System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2 beta now available

Today, Microsoft announced the first beta release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM R2). With feedback from our customers, Microsoft has made a number of new feature enhancements in R2 that support using a Windows platform including:

o Support for Live Migration: With Windows 2008 R2 adding support for Live migration, it’s now added as a new migration option in VMM R2

o Multiple VMs per LUN: VMM R2 allows multiple VMs to be placed on the same LUN if CSV is enabled on the cluster.

o SAN related enhancements: SAN migration in and out of clusters & allows Multiple LUNs per single iSCSI target

o Network related enhancements including:

§ Network Optimization

§ Some workloads such as Network load balancers need to be able to spoof MACs: There’s a new setting that allows admin to enable/Disable MAC spoofing on a per VM basis

§ Ability to reuse port groups defined in VMWare VirtualCenter

SCVMM 2008 R2 is available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers today via the TechNetand MSDN download site. You can read more about the beta release of SCVMM 2008 R2 on the Systems Center blogor checkout details on the VMM 2008 R2 beta in a post by Rakesh Malhotra .

Please go download the beta of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 today from the Microsoft Connect site and let Microsoft know what you think.