Performing Post-Upgrade Tasks in VMM

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 - Virtual Machine Manager

After you have upgraded to System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager, you may need to make additional configuration changes to your VMM environment.

In some upgrade scenarios, you will need to reassociate virtual machine hosts and VMM library servers with the VMM management server after upgrading to System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager. For example, you will need to reassociate hosts and library servers if you did not perform an in-place upgrade to System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager from VMM 2008 R2 SP1. To reassociate a host or library server, see How to Reassociate a Host or Library Server.

After upgrading to System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager, you will need to update the VMM agent on your Hyper-V hosts and VMM library servers.

You do not have to immediately update the VMM agents on Hyper-V hosts and library servers. Older versions of the VMM agent are supported by System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager, but the older versions of the VMM agent do not provide all of the functionality that the VMM agent that comes with System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager does. To take advantage of all the functionality of System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager, update your VMM agents on your Hyper-V hosts and library servers. To update the VMM agent, see How to Update the VMM Agent.

The following older versions of the VMM agent are supported by System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager:

• VMM 2008 R2 (2.0.4271.0)

• VMM 2008 R2 QFE3 (2.0.4273.0)

• VMM 2008 R2 QFE4 (2.0.4275.0)

• VMM 2008 R2 SP1 (2.0.4521.0)

Virtual machine template settings that specify which virtual hard drive (VHD) file contains the operating system are not preserved during the upgrade process. After upgrading to System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager, for all virtual machine templates that were upgraded from VMM 2008 R2 SP1, you will need to update the virtual machine template to specify which VHD file contains the operating system.

If you had a virtual machine template in VMM 2008 R2 SP1 that used a hardware profile that specified a VLAN ID, the VLAN ID is removed during the upgrade to System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager. In System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager, when you deploy a virtual machine from a template, the VLAN ID is automatically determined based on the logical network specified. Ensure that your logical networks in System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager are configured to use the correct VLAN IDs and that you have specified the correct logical network in your hardware profile. For more information about logical networks in System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager, see Configuring Networking in VMM.

After upgrading to System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager, any driver packages that were added to the VMM library in VMM 2008 R2 SP1 must be removed and added again to be correctly discovered. For information about adding driver packages to the VMM library, see How to Add Driver Files to the VMM Library.

After upgrading to a highly available VMM management server, we recommended that you relocate your VMM library to a highly available file server. For more information about VMM libraries in System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager, see Configuring the VMM Library.

After you have created a new VMM library, you will want to move the resources from the previous VMM library to the new VMM library. Here is the recommended method for moving various types of library resources:

• To move file-based resources, such as ISO images, scripts, and VHDs, see How to Import and Export Physical Resources To and From the VMM Library.

• To move virtual machine templates, see Exporting and Importing Service Templates in VMM.

• To preserve the custom fields and properties of saved virtual machines in the previous VMM library, deploy the saved virtual machines to a host and then save the virtual machines to the new VMM library.