Introduction

With System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (VMM2012) is possible, besides the hosts and virtual machines management, the Private Cloud creation, configuration and management. To make the explanation and understanding easier, we begin by describing a Private Cloud.

Private Cloud is hardware and resources grouping and provisioning designed to provide a unified structure in the services allocation, offering opacity, elasticity, optimization, delegation of control and capacity management.

In other words, imagine a company using its own resources as physical servers, storage arrays, virtual machines (VM), network settings, etc. Using VMM is possible to group all of them and offer them in a unified way to add services and other resources. When we add a virtual machine on a Private Cloud, for example, the VMM chooses the best host to offer memory and processor, the storage arrays and network configurations, according to the settings established during the creation of this VM. The task of choosing the best resources for this VM is done by Virtual Machine Manager and not the network administrator. Private Cloud Capacity management is also much easier, allowing adding more hardware without impacting the production environment. This structure can also be described as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

Prerequisites

Before we create our Private Cloud we should prepare some resources that should be available to it.

• Host Groups - You must add the servers that host virtual machines into host groups. Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2008 SP2 and R2, VMware ESX / ESXi Server 3.5 and 4.1 and Citrix XenServer 5.6 with Feature Pack 1 can be used as a member of a host groups. For more information about host groups, access http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610645.aspx  

• Library - To host the virtual machine templates, scripts, profiles, images in ISO format and other resources you need to add a shared network folder called VMM Library Server. For more details about the Library Servers, visit the link below: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610598.aspx 

• Storage - The physical storage resources from the private cloud will be stored in the storages, which may be added, discovered, and even managed through VMM2012. For more information about storage in VMM, access http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610600.aspx

• Networking - You can also create and define logical networks, static IP and DHCP configuration, MAC pooling and Load Balancers integration. These resources will be essential to the Private Clouds configuration. For more information about the network in VMM, access http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610596.aspx.  

Configuration

After adding and configuring the prerequisites, log on as administrator and open the VMM Server management console and click VM and Services. From the top menu click on Create Cloud, as shown in Figure 1. 

Figure 1 - Option to create Private Cloud

A Wizard will appear with the settings. In General, enter the Private Cloud display name and description and click Next.


Figure 2 - General

In Resources you must specify the host group that will be assigned to the Cloud. You can select more than one group, each containing different hosts. This demonstration was added to a group with three subgroups according to Figure 3.
If your group is only hosts servers with VMware you need to add a resource pool for VMware. For more information, visit the link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610676.aspx.


Figure 3 - Resources

On the next screen will be set the logical network configurations. Figure 4 displays the network configuration that was made in this test scenario, with three networks and one of them (Backend Network) with two definitions. By creating a virtual machine and add it to your Cloud the IP settings, MAC address and VLAN information will be automatically configured.


Figure 4 - Logical Networks

To display the Logical Network option during the private cloud creation is necessary to identify each host and their respective networks. In Figure 5 you can observe a host properties and the Logical Network configuration. If the logic network exists, but without using the host, it will not appear on this screen (Figure 6).


Figure 5 – Logical Network Connectivity

After these options, select Logical Network in the networks that will be used in the Private Cloud and click Next.


Figure 6 - Logical Networks

In VIP Profiles you can specify a model of Virtual IP (VIP). A Virtual profile contains settings for a specific type of network traffic. For example, if a load balancer needs any specific option or even choices about their behavior is possible, through a VIP profile, to offer all these settings. If a user creates a service he can select this template to be used if there is load balance in this service. This is an optional setting and you can add it after the Private Cloud creation too.


Figure 7 - VIP Profiles

On Storage will be specified the Private Cloud Storage classification. In the figure 8 example were added three classifications: Bronze, Silver and Gold. Select the desired rating and then click Next. To add a storage in VMM, open the management console, click on Fabric, and Storage Providers.
So far only the following list of arrays are supported: 

• EMC Symmetrix
• EMC CLARiiON CX
• HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA)
• NetApp FAS  

Figure 8 – Storage Classification

In Library you can specify the way that virtual machines are hosted and the read-only shares to be used by the private cloud. Figure 9 display two Library Servers with several folders containing multiple files, templates and scripts that will be offered for cloud services.


Figure 9 - Library Servers

By default, during VMM installation is created a shared folder and it is added as a Library Server. To add new shared folders, click Library in the Administration Console and then Add Library Server.
Choose the path and the read-only shares and then click Next.


Figure 10 - Libraries

One of the main features of a Private Cloud is the capacity control. On the next screen is displayed precisely the option to use (by default) the full resources capacity or if you prefer, to change the values ​​according to the desired limit. In figure 11 I have been set some limits on the number of virtual machines, virtual CPUs and Storage. Configure according to your needs and click Next.


Figure 11 - Capacity Management

In Capability Profile must be selected hosts profiles that will be used. There are three profiles created by default, and new ones may be added. Choose the profile that will be used and click Next.


Figura 12– Capability Profile

Review all the options chosen at Summary and click Finish to confirm the Private Cloud creation.


Figure 13 - Summary

Note on the summary screen that there is an option called View Script to export the same procedure to be done through PowerShell. This facilitates the models creation of scripts for use on a daily basis. Check out the script for the above procedures: 

Set-SCCloudCapacity -JobGroup "f1e3cf5e-605c-487c-98d1-667f1ea891ae" -CustomQuotaLimited $false -MemoryLimited $false -VirtualCPUCountLimited $true -StorageLimited $true -VirtualMachinesLimited $true -VirtualCPUCount 200 -StorageGB 10000 -VirtualMachines 50

$resources = @()

$logicalNetworks = @()

$logicalNetworks += Get-SCLogicalNetwork -ID "a16aca92-c71c-47ec-8882-4fb53b822401"

$logicalNetworks += Get-SCLogicalNetwork -ID "6b942193-412b-4539-b041-f551511cbb54"

$resources += $logicalNetworks

$vipTemplates = @()

$vipTemplates += Get-SCLoadBalancerVIPTemplate -ID "49c15983-de21-4843-ae0f-712958dbd319"

$vipTemplates += Get-SCLoadBalancerVIPTemplate -ID "803ec130-d8e2-4815-857f-efa3a2287c21"

$resources += $vipTemplates

$readonlyLibraryShares = @()

$readonlyLibraryShares += Get-SCLibraryShare -ID "d2fd725d-497b-4208-a249-7491afb8b926"

$readonlyLibraryShares += Get-SCLibraryShare -ID "edfae04a-d663-4bdd-a507-f4523028d19f"

$addCapabilityProfiles = @()

$addCapabilityProfiles += Get-SCCapabilityProfile -ProfileName "ESX"

$addCapabilityProfiles += Get-SCCapabilityProfile -ProfileName "HyperV"

$addCapabilityProfiles += Get-SCCapabilityProfile -ProfileName "Xen"

Set-SCCloud -JobGroup "f1e3cf5e-605c-487c-98d1-667f1ea891ae" -RunAsynchronously -ReadWriteLibraryPath "\\WIN-PNNSMPE05M8.Contoso.msft\SPLibrary\SPPrivateCloud" -AddCloudResource $resources -AddReadOnlyLibraryShare $readonlyLibraryShares -AddCapabilityProfile $addCapabilityProfiles

$hostGroups = @()

$hostGroups += Get-SCVMHostGroup -ID "5750a2b3-ab42-4e18-a378-168fc658a00e"

$hostGroups += Get-SCVMHostGroup -ID "3c19608e-8e75-48c4-ab47-b53b8d553891"

New-SCCloud -JobGroup "f1e3cf5e-605c-487c-98d1-667f1ea891ae" -VMHostGroup $hostGroups -Name "Sao Paulo Private Cloud" -Description "Private Cloud with Sao Paulo resources" –RunAsynchronously

After the Cloud creation, when you specify a new virtual machine you can choose the option Place the virtual machine on a cloud (Figure 14). On the next screen is displayed a ranking of the best Private Cloud to receive the new virtual machine (Figure 15).
To add an existing virtual machine to a cloud, turn it off and open its properties. In general, click Cloud and choose the Cloud that the VM will be hosted.


Figure 14 - Option for new virtual machines


Figure 15 – Clouds Ranking

Here are three clouds and some information of São Paulo Private Cloud created in the demo above.

As shown in Figure 14 and 15 is not possible to choose the host that the virtual machine will be hosted, but in the Private Cloud details you can see in the third column the host that the VM is.


Figure 16 - Private Clouds

You can now add the virtual machines and manage your Private Cloud, enjoying all benefits of elasticity, capacity management, delegation of control and lots of other benefits that we have with the Private Cloud environment.
In the next article you'll learn how to delegate control of Private Clouds.

Reference

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610625.aspx

Leandro Carvalho
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