So far, we’ve introduced Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode (vMode) and discussed the architectural changes in Windows Admin Center necessary to implement both virtualization and administration modes. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to get started with vMode.

Check out the video from Ignite and the announcement blog post if you missed the news!

Breaking Barriers to Better Beginnings

Whether you have tens of virtual machines or tens of thousands of virtual machines, your management infrastructure is critical. It’s paramount to get it up and running as fast as possible so you can get on with running your business. You don’t want to spend hours or days mucking around with prerequisite installations or submitting requests for firewall changes and group policy updates. You want to get down to business.

We know that getting started is sometimes the hardest part. Challenges with management infrastructure tend to compound quickly, especially with larger scale deployments. Manual configuration steps, environment-specific dependencies, and unclear upgrade paths can turn what should be a straightforward setup into a brittle, time consuming process that’s hard to repeat reliably across environments.

When it comes to vMode, we designed the getting started experience to be frictionless, familiar, and fast.

Frictionless: Minimal prerequisites

Modern virtualization management platforms often require:

• User rights configuration and service account setup
• Several prerequisite applications that require frequent updates
• Firewall rule changes

And that’s before you can really get started—adding time and complexity to even the simplest deployments. Virtualization Mode is designed to reduce this burden by minimizing prerequisites and streamlining setup so you can get up and running without coordinating complex dependencies across your environment.

All you need to do to get started with vMode is to install Visual C++ Redistributable, which you can do with one command:

winget install "Microsoft.VCRedist.2015+.x64" --silent

We’re not kidding, that’s it!

With vMode, getting started is a frictionless experience. You spend less time preparing your environment and more time managing it.

Familiar: Installer evolution

Those of you familiar with the installation of Administration Mode (aMode) will recognize the installer for vMode. It looks exactly like the aMode installer, but with one additional screen.                                                                                                                               

Note: Right now, these two installers are separate, but when it comes time for the release to general availability, you will be given one installer with another additional screen—one that allows you to select the mode you wish to install.

For a stateful implementation like vMode, we install a lightweight PostgreSQL database which requires a username and password. We recommend saving this information somewhere secure and accessible after installation, in case you need these credentials for restoring your vMode instance in the future.

vMode builds on an installer experience you already know, letting you move forward with confidence.

Fast: Watch for yourself!

It’s easy to take my word on the simplicity of the experience, but if you’re not convinced, we demoed the installation experience at Ignite in about three minutes!

Setup with vMode takes just a few minutes, so you spend less time waiting and more time managing your virtualization infrastructure.

Picking the Perfect Place

Now that you understand how easy it is, let’s talk about how to start an implementation. Think of Virtualization Mode as your always on command center—it deserves a home that’s built for the job.

First, find or create a machine with at least 4CPUs (physical or virtual), at least 8GB of RAM, and 10GB of free disk space. Because we need want the gateway online and available to communicate with the host agents, and we’re installing a PostgreSQL database, you’ll want this system to be running domain-joined Windows Server 2025 Standard or Datacenter edition with DNS resolution using Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). This is not a job for your laptop.

Note: It’s not a job for clustered machines yet, either. While installing vMode on a cluster today is not supported, a new high availability implementation for Windows Admin Center exclusively available in vMode is on the roadmap for general availability.

This machine could be a physical or a virtual machine. If it’s a virtual machine, it’s totally fine to have vMode running while the host is also being managed by vMode. vMode uses Network ATC which maintains a copy of the network configuration in the registry, so you never have to worry about the system losing connection with the gateway.

Carve out a small, but proper place for vMode to live, and it’ll quietly do its job in the background while you focus on managing your environment.

Staying Simple, Staying Supported

You did it! You’ve got vMode up and running. But after the install is behind you, the real question is how to keep it that way.

Keeping your management tooling up to date is critical: the management plane coordinates changes across hosts and platform services, and updates deliver reliability fixes and security patches that reduce operational risk over time.

Extensions

Extensions are the lifeblood of Windows Admin Center. After you select an object to manage in vMode, all further operations are enabled through a flexible extension framework. Each tab in the tools pane that loads to the right of the object hierarchy when you select an object, like the Virtual Machines tool when you select a host, is an extension.

You control which extensions are installed via the extension manager through toggleable automatic updates. With automatic updates turned on, every time you open vMode it checks for new extensions and updates those that have new versions available. When automatic updates are off, navigate to the extension manager to manually install any extension you need with just a few clicks. In either case, you're in control of managing your updates in the way that's best for your environment. 

Note: Running in a partially or fully disconnected environment? That’s okay, we also have a way to update extensions for offline scenarios.

Gateway and Database

The gateway and database form the core Windows Admin Center platform. These components are at the heart of everything you do in Windows Admin Center. For example, the object hierarchy is stored in the database and displayed by the gateway.

When it comes to updating the core platform, automatic platform updates are also on the roadmap, making it even easier to stay up-to-date with the latest new features in vMode.

Updating your vMode gateway will automatically trigger an update for the vMode agents configured on all objects managed through vMode. Soon, we’ll also provide a dashboard for you to see the status of all your agents and fix issues, including issues with agent updates.

With vMode, staying current feels less like maintenance work and more like a PaaS service or appliance that takes care of itself.

Flit Forward Faster

In minutes, you can have an enterprise scale management platform for your virtualization infrastructure up and running. With one prerequisite installation, it really couldn't get much simpler to get started and take advantage of all vMode’s benefits, like the PostgreSQL database, self-managed update lifecycle, automatic agent updates, and more.

Keep tuning in to hear more about Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode and keep an eye out for an update preview release with even more new features!

Thanks for reading,

Davanna “Amazingly Alliterative” White