Microsoft Releases System Center Virtual Machine Manager R2 Beta

From Microsoft:

Today, Microsoft announced the beta availability of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM). The R2 beta release is a comprehensive solution for managing virtualized infrastructure running on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2 and VMware ESX through Virtual Center.

Some of the new features & functionality included in this release are:

• Support for the new features of Windows Server 2008 R2, including:
  1. Live Migration: Enables the movement of running virtual machines from one virtual host to another with no downtime. 
  2. Hot addition/removal of VHDs:  Allows the addition and removal of new virtual hard disks (VHDs) on a running virtual machine.
  3. New networking protocols: Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney.
• Streamlined process for managing host upgrades: Permits to apply updates or perform maintenance on a host server by safely evacuating all virtual machines to other hosts on a cluster using Live Migration or putting those workloads into a saved state to be safely reactivated when maintenance or upgrades are complete. Maintenance mode is enabled for all supported hypervisor platforms on Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta.
• Support for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI): Enables administrators to deploy and manage virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) in their data center environment. 
• Support of disjoint domains: Reduces the complexity of reconciling host servers with differing domain names in Active Directory and DNS.  In these situations, VMM 2008 R2 Beta automatically creates a custom service principal name (SPN) configured in both AD and DNS allowing for successful authentication. 
• Use of defined port groups with VMware Virtual Center: On installation, VMM 2008 R2 Beta will present available port groups for VMM’s use thus allowing administrators to maintain control over which port groups are used.

For a full list of new features, please check out Rakeshm's VM Management Blog. If you are interested in testing R2 Beta code, you can download it from Connect.