Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 SP1 with documentation

November 9, 2011 by James van den Berg 1 Comment

Overview

VMMSSP (also referred to as the self-service portal) is a fully supported, partner-extensible solution built on Windows Server® 2008 R2, Hyper-V™ technology, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). You can use it to pool, allocate, and manage resources to offer infrastructure as a service and to deliver the foundation for a private cloud platform inside your datacenter. VMMSSP includes a pre-built web-based user interface that has sections for both the datacenter managers and the business unit IT consumers, with role-based access control. VMMSSP also includes a dynamic provisioning engine. VMMSSP reduces the time needed to provision infrastructures and their components by offering business unit “on-boarding,” infrastructure request, and change management. The VMMSSP package also includes detailed guidance on how to implement VMMSSP inside your environment.

Important VMMSSP is not an upgrade to the existing VMM 2008 R2 self-service portal. You can choose to deploy and use one or both self-service portals depending on your requirements.

Feature Summary
The self-service portal provides the following features that are made available through a web-based user interface:

• Register business units (business unit on-boarding): Using standardized forms, users can register their business units with the self-service portal; the self-service portal provides a simple workflow for the datacenter administrator to use when approving or rejecting registrations.
• Manage infrastructure requests and change requests: Using standardized forms, users can request new infrastructures or request changes to infrastructures; the self-service portal provides a simple workflow for the datacenter administrator to use when provisioning, approving, or rejecting requests.
• Move infrastructures between business units: The datacenter administrator can move an infrastructure from one business unit to another.
• Support self-service provisioning of virtual machines: Depending on their user role, users can use standardized forms to request bulk creation of virtual machines.
• Import virtual machines: The datacenter administrator can import existing virtual machines from Virtual Machine Manager.
• Configure and allocate datacenter resources: The datacenter administrator can manage configuration information related to computer, network, and storage resources in the VMMSSP database.
• Configure automatic email notifications: The datacenter administrator can configure VMMSSP to work with SQL Server® Database Mail to send email messages to designated recipients. The messages notify the recipients of such events as request approvals or rejections, or impending expiration of virtual machines.
• Customize default virtual machine actions: Using a simple, web-based interface, the datacenter administrator can extend the default virtual machine actions; for example, the datacenter administrator can add scripts that interact with storage area networks (SANs) to support rapid deployment of virtual machines.
• Define and use custom virtual machine actions: A datacenter administrator can now create up to five custom virtual machine actions and make them available to users on the Virtual Machines tab. For example, a datacenter administrator can create a Create Checkpoint action and add it to the list of actions on the Virtual Machines tab.
• Use Opalis policies in virtual machine actions: In a datacenter that includes a deployment of Opalis Integration Server, a datacenter administrator can customize tasks in virtual machine actions to trigger Opalis policies instead of run scripts.
• Define and use custom virtual machine properties: A datacenter administrator can define custom properties to collect information from users in the Create Virtual Machine wizard, and use these properties in the tasks of the CreateVM virtual machine action. For example, a datacenter administrator can create the properties RAM and CPU Count. Then the Create Virtual Machine wizard includes fields for RAM and CPU Count. When a user finishes the wizard, the wizard passes the RAM and CPU count values that the user entered to the tasks in the CreateVM virtual machine action.
• Set virtual machine expiration dates: Depending on their user role memberships, users can set expiration dates for virtual machines. After a virtual machine has expired, it is no longer available for use in VMMSSP.
• Manage virtual machine DVD drives and media: When working with virtual machines that have DVD drives, users can attach media such as ISO images to the virtual machines.
• Localization: The self-service portal is now available in English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese

You can download SCVMMSSP 2.0 ServicePack 1 here