News

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Now at RC Stage

SCVMM 2012 RC includes many new features for hypervisor creation/management, resource optimization and service lifecycle management. It's also on a new schedule for general availability in early 2012.

• By Michael Domingo, Chris Paoli
• 09/09/2011

System Center VMM 2012 is now available as a release candidate. That's according to a blog post by the SCVMM Team blog detailing many of the new features.

SCVMM 2012 RC sports quite a few new features in several areas, including fabric management, resource optimization, cloud management, and service lifecycle management.

New in fabric management is the capability of the OSD to convert dynamic VHD to a fixed type; configuration and provision of network adapters can happen concurrently. Also, while creating clusters, clusters don't have to be immediately validated. Reports for clusters that are validated can be run as needed. Those reports can also be viewed under a new Cluster status tab.

New resource optimization features include ability to put powered down hosts into maintenance mode, and better integration with Systems Center Operations Manager 2012 (currently in beta). In the latter, VMM 2012 can react to alerts from Operations Manager's application-level performance monitors.

The RC also adds a number of service lifecycle management features. New is the ability to provision services being deployed based on IP, as well as new view of application instances. Service TemplatesAlso, as Services Templates are updated and published, changes are immediately reflected in Services Instances.

VMM 2012 RC is available for evaluation either in a virtualized environment or a download; links for both are available on
on the SCVMM blog.

In related news, Microsoft Server and Tools President Satya Nadella confirmed that the next releases of System Center 2012 and SQL Server 2012 will likely see daylight in early 2012. Nadella revealed those details during a speech given at the Citi Technology Conference in New York to investors on Thursday. SQL Server 2012 is currently at Community Technology Preview (CTP) 3; many of the components of System Center 2012 are in varying stages of development.

Microsoft back in May previously forecasted a release of its core products, including System Center VMM 2012, System Center Operations Manager 2012, System Center Service Manager 2012 and System Center Data Protection Manager 2012, for in the second half of 2011. While Nadella did not discuss the reason for the partial delay of System Center components, he did mention that Microsoft will be unveiling new info at its Microsoft BUILD conference next week.