Interoperability Goodness at TechEd 2012

I know there was a flurry of news at the recent TechEd 2012 conference in Orlando, so I wanted to point you to a piece of Interoperability goodness that might have gone unnoticed in the mix: the release of the System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) OVF Export/Importtool.

I recently chatted with my colleague Monica Martin, who is involved in the DTMF work around OVF for MS Open Tech. She gave me a lot of insight into the tool, which uses the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)’s Open Virtualization Format (OVF 1.1) standard, enables Interoperability between System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and VMware vCenter and Citrix Xen Server.

The tool allows Microsoft’s System Center 2012 VMM users to import and export a virtual machine in an OVF 1.1 format from VMware’s vCenter and Citrix’s Xen Server.

The OVF Import/Exporttool is a set of cmdlets for use with VMM. Use of OVF promotes portability and interoperability of a virtual machine across Microsoft, VMware and Citrix hypervisors. We’ve gained valuable implementation experience with Citrix and VMware using OVF and successfully tested with vCenter and Xen Server.

Adding OVF and the OVF Import/Exporttool to the cache of advanced infrastructure, configuration and service management capabilities to SC 2012 is another milestone in Microsoft’s plans to deliver ongoing value to our customers and partners.

The Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an open standard for packaging and distribution of virtual appliances to run in virtual machines developed in the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), Inc. Microsoft and other industry partners are focused on the development of OVF. Microsoft has been involved in OVF development from the outset.

OVF 1.1 is an international standard important to customers and partners, who are looking for strategies to effectively enable and speed their on-ramp of virtualization technologies in an interoperable way.

This is another example of how Microsoft is committed to interoperability and openness in the products and services we provide, including our multi-hypervisor and standard-based storage management features in SC 2012.

We have now taken this even further with the release of the System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) OVF Export/Import tool, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. More information can be found on TechNet.

For more information about this tool and other System Center products and solutions, please visit the System Center website.