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Processes and tools for administering virtualized computing environments

Core Idea: Virtual Machine Management encompasses the tools, techniques, and practices used to create, configure, monitor, and maintain virtual machines throughout their lifecycle across virtualization platforms.

Key Elements

Management Layers

• Host-level Management: Direct control of VMs on a single hypervisor
  • Command-line interfaces (PowerShell, ESXi Shell)
  • Host-specific management tools (Hyper-V Manager, VMware vSphere Client)
• Enterprise Management: Centralized control of multiple hosts
  • Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
  • VMware vCenter
  • Proxmox Virtual Environment
  • oVirt/Red Hat Virtualization
• Cloud Management Platforms: Large-scale automated management
  • OpenStack
  • VMware Cloud Foundation
  • Microsoft Azure Stack

Core Management Functions

• Provisioning: Creating and deploying new virtual machines
  • Templates and golden images
  • Cloning and rapid deployment
  • VM configuration and customization
• Resource Management: Allocating and optimizing resources
  • CPU and memory allocation
  • Storage provisioning
  • Network configuration
• Monitoring and Operations: Maintaining running VMs
  • Performance monitoring
  • Health checks
  • Capacity planning
  • Troubleshooting
• Lifecycle Management: Managing VMs through their lifespan
  • Updates and patches
  • Backups and snapshots
  • Migration and retirement

Advanced Capabilities

• Live Migration: Moving running VMs between hosts with minimal/no downtime
• Dynamic Resource Scheduling: Automatic workload balancing
• High Availability: Automatic recovery from host failures
• Disaster Recovery: Replication and recovery across sites
• Automated Workflows: Scripted and policy-based management
• Self-Service Portals: User-initiated VM provisioning with approval workflows

Management APIs and Automation

• PowerShell and PowerCLI
• REST APIs
• Infrastructure as Code tools
  • Terraform
  • Ansible
  • Puppet/Chef
• CI/CD pipeline integration

Security Management

• VM hardening and compliance
• Role-based access control
• VM encryption
• Network isolation

Additional Connections

• Broader Context: IT Operations Management (integration with broader IT processes)
• Applications: Infrastructure as Code (automation approaches)
• See Also: Virtualization Monitoring Tools (specialized monitoring solutions)

References

1. "Mastering Hyper-V" by John Savill
2. "VMware vSphere: Design and Implementation" by Scott Lowe

#virtualization #management #operations #infrastructure

Connections:

Sources:

• From: Hyper-V - Wikipedia