Sunday, November 13, 2011

Cloud Management with System Center - Building a Private Cloud with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

With the release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (SCVMM 2012), Microsoft have consolidated the creation and management of your Private Cloud environment into a single console and have made it really easy to setup!


I have decided to create a blog series titled 'Cloud Management with System Center' and this is the first post in the series.

Before continuing with this post, ensure you have followed my previous blog posts on installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and App Controller 2012

This series coincides with the new Microsoft Private Cloud Community Evaluation Program starting up and you can sign up at any time to the CEP by clicking on the link below (you will need a Microsoft Live ID to sign in):

https://connect.microsoft.com/site799/program7383

In this post, I will walk through the steps required to create a Private Cloud for your environment using SCVMM 2012.

To begin, open up the SCVMM 2012 console and select the 'VMs and Services' tab from the Wunderbar on the left hand side of the screen.

Once this is open, right mouse click on the 'Clouds' icon on the left hand side of the screen and select the 'Create Cloud' option from the drop down menu as below


Now select which host group(s) you want to make a part of this particular private cloud and then click 'Next'


From the next screen, select the Logical Networks that are going to be a part of this private cloud and then click 'Next'


Next up, select if you want to use Load Balancers for your private cloud and then click 'Next' again


If you have selected a load balancer from the previous screen, then you will now need to choose the Virtual IP Profile that you want to assign to your private cloud. If you are not using load balancers in your cloud or are configuring them later, then you can leave this selection empty and click 'Next' to move on


Choose any storage classifications from the next screen if applicable, and then click 'Next'


In the next screen you can specify a stored virtual machine path and any read only library shares that you wish to assign to this private cloud and then click 'Next'


At the 'Capacity' screen, you can tell SCVMM 2012 what capacity limitations are going to be applied to this particular cloud and keep in mind that this will have an implication on what resources you can deploy at a later stage from your Service Application Templates if you have low capacity specified here


In the next screen, you can choose the capability profile for your cloud to span over VMWare, Citrix or Hyper-V hypervisors. I've just chosen the Hyper-V capability here and clicked 'Next'


From the final 'Summary' screen, confirm that all of your selections are correct and once you're happy enough with them, click 'Finish' to create your private cloud


Once the wizard has completed, go back to the 'VMs and Services' window and expand the 'Clouds' icon on the left hand side to confirm that your new private cloud has been created and is ready for provisioning



If you want to learn more about Cloud Management with System Center, click the link below for my next post:

3 comments:

  1. Hello Kevin,


    Building Private cloud: This is what I have done
    On a plain system I have installed windows server 2008 R2 SP1 and added hyper-v role and called it as private. Here the internet is connected.
    In the Hyper-v manager gone to Virtual Network Adapter >New virtual network>selected Internal and added and called It as internal>clicked ok.
    Here from hyper-v manager I had created 2 VMs. On one VM installed windows server2008. (Steps done in configuring windows server2008) and other VM installed SCVMM2012
    Specify name and location: winsr2008r2 (not activated yet), Assign memory: 1024
    Configure networking: not connected now, Connected virtual hard disk(image file)
    Configuring Windows server 2008 R2:
    Started server>Install now>Enterprise full installation>custom installation>changed password
    Done with windows update and can connect to internet.
    Next changed the network settings to “internal” to communicate with SCVMM, I had changed the properties of IPV4 network
    Change IP address to 192.168.10.120 and preferred DNS server to 192.168.10.120
    Next I have run dcpromo to activate Active Directory Domain Services and created a new forest domain name “FQDN” with “corp.contoso.com”. Now changed the system properties and make a member of domain “copr.contoso.com”
    Next I had gone to Active Directory Users and Computers>corp.contoso.com>created new user name with “vmmadmin”.
    Configuring SCVMM2012:
    Started server>Install now>Enterprise full installation>custom installation>changed password
    Done with windows update and can connect to internet.
    Next changed the network settings to “internal” to ping domain controller, I had changed the properties of IPV4 network
    Change IP address to 192.168.10.121 and preferred DNS server to 192.168.10.120
    Next I verified to reach the domain controller by pinging from command prompt>ping 192.168.10.120, Here I can ping the domain controller. Now changed the system properties and make a member of domain “copr.contoso.com”
    Now I added VMM domain account in to local administrators group of the SCVMM2012, gone to EDIT Local users and groups>Groups>double clicked on Administrators>added vmmadmin in to that.
    Now logged off this account and get logged through vmmadmin account.

    Configuring VMM for Sc2012:
    Here I had installed Sql Server 2008 R2 first and configured VMM for SC2012>product registration>accept licence>join CEIP(no)>Microsoft update(no)>database configure(here I had given named instance of Sql where I had first installed SQL)>configured domain account>library configuration(used existing library share)>Install.

    Now connected to server VMM Console
    Here I need to create private cloud. I want to know are there prerequisites to create private or we can directly create cloud.
    If there are any prerequisites let me how to configure them.

    I want to how to run applications after creating cloud. Thank you waiting for your reply.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Building Private cloud: This is what I have done
    On a plain system I have installed windows server 2008 R2 SP1 and added hyper-v role and called it as private. Here the internet is connected.
    In the Hyper-v manager gone to Virtual Network Adapter >New virtual network>selected Internal and added and called It as internal>clicked ok.
    Here from hyper-v manager I had created 2 VMs. On one VM installed windows server2008. (Steps done in configuring windows server2008) and other VM installed SCVMM2012
    Specify name and location: winsr2008r2 (not activated yet), Assign memory: 1024
    Configure networking: not connected now, Connected virtual hard disk(image file)
    Configuring Windows server 2008 R2:
    Started server>Install now>Enterprise full installation>custom installation>changed password
    Done with windows update and can connect to internet.
    Next changed the network settings to “internal” to communicate with SCVMM, I had changed the properties of IPV4 network
    Change IP address to 192.168.10.120 and preferred DNS server to 192.168.10.120
    Next I have run dcpromo to activate Active Directory Domain Services and created a new forest domain name “FQDN” with “corp.contoso.com”. Now changed the system properties and make a member of domain “copr.contoso.com”
    Next I had gone to Active Directory Users and Computers>corp.contoso.com>created new user name with “vmmadmin”.
    Configuring SCVMM2012:
    Started server>Install now>Enterprise full installation>custom installation>changed password
    Done with windows update and can connect to internet.
    Next changed the network settings to “internal” to ping domain controller, I had changed the properties of IPV4 network
    Change IP address to 192.168.10.121 and preferred DNS server to 192.168.10.120
    Next I verified to reach the domain controller by pinging from command prompt>ping 192.168.10.120, Here I can ping the domain controller. Now changed the system properties and make a member of domain “copr.contoso.com”
    Now I added VMM domain account in to local administrators group of the SCVMM2012, gone to EDIT Local users and groups>Groups>double clicked on Administrators>added vmmadmin in to that.
    Now logged off this account and get logged through vmmadmin account.

    Configuring VMM for Sc2012:
    Here I had installed Sql Server 2008 R2 first and configured VMM for SC2012>product registration>accept licence>join CEIP(no)>Microsoft update(no)>database configure(here I had given named instance of Sql where I had first installed SQL)>configured domain account>library configuration(used existing library share)>Install.
    Now connected to server VMM Console.

    Here I want to create private cloud. I want to know are there any prerequisites to create cloud.
    If there are any prerequisites, please let me know how to configure them.
    I want to know how to run applications on it. Please kindly help me out. I am waiting for your reply. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi GSK,

      Thanks for the really long comment/question!

      To quickly try to help you out with answers:

      The pre-requisites to creating a private cloud are based around ensuring that your virtual environment can first be managed with SCVMM 2012. Once all of your hypervisors and their virtual machines can be seen in the console, then you can easily create the private cloud object containing whatever combination of these components you wish.

      Kevin.

      Delete