Using SCVMM Custom Properties

Q. What are System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 custom properties?

A: System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) contains 10 custom properties named Custom1 through Custom10. You can also create additional custom properties for the various types of SCVMM objects such as a virtual machine (VM), a virtual machine template, hosts, hostgroups, clouds, and more.

You might create a custom property to store information, such as a cost center, its primary application function, desired physical location, or a contact email address--anything you can think of. These properties can then be used for administrators and business users to more easily understand information about assets in SCVMM and for reporting.

However, the real power is realized when your custom properties are combined with custom placement rules that can utilize the custom properties to help control where VMs are placed.

For example, if you haven't fully embraced a private cloud where any VM can run on any host but instead each business unit group has their own set of hosts, you could create a Cost Center property for VMs and hosts, then create a custom placement rule that says the Cost Center of the VM must match that of the host for placement.

These rules are used both for initial placement and also as part of Dynamic Optimization, where VMs are rebalanced among all hosts. It's important to note when you create your custom placement rules that you have options if the rule "should" or "must" match or not match. "Should" means the placement will try and match but doesn't have to and if placement violates the rule then a warning is generated. If "Must" is used, then placement isn't possible if the rule is violated.

To create a custom propert, perform the following:

That's it! You are now using custom properties.