Benefit of SCVMM?

[Justin]

Hello All,

We had a consultation with a presales engineer a week or so ago and, paraphrasing, he said that he was unfamiliar with anyone using a Hyper-V cluster without using SCVMM and was concerned that there may be issues as we are not planning on using the product. He has not got back to me with any information so I am reaching out to the community. I will have five servers clustered with a 3par as the CSV storage. I was not planning on using VMM. Will the lack of VMM hinder me in any way? Backup targets will be a generic FC storage array and a StoreOnce 4500.

Thank you for the input and forgive me if I misquoted the PSE, this is simply information I took away, I may have misunderstood.

Justin

[nmdange]

If we're talking about a single Hyper-V cluster, it won't impact Veeam at all really. VMM can be useful with multiple clusters as you just add VMM to Veeam and it adds everything at once, instead of one Hyper-V cluster at a time. It also helps for tracking a VM that is migrated between clusters or standalone hosts.

Outside of backups, VMM makes various admin tasks easier, like templates for creating VMs, setting up virtual switches, applying consistent network or storage qos, dynamic optimization, that sort of thing. But it is in no way required.

[Justin]

Yes, just a single Hyper-V cluster composed of five nodes. This may expand in the future but that is unlikely.

I have SCVMM installed for the TEST environment, but we are on the smaller side and other than single pane of glass visibility, I have not really found it helpful. Maybe someday, but again, unlikely.


Thanks for your input.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Justin,

SCVMM simplifies Hyper-V management when you have lots of hosts and clusters. With a single Failover Cluster you will not lose any capabilities in Veeam B&R. On a side note, to get complete visibility into your Hyper-V infrastructure install free version of Veeam ONE. In version 9 there will infrastructure assessment reports that would allow you to configure your infrastructure according to the known best practices.

Thanks!

[vClintWyckoff]

Justin-
As @Vitaliy mentions, Veeam ONE will be a great addition to ensuring your Hyper-V environment and VMs within are always performing optimally. Also, a great tool comes from 5Nine Software (www.5nine.com) where they have a free version of their 5Nine Manager for Hyper-V. Personally I think it simplifies a lot of the activities that VMM can make slightly more challenging

Check it out, it's free!

[Justin]

Hi Justin,

SCVMM simplifies Hyper-V management when you have lots of hosts and clusters. With a single Failover Cluster you will not lose any capabilities in Veeam B&R. On a side note, to get complete visibility into your Hyper-V infrastructure install free version of Veeam ONE. In version 9 there will infrastructure assessment reports that would allow you to configure your infrastructure according to the known best practices.

Thanks!

Thanks Vitaliy. We licensed One so no limitations there.

Justin-
As @Vitaliy mentions, Veeam ONE will be a great addition to ensuring your Hyper-V environment and VMs within are always performing optimally. Also, a great tool comes from 5Nine Software (http://www.5nine.com) where they have a free version of their 5Nine Manager for Hyper-V. Personally I think it simplifies a lot of the activities that VMM can make slightly more challenging

Check it out, it's free!

I've been hearing a lot about 5Nine lately. I may be giving it a shot soon. I have VMM in test but don't use any of the features to justify its complexity. 5Nine sounds like a winner.

[Vitaliy S.]

If you own Veeam ONE then definitely deploy it and integrate with Veeam B&R to get all cool new reports!