrate VM’s from Xenserver 6.2 over to Hyper-V 2012 / R2 ?

    thanks!

    • Dane YoungDane Young07-27-2014

      Evan,

      No, this is not possible. However, you can absolutely cold migrate these VMs, which is the process that you would do if you were permanently moving from XenServer to Hyper-V. Hopefully this helps!

      Take care,
      –youngtech

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