The Role of System Center with Hyper-V
The capabilities of the Hyper-V features that I described previously in this chapter are
impressive, but it’s important to realize that this is just for virtualization. Yes, Hyper-V
is powerful and can enable almost any required scenario, but virtualization is the
foundation and not the complete solution.
A production environment of any kind needs management services, and virtualization
adds requirements to those management capabilities. For Windows Server and Hyper-
V, the management solution is System Center. While it is possible to deploy Hyper-V
without System Center in a small, limited capacity, it is required for any enterprise
deployment. System Center comprises various components, and each is separately
deployed and offers its own discrete capabilities. Moreover, while deployment of the
entire System Center product offers numerous benefits, some organizations will
deploy only certain components. For organizations wanting to deploy a true cloud with
consistent capabilities with Azure, they can deploy Microsoft Azure Stack, which takes
the Azure code and brings it on-premises running on top of Hyper-V.
Azure Stack is delivered in a prescriptive way with specific requirements and
configurations and delivered at a rapid pace. System Center enables more flexible
configurations, as you can manage all aspects of the environment, but with that comes
more complexity. System Center will continue to run in a long-term servicing model
with releases every couple of years. Chapter 9, “Implementing the Private Cloud,
SCVMM, and Microsoft Azure Stack,” details how System Center and Microsoft Azure
Stack are leveraged. I briefly introduce all the components of System Center here
because they will be discussed and used in the chapters preceding Chapter 9. Figure
1.13 shows the full System Center product.
Figure 1.13 Components of System Center