Feature Summary:

• Fabric Management
  • Setup Upgrade
    • *New in RC -Upgrade- Setup will support the following upgrade paths:
      • VMM 2008 R2 SP1 --SC VMM 2012 RC -- SC VMM 2012 RTM
      • SC VMM 2012 RC -- SC VMM 2012 RTM
  • Hyper-V and Cluster Lifecycle Management – Deploy Hyper-V to bare metal server, create Hyper-V clusters, orchestrate patching of a Hyper-V Cluster
    • *New in RC:
      • ISO or CD-based OSD for environments with DHCP without WDS
      • OSD will now convert dynamic to fixed type of VHD destination
      • All network adapters on host can be configured during provisioning
    • *New in RC:
      • Ability to bypass cluster validation during cluster creation
      • Run cluster validation reports on-demand
      • New Cluster status tab to view an aggregated status and a cluster validation report
      • Ability to see current CSV owner in the properties of the cluster
  • Third Party Virtualization Platforms - Add and Manage Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX Hosts and Clusters
  • Network Management – Manage IP Address Pools, MAC Address Pools and Load Balancers
    • *New in RC:
      • Simplification of the logical networks in the Fabric workspace
      • Ability to see IP addresses that are in use from a IP pool
      • Added support for Microsoft Network Load Balancer
      • Gateway and DNS are no longer mandatory fields for logical networks
      • Load balancer can now support affinity to logical networks
  • Storage Management – Classify Storage, Manage Storage Pools and LUNs
    • *New in RC
      • Create persistent sessions to iSCSI array and logon initiator to array
      • Better scalability of storage operations - LUN create, snapshot, clone, masking, and unmasking
      • Option to create storage groups per cluster (BETA only supported creation of storage group per node in a cluster)
      • Enablement of MPIO feature when provisioning a new Hyper-V server
      • Automatic MPIO device claim
      • Support for arrays that implement OnePortPerView
  • Update Management- Keep your VMM Fabric Servers (VMM roles, hosts, and clusters) up-to-date with patches.
    • *New in RC:
      • Share a WSUS root server between System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2/ System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta
      • Hyper-V Cluster Orchestration- Nodes put into VMM Maintenance Mode can be set to trigger Maintenance Mode in Operations Manager.
  • Resource Optimization
    • Dynamic Optimization – proactively balance the load of VMs across a cluster
    • Power Optimization – schedule power savings to use the right number of hosts to run your workloads – power the rest off until they are needed.
      • *New in RC:
        • Set Operations Manager Mode for powered down hosts
    • PRO – integrate with System Center Operations Manager to respond to application-level performance monitors.
      • *New in RC:
        • Support added for System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta
        • VMM will ship two sample PRO Packs: Cluster scale out and Service scale out MPs
• Cloud Management
  • Abstract server, network and storage resources into private clouds
  • Delegate access to private clouds with control of capacity, capabilities and user quotas
  • Enable self-service usage for application administrator to author, deploy, manage and decommission applications in the private cloud
• Service Lifecycle Management
  • Define service templates to create sets of connected virtual machines, OS images and application packages
    • *New in RC:
      • Service Designer and Specialization UI enhancements
      • Added ability to use Service Template Patterns
  • Compose operating system images and applications during service deployment
    • *New in RC:
      • IP-based provisioning
      • New application instance view
  • Scale out the number of virtual machines in a service
  • Service performance and health monitoring integrated with System Center Operations Manager
  • Decouple OS image and application updates through image-based servicing
    • *New in RC:
      • Streamlined ability to enable OS VHD updates to a Service Template
      • Publish updated Service Templates in order to update Service Instances
  • Leverage powerful application virtualization technologies such as Server App-V