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:

Cloud Management with System Center - Creating a Virtual Machine Template with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012