Now Available – System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 RTM
Looking for a solution that helps you reduce IT costs, while increasing agility for your organization? Build a foundation for your Private Cloud with the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manger Self-Service Portal 2.0 (SSP).
Over the last year, we have been talking about the need to provide a set of capabilities, including self-service, to build a private cloud to deliver Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). As Brad Anderson, corporate vice president at Microsoft, announced in his keynote at TechEd Europe in Berlin this week, SSP is released now. It’s free and fully supported! You can download it here . Below are some more details about what the Self-Service Portal is, which technology partners are extending SSP with integration packages today and where you can find more information like technical guidance.
We also announced Hyper-V Cloud at TechEd yesterday, a set of programs and initiatives to help our customers and partners deploy private & public clouds to deliver IaaS based on Windows Server Hyper-V, System Center, and related products. SSP is a component of many of the Hyper-V Cloud offerings. You can read more about Hyper-V Cloud in this blog.
What is the Self-Service Portal?
SCVMM SSP 2.0 is a fully supported, partner-extensible solution built on top of Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V technology, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. You can use it to pool, allocate, and manage resources to offer IT as a service and to deliver the foundation for a private cloud platform inside your datacenter. SCVMM SSP 2.0 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. It also includes a dynamic provisioning engine. SCVMM SSP 2.0 reduces the time needed to provision infrastructures and their components by offering business unit “on-boarding,” infrastructure request, and change management. In addition, the free download package also includes detailed guidance on how to implement the Self-Service Portal inside your environment.
Why should I use the Self-Service Portal?
· Allocate datacenter resources. Use SCVMM SSP 2.0 to pool datacenter infrastructure resources, such as network, storage, load balancers, virtual machine templates, and domains, and make them available to business units to meet their infrastructure needs. You can also use SCVMM SSP 2.0 to establish the costs associated with reserving and using infrastructure resources.
· Simplify business unit on-boarding. Use SCVMM SSP 2.0 to simplify the process of enrolling a business unit and provisioning its infrastructure. With SCVMM SSP 2.0, datacenter administrators can register business unit requirements in one central location. After they have registered, business unit administrators can request resources in the organization’s infrastructure pool to host their IT services.
· Validate and provision infrastructure requests. Use SCVMM SSP 2.0 to simplify the process that datacenter administrators use to validate and provision a business unit IT administrator’s infrastructure requests. Using SCVMM SSP 2.0, datacenter administrators can provision the requested resources, and assign them to the requesting business unit IT administrator.
· Provide forms for self-service virtual machine provisioning. Use SCVMM SSP 2.0 to streamline the business unit IT user’s experience in managing virtual machines.
· Extend and customize virtual machine actions. Use the powerful extensibility features of SCVMM SSP 2.0 to work with IHV, ISV, and SI partners to customize different virtual machine actions (create, delete, stop, start, resume, shutdown, pause, store, and deploy).In this way, you can leverage the unique characteristics of your infrastructure.
Partner integration with Self-Service Portal
The Self-Service Portal includes powerful extensibility features for Microsoft technology partners. Independent software and hardware vendors can customize different virtual machine actions (create, delete, stop, start, shut down, connect, pause, and so on) to take advantage of the unique characteristics of their infrastructure. We are working with a number of technology partners on Self-Service Portal integration packs.
These partners already offer an integrated solution:
Citrix Integration Pack for Self-Service Portal
Compellent Solution Pack for Self-Service Portal
F5 Solution for Self-Service Portal
HP services using Self-Service Portal
Intel Cloud Builder Guide: Cloud Design and Deployment on Intel Platforms
NetApp ApplianceWatch PRO 2.1.1
VKernel Chargeback with Hyper-V
Next steps
· Download the SCVMM Self-Service Portal 2.0
· Visit the Self-Service Portal 2.0 webpage to find more information and resources
· Get more technical guidance for the Self-Service Portal 2.0 on TechNet
· Any questions? Send email to sspfeedback@microsoft.com