The following procedure provides an overview of the tasks you must perform to configure VMM to manage a VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) environment. VMM manages VMware through the VMware Infrastructure API, so to start managing VMware, you must add the VMware VirtualCenter server to VMM.

Important
For the most current and detailed information about configuring and managing a VMware environment in VMM, see the following topics in the VMM TechNet Library:

Requirements for VMware Virtualization Managers and Hosts

Virtual Machine Manager supports the following VMware releases:

  • Virtualization managers—VMware VirtualCenter 2.5

  • Virtual machine hosts—VMware ESX Server 3.5, VMware ESX Server 3.0.2, VMware ESX Server 3i

How to configure VMM to manage your VI3 environment
  1. Add your VMware VirtualCenter server to Virtual Machine Manager.

    Your first step in configuring VMM to manage a VI3 environment is to add the VirtualCenter server so that VMM can use the VMware Infrastructure API to manage the ESX Server hosts and virtual machines. When you add a VirtualCenter server to VMM, all hosts that are running ESX Server are added to VMM. VMM creates a host group for the ESX Server hosts. Each ESX Server host must remain in its host group.

    When you add the VirtualCenter server, you specify whether or not to communicate with the ESX Server hosts in secure mode. When secure mode is enabled, VMM must be able to identify each ESX Server host by its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate and, for non-embedded versions of ESX Server (VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3.0.2), by the host’s SSH public key.

    Important
    You cannot manage a VirtualCenter server using more than one VMM server. If you add the VirtualCenter server to more than one instance of VMM 2008, VMM creates a duplicate object for each VMware virtual machine, with the duplicate virtual machine permanently in a Missing state.
  2. Configure security for individual VMware ESX Server hosts.

    When you add a VirtualCenter server to VMM, VMM adds each ESX Server host with OK (Limited) status until you configure the security information that VMM needs to perform file transfers between the host and Windows Server–based computers. The unsupported virtual machine operations include creating a virtual machine from a virtual hard disk that is stored on a library server or storing a virtual machine in the VMM library.

    When a host has OK (Limited) status, VMM administrators are limited to a subset of virtual machine operations that do not require that type of file transfer. For a list of supported virtual machine operations in VMM under limited or full management, see Supported Virtual Machine Actions for ESX Server Hosts.

    To change a host’s status to OK and enable all management capabilities that VMM supports, VMM must have virtual machine delegate credentials on the host. Additionally, if you are managing your VMware environment in secure mode, VMM must be able to identify the host by its certificate. For non-embedded versions of ESX Server, the host’s RSH public key also is required. For detailed instructions about configuring security for ESX Server hosts, see Configuring Security for a Managed VMware Environment in VMM 2008 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=145051).

    Note
    You must use the same delegate user (by default, vimuser) on all ESX Server 3i hosts that use the NFS datastore.

    For a procedure for configuring security on a host, see How to Set Credentials for Communicating with a Host.

  3. Import VMware templates into the Virtual Machine Manager library.

    To import the templates, you must have specified the administrative account to use for connections to the ESX Server hosts that store the templates. If the VirtualCenter server is managed in Secure Mode, you must also provide a certificate and public key for each of the hosts.

  4. Optionally, configure Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) for VMware host groups and host clusters.

    PRO supports workload- and application-aware resource optimization within a virtualized environment. Based on performance and health data provided by PRO-enabled management packs in System Center Operations Manager 2007, PRO can automatically or manually implement recommendations, known as PRO tips, to minimize downtime and accelerate time to resolution. For more information, see About Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO).

    For instructions for enabling PRO, see How to Configure PRO for a Host Cluster and How to Modify the Properties of a Host Group.

Note
After adding a VirtualCenter server to VMM, you can use the Add Hosts Wizard to manually add any new ESX Server hosts to VMM. VMM does not discover the new hosts automatically. For more information, see Adding ESX Server Hosts.

Additional Resources


For the most up-to-date Help information, go to the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Help Online. To find additional Virtual Machine Manager 2008 documentation, go to the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 TechCenter Library.