And what customers are saying is, they have these existing VMware systems, our product, System Center, actually manages VMware. We do a world-class job of managing VMware, so they can use one pane of glass to manage their legacy VMware environments together with their Hyper-V system.

World-class job of managing VMware? Not according to my investigation.  And Network World found much of the same.

One pane of glass to manage VMware and Hyper-V? Not so fast — in order to manage just a Hyper-V environment, you need a whole array of tools:

• Hyper-V Manager
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Console
• System Center Operations Manager 2007 Console
• System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Console
• Third-party network interface teaming utility
• Server Core console configuration tools
• iSCSI configuration utility
• Failover Cluster Manager
• Perfmon
• … the list goes on

And oh, by the way, you also still need the vSphere Client because SCVMM cannot configure ESX host settings — hardware, storage, networking, resources, etc.

The easiest way to get “single pane of glass” management for Hyper-V is to simply redefine the “pane” to be an LCD display:

Presto!  Single pane of glass to manage VMware and Hyper-V.

Related posts:

1. Save $14,970 on VMware ESX management
2. SCVMM Damage Control
3. VM Resource Management: Hyper-V versus SCVMM
4. Yes, NIC teaming is not unsupported

I was particularly interested in PRO Tips, which is consistently mentioned as a key benefit of SCVMM.  It is supposed to compete with VMware DRS, except that PRO relies on System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) while DRS is simply an easy-to-use feature of VirtualCenter. 

Considering the importance of this feature, I expected to see one of the labs cover the SCVMM-SCOM integration and PRO Tips.  No such luck.  We spent time applying hotfixes and rebooting Windows Server 2008 to install the Hyper-V role and other Deep-Dive topics like that.

Instead, PRO Tips received a couple PowerPoint slides and some hand waving about how great it is to be able to automatically migrate your virtual machines – and introduce downtime thanks to quick migration.

I did appreciate the fact that the instructor acknowledged this serious omission.  He intended to at least demonstrate PRO Tips in action, but resources fell short.

If PRO Tips cannot be covered in two days, due to the complexity of SCOM integration, who in the world is really going to be deploying Microsoft virtualization with all of the advertised features?  Probably just the two thousand.

Related posts:

1. SCVMM/PRO Complexity: High
2. Two thousand?
3. Say it ain’t so, PRO!
4. Save $14,970 on VMware ESX management

Operations Manager 2007′s value diminishes when managing non-Microsoft IT elements, whether management is provided by Microsoft or a third party.

Sort of reminds me of the value of SCVMM-VirtualCenter integration, but that’s another topic.

Something that really caught my eye is that the product has racked up 4000 licenses in the year-and-a-half that it has been available.  But, if you know the product architecture, you would concur that most sites require several licenses, whether you run a business website or www.foxybingo.com. That implies about 2000 SCOM 2007 sites, to make a reasonable estimate.

Is that a lot?  Perhaps, since Gartner found one strength to be “A significant installed base.”

Consider this:  To take advantage of the highly-advertised SCVMM features like PRO Tips, topology diagrams and reporting (well, in 60 days…) you need to integrate with SCOM.  Does that mean that there are just a couple thousand environments out there that are actually ready to deploy Microsoft virtualization?

Are you one of the two thousand?  What about everyone else?  Read up on SCOM architecture and deployment just to get started with virtualization?  Doubtful.  For those with real work to do, today, take a look at VMware Infrastructure with a free 60-day trial.  You can use VMware DRS right away to intelligently place virtual machines on hosts and even move them around with zero downtime.  Kind of like PRO Tips, without the quick migration downtime and all the moving parts of SCOM:

Root Management Server?  Clusters?  Report Server?  Management Servers?  DW DB?  Agents?  Please pass the Tylenol.

Related posts:

1. PRO Tips: pros only, please
2. Save $14,970 on VMware ESX management
3. SCVMM/PRO Complexity: High
4. Hyper-V Console Disconnects During Live Migration