A virtual machine host is a physical computer that hosts one or more virtual machines. Before creating virtual machines by using VMM, you need to add one or more hosts to VMM. After the hosts are added to VMM, you can manage the hosts and the virtual machines that are on the hosts. You can use host groups to adjust the amount of resources reserved for the host operating system on different hosts and to make hosts available for users through virtual machine Self-Service. You can also use host groups to enable automatic placement of virtual machines on the best host in a group of hosts. A host group is a scope for delegation, and you can define what host groups a user role can administrate.
You can manage the following hosts by using VMM:
- Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. Virtual Server 2005 R2 is a host server virtualization technology. It is engineered for the Windows Server 2003 platform and runs most x86-based operating systems in a guest environment.
- Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Hyper-V is a hypervisor-based virtualization platform that Microsoft has included with Windows Server 2008. Hyper-V provides support for 32-bit and 64-bit guest virtual machines.
- VMware ESX. VMM interacts with VI3 to enable the management of VMware virtual machines running on ESX. You can use VMware VC for a VMware server to manage VMware hosts.