6

In my dev team now, there has risen a request to be able to create/run VM's on demand.

What they are asking for is a system/method/tool that they can select the following: CPU's, RAM, OS , Hard disk etc.

They want to create them and destroy them on the fly.

The option of me, managing a VMhost for them with these options seems crazy and time wasting.

How can I achive that?

By a script maybe?

  • We work with VM currently, but if other Virtualization host can provide the solution, it's fine

  • We have VMware Essentials license, with 3 servers attached.

Shane Madden
  • 112,982
  • 12
  • 174
  • 248
Saariko
  • 1,791
  • 13
  • 45
  • 73
  • 1
    "We work with VM currently" <--- VMware I'm assuming? If so, which products? – EEAA Jan 30 '13 at 14:43
  • VMware [vCloud Director](https://www.vmware.com/products/vcloud-director/overview.html) would allow you to do this. – EEAA Jan 30 '13 at 14:45
  • Outside of the VMware neighborhood, you're likely looking at Eucalyptus, Openstack, or something custom. – EEAA Jan 30 '13 at 14:49
  • Maybe its just me, but assuming you are the admin of this situation, this is your job and users have no business managing VMs. – DanBig Jan 30 '13 at 15:57
  • 1
    @DanBig YEA, it's just you. I manage the hosts - I dont need to manage the dozen of QA and testing machines my 25 devs need (that it self can be full time job) - Just like they got their own GIT/CC server - I manage the server - they manage the streams. – Saariko Jan 30 '13 at 18:23
  • You didn't mention size of dev team, etc., but since others went the full on solution, I should at least mention that VMware Workstation on each devops machine can do this just fine, especially for simple development and software testing on a budget. – TheCleaner Feb 05 '13 at 14:59

3 Answers3

3

While you can do this with the ridiculous VMware vCloud Director suite, this is also possible with very granular permissions on a regular VMware vSphere setup.

We'd need more detail on your environment... e.g. what your current VMware installation looks like, the licensing level and whether you have Active Directory...

It sounds like you're looking for a cloud management solution, regardless of what you have. I'd recommend looking at OnApp as an example of a structured cloud management option.

ewwhite
  • 194,921
  • 91
  • 434
  • 799
3

System Center Virtual Machine Manager can give you this type of capability. Assuming your in a Microsoft shop but like ewwhite said we'd need more information, although I believe it will support linux.

Overview of System Center 2012 - Virtual Machine Manager it appears the latest update got rid of the self service portal, and they recommend using the App Controller instead, but this should give you what you're looking for.

MDMoore313
  • 5,531
  • 6
  • 34
  • 73
0

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) enables a user to deploy not only VMs, but an entire application architecture, i.e. a set of VMs collectively delivers a LOB app. For instance, if you have a 3-tire web app (frontend, mid-tier, and backend) you can automate the deployment of all 3 tiers into a few mouse clicks with a service template (http://aka.ms/scvmm) which will orchestrate the deployment process (who to do what when and how to deploy, install, configure, and scale the app) based on what you define, and this is the case of deployment as a service.

In a mixed virtualization environment, you can add vCenter as a virtualization resource which then manages the VMware resources accordingly.

Regardless you are employing Microsoft private cloud as a solution platform or not, I encourage you to install and evaluate SCVMM 2012 sp1 (http://aka.ms/2012) on Windows Server 2012 (http://aka.ms/8) and use it as a learning tool and a 2nd opinion when evaluating cloud/virtualization solutions. The two (Windows Server 2012 and SCVMM 2012 SP1) have added very significant hybrid capabilities in their releases.

Yung Chou
  • 89
  • 1