Self-Service Portal Components
The self-service portal consists of three components:
VMMSSP website: A Web-based component that provides a
user interface to the self-service portal. Through the VMMSSP website,
users can perform various tasks such as pooling infrastructure assets in
the self-service portal, extending virtual machine actions, creating
business unit and infrastructure requests, validating and approving
requests, and provisioning virtual machines (using the self service
virtual machine provisioning feature). Users can also use the website to
view information related to these tasks.
VMMSSP database: A SQL Server® database that stores
information about configured assets, information related to business
units and requests, and information about what has been provisioned to
various business units. The database also stores the XML that encodes
default and customized virtual machine actions and other information
related to the configuration of the self-service portal.
VMMSSP server: A Windows service that runs default
and customized virtual machine actions that the user requests through
the VMMSSP website. The service uses a Windows Communication Foundation
(WCF) TCP endpoint to listen for client communication, and hosts a
Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) run-time environment. Using WF, the
server component runs the sequences of tasks that comprise virtual
machine actions. You can optimize the performance of the server
component using parameters available in the self-service portal or in
configuration files; these parameters control or “throttle” the number
of operations that can run simultaneously
Test Lab Setup: Single-Machine Deployment Scenario
Figure 1 illustrates the single-machine deployment scenario. In this
scenario, you must install the self-service portal components on a
physical computer or virtual machine that also runs the System Center
Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Administrator Console and SQL Server 2008.
The VMM server component (including the VMM Library) and the virtual
machine hosts all run on separate computers.
Figure 1. Topology of the single-machine deployment scenario
Environmental Prerequisites
When you install a component of the self-service portal, the Setup
wizard checks the target computer for the components and settings
required for that component. However, the self-service portal components
have general requirements that this prerequisite check cannot detect.
These requirements are referred to as environmental prerequisites—they
apply to the whole environment in which the self-service portal
components function. To ensure that the self-service portal components
deploy smoothly and function as expected, prepare the environment before
you run the Setup wizard.
Important: Because environmental changes affect more
than the self-service portal components, exercise due caution when
making sweeping changes.
This section describes the environmental prerequisites for the
self-service portal, including Active Directory® Domain Services (AD DS)
requirements and security considerations.
Infrastructure
Before you install the self-service portal components, make sure that
the computers you intend to use for the self-service portal components
belong to an AD DS domain. You must also ensure that you have installed
Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 to manage virtual machines in your
environment. For information about configuring VMM to work with the
self-service portal, see “Configuring Hyper-V and VMM Resources to Work
with the Self-Service Portal” in the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2
VMMSSP Datacenter Administration Guide.
Security Considerations
Securing the environment for the self-service portal involves the following tasks:
• Understanding and planning the default and custom user roles that are defined in the self-service portal.
• Planning and preparing the service accounts.
• Understanding the ports and protocols required for establishing
communication channels between various self-service portal components.
• Hardening the Web server that will run the VMMSSP website component.
Source & more information: VMMSSP Deployment Guide