Managing Virtual Machines with the VMM Administrator Console
Ultimately, virtualization is all about running and managing virtual machines. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that a key role of VMM 2008, and the VMM Administrator Console component in particular, involves managing the life-cycle of virtual machines. VMM 2008 provides a central administrative interface for the management of any number virtual machines distributed over an equally broad number of potentially widely distributed host systems running both Hyper-V and VMware ESX Server technology.
The breadth of support for virtual machine management within VMM 2008 is such that there is no task that can be performed using the Hyper-V Manager that cannot also be performed using VMM 2008 and the VMM Administrator Console (assuming that the user in question has been assigned appropriate role permissions).
The objective of this chapter is to provide step-by-step guidelines on managing all aspects of virtual machine life-cycles using VMM 2008. The chapter assums some level of familiarity with the VMM Administrator Console with regard to starting the console and connecting to a VMM Server. For more details on this topic area refer to the chapter entitled A Guided Tour of the VMM Administrator Console.
Creating Virtual Machines
Perhaps one of the key tasks when managing virtual machines is the creation of new virtual machines, either on a local or remote host. New virtual machines may be created by cloning an existing virtual machine, using a pre-existing template or configured completely from the ground up.
