Q: Why has the web portal for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager been removed in Service Pack 1?

A: The original release of System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) included a web portal for virtual machine (VM) creation and management. It was essentially the same web portal that was supplied as part of SCVMM 2008 R2 and was only included for backwards compatibility and not recommended to be used.

The preferred web portal was to use System Center App Controller 2012, which offers a rich, Silverlight-based web interface that can utilize all the features of SCVMM 2012.

For System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager SP1, the SCVMM web portal has been removed, as organizations should use App Controller as the web portal of choice. To learn more about SCVMM, take a look at my article "Enabling the Private Cloud with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012."

If you've not yet upgraded to SP1, take a look at my FAQ "Q: How do I upgrade System Center Virtual Machine Manager and App Controller 2012 to SP1?"