IBM Flex System Manager VMControl
IBM® Flex System Manager VMControl is designed to simplify the management of workloads in your IT environment. Use IBM Flex System Manager VMControl Express® Edition, IBM Flex System Manager VMControl Standard Edition, and IBM Flex System Manager VMControl Enterprise Edition to manage virtual servers, virtual appliances, workloads, and system pools across multiple hardware platforms and virtualization environments from one location.
- Overview of IBM Flex System Manager VMControl
This section provides an overview of IBM Flex System Manager VMControl Express Edition, IBM Flex System Manager VMControl Standard Edition, IBM Flex System Manager VMControl Enterprise Edition, , including accessibility and license information. - Planning for IBM Flex System Manager VMControl
Before using IBM Flex System Manager VMControl, review the virtualization environments that VMControl supports and tasks supported for each virtualization environment. You can also find information about planning for each virtual environment and learn how you can prepare for creating and using system pools. - Activating IBM Flex System Manager VMControl and installing agents
VMControl is installed during the installation of IBM Flex System Manager. You do not need to download and install VMControl independently. However, you do need to activate VMControl. - Navigating and managing VMControl resources
You can use the VMControl summary page to view virtual resources and their status; you can also access common tasks. Additionally, VMControl provides several views for accessing and working with your resources. - Managing storage
With VMControl, you can configure, manage, and monitor some aspects of the storage resources in your environment. These storage resources might include fibre channel switches, storage subsystems, IBM BladeCenter storage, and storage system pools. VMControl allocates storage as needed when performing functions such as importing a virtual appliance package or capturing a virtual server. - Managing networks
With VMControl, you can create a virtual server and connect it to a manually configured network, or to the logical network automatically configured in a network system pool. The logical network is provided by IBM Flex System Manager Network Control. - Managing virtual servers
With IBM Flex System Manager VMControl, you can create, edit, delete, and relocate virtual servers from one host to another. In addition, you can group multiple virtual servers into a workload for aggregated monitoring. - Managing virtual appliances and workloads
A workload is a deployed virtual appliance that allows you to monitor and manage one or more virtual servers as a single entity. With IBM Flex System Manager VMControl Standard Edition, you can capture, import, and deploy virtual appliances. Workloads are created by deploying virtual appliances or by grouping existing virtual servers as a workload. The first step in managing virtual appliances and workloads is creating an image repository. - Managing server system pools
Server system pools enable you to group similar hosts. With IBM Flex System Manager VMControl, you can create a system pool of selected hosts, add and remove hosts from the system pool, enter and exit maintenance mode for the hosts, and permanently delete a system pool. If you have IBM Flex System Manager Network Control installed and licensed, you can also set up and manage network system pools (NSPs) to leverage automated network relocation and logical network provisioning. - Troubleshooting and support
Use this section to troubleshoot and resolve problems with VMControl. - Reference
This section provides reference information for IBM Flex System Manager VMControl, including commands and OVF specifications.
Parent topic: Managing virtualized resources