Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure Stack HCI

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Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure Stack HCI are virtualization technologies that are supported by License Metric Tool.

Purpose

To retrieve information about the capacity and virtualization structure of virtual machines, define Hyper-V or Azure Stack HCI hypervisors as VM managers in License Metric Tool. The hypervisors can expose the required data via the WS-MAN protocol.

Diagram showing the communication between the server and hypervisors.
In case of clusters, two approaches are possible:
Important: In case of Azure Stack HCI, License Metric Tool does not support a direct connection to Azure Portal to retrieve data. It also does not support a connection by using the cluster name of Azure Stack HCI.
  1. Define a connection to each Hyper-V or Azure Stack HCI server that is a part of a cluster. If any server is missing, virtual machines that exist on that server have the Incomplete virtualization status in License Metric Tool.
  2. If all members of the cluster have at least one common set of credentials that have sufficient privileges to access the WS-Management interface (for example, the domain user), define a connection to one computer system from the cluster. Then, select the option to share credentials. The VM Manager Tool uses the credentials to connect to the Hyper-V or Azure Stack HCI that you defined. Then, it extracts addresses of the remaining cluster members and connects to them by using the same credentials.
Diagram showing the communication between the server and Hyper-V clusters.

Communication interface

You can choose to use PowerShell or WinRM as the communication interface for Hyper-V or Azure Stack HCI. For both communication interfaces, provide the user name in one of the following formats:
  • user_name@domain, for example: test@cluster.com
  • user_name\domain, for example: test\cluster.com
9.2.16 Starting from application update 9.2.16, you can also provide the administrator user name in one of the following formats:
  • domain@user_name, for example: cluster.com@test
  • domain\user_name, for example: cluster.com\test
Note: Ensure that you upgrade the VM Manager Tool to version 9.2.16, not only the License Metric Tool server.
If the target server is not in a domain, specify its host name as the domain. For example:
  • test\hostname or test@hostname
  • 9.2.16 hostname\test or hostname@test
PowerShell
PowerShell is a framework for managing the automation and configuration of tasks by means of the DCE-RPC protocol. In order for License Metric Tool to use PowerShell for retrieving information from VM managers, the VM Manager Tool must be installed on a Windows computer. The computer must also meet the following requirements:
  • Microsoft RPC communication with Microsoft Hyper-V must be allowed by Windows firewall
  • ICMP Echo Reply must be allowed by Windows firewall
  • Microsoft PowerShell 2.0 or higher must be installed
  • Microsoft.NET Framework 3.5 or higher must be installed
    Important: If you are using .NET Framework 4.0 or higher, use PowerShell version 3.0 or higher.

For more information about types of the VM Manager Tool deployment, see: VM Manager Tool deployment types and flow of data.

WinRM
Windows Remote Management (WinRM) is the Microsoft implementation of the WS-Management protocol. It uses Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) over HTTP or HTTPS protocols. In order for License Metric Tool to use WinRM for retrieving information from VM managers:
  • You must configure Windows Remote Management Service (WinRM) for all members of the Microsoft Hyper-V or Azure Stack HCI cluster. For more information, see: Configuring WinRM on Hyper-V and Azure Stack HCI hosts.
  • The default URL that is to be used is <protocol>://{manager-address}:<port>/wsman, where:
    • <protocol> is either http or https
    • <port> is the port of the listener that was created for the WinRM service. The default value for the HTTP listeners is 5985 and for HTTPS listeners is 5986 (WinRM 2.0). To verify all the defined WinRM listeners, use the winrm enumerate winrm/config/listener command.

Supported versions

For information about supported versions, go to IBM® License Metric Tool 9.2 - Supported Operating Systems and click Supported Hypervisor.