Specifications

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 Reviewer’s Guide 34
Figure 13. Virtual Machine Manager controls VirtualCenter Server and ESX Server
After adding the VirtualCenter Server, the VMMM management console can manage VMware VMs. In
Figure 13, you can see that VMM can control the VMware Virtual Machine Stop, Pause, and Save State
capabilities.
High Availability with Failover Clustering
Creating a highly available environment for virtual machines is every bit as important as it is for physical
servers. Failover Clustering is Microsoft’s primary high availability server-level protection technology. It
is available for both Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. With Windows Server 2008,
Failover Clustering enables you to create a cluster of up to 16 nodes. If one cluster node fails then
other nodes in the cluster can assume the services running on that node. It can also provide high
availability at both the virtual server host level and the virtual machine guest level.
At the host level, Failover Clustering provides protection against the single point of failure that can
result from a host hardware failure. If a physical host server experiences a failure then all virtual
machines running on that host automatically start on another node in the cluster.