A VM Manager is software that provides tools for system administrators to manage, monitor, and diagnose Virtual Machines running in different hosts and clusters.
Flexxible|SUITE uses VM managers to operate with virtual machines, directly (tenant servers) or through a Desktop broker farm like Citrix Virtual Desktop (former XenDesktop) or Citrix Virtual Apps (former XenApp).
The SUITE supports different kinds of VM managers for different virtualization platforms and technologies:
- Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2
- Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 R2
- Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2016
- VMWare vSphere versions 6.0 to 6.7
- Citrix XenServer 7.1
- Microsoft Azure *
The different VM Managers with which a Flexxible|SUITE installation is working can be accessed through the main menu, at "Scalable system / VM Managers".
After a new Desktop Broker Farm is added to Flexxible|SUITE, or when a new connection between a XenDesktop site and a hosting hypervisor is created, the "Synchronize infrastructure" process discovers and automatically adds VM Managers to this list. Some kinds of VM Managers, like vSphere, XenServer and Azure require an administrator to configure credentials or other additional information before they become fully operational.
If an existing VM Manager is specifically for hosting tenant servers, but not connected to a Desktop broker farm, it will need to be manually added to the VM Managers list.
For Flexxible|SUITE to be able to work with the different kinds of VM Managers, the corresponding snapins or modules must be installed in every worker VM:
- The VMM Manager console for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine manager
- PowerCLI 11 for VMWare vSphere
- XenServer 7.2.0 SDK PowerShell snapin for Citrix XenServer 7.1
- Azure Az Powershell module for Microsoft Azure
A VM Manager is configured with the following data:
Name: the descriptive name of the VM Manager
Kind: the vendor and technology of the VM Manager
Nodes tab: the list of individual machines that are part of the VM Manager, or the cluster name (for SCVMM), or the access Url address (for vSphere and Azure).
VMs tab: the list of VMs that are managed by the VM Manager, grouped by type.
HA hypervisors tab: the list of clusters, or HA hypervisors, managed by the VM Manager
Desktop managers tab: the list of XenDesktop sites that hold a hosting connection to the VM Manager
Networks tab: the list of networks with associated VLAN Ids defined in the VM Manager. VMs created in this VM Manager are plugged to the network with the same VLAN Id that the tenant.
Depending on the VM Manager kind other configurations may apply:
User name: for vSphere and XenServer, the user name (DOMAIN\USERNAME) that Flexxible|SUITE will use to communicate with the VM Manager. This user must have the administrator role in the vCenter console.
Password: for vSphere, XenServer, and Azure, the password that Flexxible|SUITE will use to communicate with the VM Manager.
Subscription Id: for Azure, the GUID code of the Azure subscription where the VMs are hosted.
Tenant Id: for Azure, the Azure subscription tenant GUID code
Application Id: for Azure, the Azure subscription application GUID code
*Azure template management
Templates can be edited and set in Ready for deploy, but a new snapshot is not created for new versions, so new catalogs point to the current template version, and when the template is modified, this change will be propagated to new catalogs even if the template is in edition.