During the installation of SCVMM, there is an option to specify the storage of the
distributed keys that are used for the encryption of data in the SCVMM database.
Normally, these keys are stored on the local SCVMM computer, but if you are
implementing a highly available SCVMM installation, the keys need to be stored
centrally. For SCVMM, this means storing in Active Directory. For details on creating
the necessary container in Active Directory for the distributed key management, refer
to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg697604.aspx.
The installation process for SCVMM 2016 is a simple, wizard-driven affair that will
guide you through all of the required configuration steps, so I don’t go into the details
here. Just remember to specify your domain account for the service.
SCVMM 2016 supports being installed on a failover cluster now, which means that the
SCVMM service becomes highly available and can be moved in planned and
unplanned scenarios using Failover Clustering technologies. An external SQL Server
should be used to host the SCVMM database, and the installation of SCVMM to a
highly available configuration is simple. Start the SCVMM 2016 installation to an
operating system instance that is part of a failover cluster, and the SCVMM
installation process will detect the presence of the Failover Clustering feature and ask
whether the SCVMM installation should be made highly available. If you answer yes,
you will be prompted for an additional IP address and a name to be used for the
cluster SCVMM service, and that is really the only change in the installation process.
You need to specify a domain account for running the VMM service, and Active
Directory will be used for storing the encryption keys. You also need to install SCVMM
on all of the other nodes in the failover cluster so that the SCVMM service can run on
all nodes.
If you are upgrading from SCVMM 2012 R2 to 2016, the process is similar; however, a
regular in-place upgrade is not supported. Instead, the sequence of activities is as
follows:
1 . Perform a backup of the SCVMM database and server.
2 . Uninstall SCVMM 2012 R2, and select the option to retain the database.
3 . On a clean Windows Server 2016 server install SCVMM 2016.
4 . When prompted, elect to use an existing database, and confirm that the database
will be upgraded.
5 . All configuration will be maintained, and you will need to update the SCVMM
agents on all hosts. If you had the ASR agent of other software installed, ensure
that this is also installed on the server.
6 . You may need to copy over library content if you have custom assets in the library
that was on the SCVMM host previously and you have installed SCVMM 2016 on a
fresh host.SCVMM Management Console