System Center Virtual Machine Manager for Beginners (Part 11)

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If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:

In my previous article in this series, I showed you how to turn your model virtual machine into a template. In this article, I want to conclude the series by explaining how you can generate brand new virtual machines from your previously created template.

So as you may recall from the previous article, the template VM that I created was based on Windows 8.1. Of course I am only using this particular template as an example. In the real world you are most likely going to create multiple templates.

If you look at Figure A, you will see that I currently have three VM templates in my library. You will also notice that the Windows 8.1 template that I created in my previous article shows a status of Creation Failed. This brings up a couple of important points that I want to share with you.

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Figure A: There are three templates in my VMM library.

The first point is that when something unexpected goes wrong (such as the failure to create a template) then there are ways of finding out what went wrong. To do so, go to the Jobs workspace. This workspace shows all of the most recent jobs and you can click on a job to learn more about it.

Unfortunately, the template creation failure happened over a month ago and VMM does not display jobs from far enough back for me to show you what went wrong. I can however show you an example of another failed job. If you look at Figure B, you will see that the Jobs History container has a sub container called Critical Failures. I have selected a critical failure and you can see a summary of the failure beneath the Jobs list. You will also notice that there are three tabs at the bottom of the window. You can use these tabs to view more detailed information about the failure or to examine change tracking information.

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Figure B: You can use the Jobs workspace to view information about the failure.

This brings me to my next point. Although I don’t have a screen capture of the VM template creation job that failed, I did take a look at the problem at the time of the failure. The reason why the template creation job failed was because my VMM server did not have enough storage space.

My VMM server is running within a Hyper-V virtual machine and the VM’s virtual hard disk is 127 GB in size. On the surface that would seem to be plenty for a lab deployment that only includes a few ISO images and a handful of templates. However, the creation of library objects seems to consume space really quickly. Let me show you what I mean.

As I said before, my VMM server is running inside a Hyper-V virtual machine. This means that the VMM server isn’t actually hosting any VMs. The only things that exist on my VMM server are the Windows operating system, VMM, SQL, and the few objects that exist in the library. In fact, I have even deleted some of the ISO files just to free up some space. So with that in mind, check out the disk usage in Figure C.

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Figure C: Only 5 GB of space remains on the server.

So where did all of my space go? If you look at Figure D, you can see that it doesn’t take many multi-gigabyte files to consume the available space. In this particular case, the biggest culprit is a 40 GB VMDK file that is left over from when I converted a VMware virtual machine to Hyper-V. The lesson here is that it is a good idea to periodically review the contents of your VMM library because there may be old files that are still consuming lots of storage space.

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Figure D: My VMM server contains some really large files.

OK, so now that I have shown you what the problem was, let’s build a VM from a template. If you look back at the first figure, you will notice that I have created a Windows 10 CTP template. I will go ahead and use this template since it is readily available. The method used for creating a VM from a template works in much the same way regardless of which version of Windows is installed within the template VM. It is also worth noting that I have deleted that 40 GB VMDK file so that my server will have enough free space to perform the requested job.

To create a VM from a template, right click on the template and then select the Create Virtual Machine command from the shortcut menu, as shown in Figure E. This will cause Windows to launch the Create Virtual Machine Wizard.

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Figure E: Right click on the template and choose the Create Virtual Machine command from the shortcut menu.

The first thing that you will have to do is to enter a name and an optional description for the VM that you are creating. Once again, remember that the new VM’s computer name will not automatically match the name that you enter here. You will have to configure the computer name separately later on.

Click Next and you will be taken to the Configure Hardware screen, shown in Figure F. You can manually configure the hardware that is assigned to the new VM if you want, but it is usually more efficient to select one of your previously created hardware profiles. Keep in mind that hardware profiles are not OS specific. For instance, you will notice in the figure that I have a Windows 8.1 hardware profile. I only named the profile Windows 8.1 because it allocates hardware that is appropriate for a Windows 8.1 VM. I can just as easily use this profile for a Windows 10 VM.

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Figure F: Select a hardware profile or manually configure the VM’s hardware allocation.

Click Next and you will be taken to the Select Destination screen. This screen asks you to select a host group for the new VM. Make your selection and click Next.

Now you will be prompted to pick a host server on which to create the new VM. Make your selection, as shown in Figure G and then click Next.

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Figure G: Select a host server and click Next.

The following screen will ask you to specify a VM storage path. The storage path should be pre-populated so you can just click Next.

Now you will be prompted to select a virtual network adapter on the host server. Once again, there is a chance that the required information will already be filled in for you. If so, then just click Next.

At this point you will be taken to the wizard’s Add Properties page. Since the virtual machine is being generated from a template you won’t usually have to do anything on this screen unless you want to change one of the automatic actions. That being the case, go ahead and click Next and you will be taken to the Summary screen. Take a moment to verify that the summary information is correct and then click Create.

When the creation process completes, you should see the new virtual machine listed in the VMs and Services container as shown in Figure H.

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Figure H: The new VM has been created.

Conclusion

In this article series, I have shown you how to deploy System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 and how to use it to create and manage virtual machines. Virtual Machine Manager is not a required component for Hyper-V deployments, but it should be considered essential for any organization that has more than two or three virtualization hosts.

If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:

About The Author

Brien Posey is a freelance technology author and speaker with over two decades of IT experience. Prior to going freelance, Brien was a CIO for a national chain of hospitals and healthcare facilities. He has also served as a network engineer for the United States Department of Defense at Fort Knox. In addition, Brien has worked as a network administrator for some of the largest insurance companies in America. To date, Brien has received Microsoft’s MVP award numerous times in categories including Windows Server, IIS, Exchange Server, and File Systems / Storage. You can visit Brien’s Website at: www.brienposey.com.

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