System Center Virtual Machine Manager SSP 2.0 SP1 Beta Released

Microsoft is hard at work on an upgrade for System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0, and is already sharing details of the evolution with customers.

The first Service Pack for System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 is designed to introduce a number of enhancements for existing customers, and early adopters that welcome the possibility of testing pre-release solutions can already get a preview of SP1.

According to J.C. Hornbeck, System Center Knowledge Engineer, the software giant has released System Center Virtual Machine Manager SSP 2.0 SP1 Beta on Microsoft Connect.

Customers interested in test driving System Center Virtual Machine Manager SSP 2.0 SP1 Beta need to head to Connect and sign in using a valid Windows Live ID.

Among the enhancements delivered with System Center Virtual Machine Manager SSP 2.0 SP1, Hornbeck mentioned virtual machine import capabilities.

SP1 will allow customers leveraging VMMSSP 2.0 import virtualized assets into the portal, as long as they were managed using System Center Virtual Machine Manager. At the same time, VMs which have been removed entirely can be re-imported.

Hornbeck choose to highlight the following features for System Center Virtual Machine Manager SSP 2.0 SP1:

“Import virtual machines: Allows DCIT (Datacenter) administrators to re-import virtual machines that were removed from the self-service portal and also import virtual machines created outside the portal but managed by VMM.

“Expire virtual machines: This feature provides the user the ability to set an expiration date for the virtual machines that are being created or imported so that the virtual machines auto-delete after the set date. This feature also provides users the flexibility (through role-based access) to set or change the expiration date for the virtual machine.

“Notify administrators: This feature provides functionality to notify BUIT(Business Unit) or DCIT(Datacenter) administrators about various events in the system (for example, Submit request, Approve request,Expire virtual machine, and so on) via email through SQL server mail integration.

“Move infrastructure between business units: This feature allows DCIT(Datacenter) administrators to move an infrastructure from one business unit to another when the system is in Maintenance Mode.”