Jaron Burbidge's Blog

Exchange Server 2013 on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V performance and scalability report

Jaron Burbidge — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 07:24:00 GMT

ESG Labs have recently completed their performance and scalability report on Exchange Server 2013 running on Windows Server 2012

Summary of the testing is:

ESG Lab performed hands-on testing of a virtualized tier-1 Exchange 2013 application workload. The workload used was designed to emulate thousands of Exchange users performing typical activities including sending and receiving e-mails, making calendar entries, updating contacts, and managing to-do lists. The storage activity of up to 48,000 typical Exchange users was tested using a single physical server hosting
up to twelve Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V virtual machines.

Key findings included:

Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V supported the needs of 48,000 emulated Exchange mailboxes.
Performance scaled linearly from two to 12 virtual machines on a single server, as sustained IOPS reached a maximum of 5,894—over 60% more than the targeted IOPS rate of 3,600.
Response times remained manageably low reaching a maximum of 15.31 milliseconds. This was well under the Microsoft maximum threshold guideline of 20 milliseconds for Exchange database reads.
The I/O efficiency improvements in Exchange 2013 reduce the cost of delivering e-mail support in mixed virtual server environments. ESG Lab supported up to 48,000 mailboxes on 12 virtualized Exchange servers on a single Dell M620 blade server

ESG Lab confirmed that the improved IOPS performance efficiency of Exchange 2013 and the manageably low IOPS overhead of Microsoft Server 2012 with Hyper-V can be used to consolidate tier-1 e-mail application workloads with confidence. A single server hosting a virtualized Exchange infrastructure deployed within twelve Hyper-V virtual machines supported the I/O requirements of up to 48,000 simulated Exchange users with excellent response times.

This is great validation of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-v.

Windows Azure IT Camp's coming your way!

Jaron Burbidge — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 07:54:22 GMT

Wondering what this Public Cloud is all about?

Heard of this thing called Windows Azure, but not really sure what it is and how you can take advantage of its services?

Then I have the answer for you .. Windows Azure IT Camp

Join us on March 26 in Auckland or April 8 in Christchurch for a full day on all things Azure, specifically our Infrastructure as a Service offerings such as

Virtual Machines
Virtual Networks
Cloud Storage

So join local Microsoft experts as they introduce you to the Microsoft cloud platform, dive deep into Windows Azure Virtual Machines, and help walk you through hands-on demonstrations of the power of IaaS on the Windows Azure platform

We will also have a special segment on Cloud Integrated Storage, a new solution from Microsoft to help you cost effectively manage your Tier 2 storage growth pains by leveraging the low cost of Azure storage.

To register, click one of the links below:

Auckland - March 26, 2013

Christchurch - April 8, 2013

I look forward to seeing you there.

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-v Final Scalability Figures

Jaron Burbidge — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:23:18 GMT

Throughout the development of Windows Server 2012, we have regularly pushed the scale boundaries as test resources and engineering schedule allowed For example, in pushing Hyper-v scale to support up to 64 virtual processors per VM, it isn't just replacing some static variables and retesting.

There is serious engineering prowees that is brought to bear to ensure uniform and consistent scaling across the board such as:

Virtual NUMA
SR-IOV & Networking
Live Migration
Storage Optimisations (1 million IOPs from a single VM :) )

Scalability means systematically breaking through one scalability barrier only to find the next one, addressing that to ultimately achieve system balance. To that end, Windows Server 2012 is redefining performance and scale and the reason for its success has been the tremendous work cross-team to identifiy the mitigate theses issues across the platform.

Because the Windows Server 2012 scale limits have continuously grown throughout development, I wanted to let you know that Windows Server 2012 RTM will now support up to

8,000 Virtual Machines in a Cluster!

Yes that's right, 8,000 VM's in a cluster. To put that in perspective in terms of numbers for VMs per server in a cluster that translates to:

8 nodes in a cluster - 1,000 VMs per server
16 nodes in a cluster - 500 VMs per server
32 nodes in a cluster - 250 VMs per server
64 nodes in a cluster - 125 VMs per server

As you can see, you could do an 8 node cluster with 1,000 VMs per server, but failing over 1,000 VMs per server will logically take some time and be dependant on a multitude of factors most of them storage related. Thus, the ability to support up to 64 nodes (twice as many as VMware) to disperse the load is significant.

Awesome!

Microsoft moves further into the cloud

Jaron Burbidge — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:10:00 GMT

While the other guys have been focused on licensing shenanigans, (three licensing changes in a year...), we have been hard at work delivering the broadest and deepest Windows Server release ever for customers of all sizes full of rich innovation.

Today we launch Windows Server 2012, a generational leap for servers and the best platform for the cloud. Whether you're a small company setting up your first sever or running the largest datacenters at cloud scale, Windows Server 2012 delivers the best server experience.

A survey of 70 early adopter customers from around the world revealed that they expect, on average:

a 52% reduction in downtime
a 41% reduction in workload deployment time, and
15 hours of productivity time saved per year, per employee

91% of the companies surveyed expect a reduction in server administration labour and 88% expect a reduction in network administration labour, all delivered by adopting Windows Server 2012.

Finally you can read President of Microsoft Server & Tools Business, Satya Nadell's blog post here

If you would like to discuss Windows Server 2012 further, please email me jaronb@microsoft.com

Network Virtualisation and Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Jaron Burbidge — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:35:00 GMT

With Windows Server 2012, System Center 2012 SP1, and our hardware and software partners, we have a complete end-to-end SDN solution that provides rich manageability, scalability, and flexibility for these cloud networks. Our solution works on existing networks, so customers can realize the benefits of SDN today. At the same time, our approach allows partners to enlighten their network software and network equipment to participate in, support, and augment the multi-tenant data center brought about by Hyper-V Network Virtualization. Our open approach, focus on standards, and our close partnerships across the industry make our solution particularly unique and compelling for customers.

In many ways, VMware’s acquisition of Nicira is a late acknowledgement of the importance of SDN as a critical enabler for the cloud. However, I think our approach is substantially more mature, delivers end-to-end capability, and provides an open platform for partners to innovate. Most important, our implementation is available broadly for customers to begin deploying today.

Our solution is built on a standards based tunneling technology called Network Virtualization General Router Encapsulation (NVGRE) built on the IETF standard GRE protocol. We are building an entire eco-system around Hyper-V Network Virtualization with

Silicon partners like Intel, Emulex and Broadcom building specialized network cards to support NVGRE traffic.
Switch extension partners like inMon and 5NINE building extensions
F5 Networks, IvoNetworks and nAppliance building devices for cross-premise connectivity

What's new with Windows Azure

Jaron Burbidge — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:43:04 GMT

We recently announced a raft of new capabilities to be delivered with Windows Azure. These new capabilities combine infrastructure and platform services such as:

Virtual Machines

Infrastructure on your terms. Easily deploy and run Windows Server and Linux virtual machines. Migrate applications and infrastructure without changing existing code. Learn more

Web Sites

Start for free and scale up as your traffic grows. Build with ASP.NET, PHP or Node.js and deploy in seconds with FTP, Git or TFS. Learn more

Cloud Services

Enterprise grade cloud platform. Create highly available, infinitely scalable applications and services using a rich Platform as a Service (PaaS) environment. Support multi-tier scenarios, automated deployments and elastic scale. Learn more

Big Data

Get actionable insights from your data. Take advantage of a fully compatible enterprise-ready Hadoop service. This PaaS offering provides easy management and integrated with Active Directory and System Center. Learn more

Media

Ingest, Encode, Protect, Stream, Create, Manage and Distribute media in the cloud. This PaaS offering provides everything from encoding to content protection or streaming and analytics support. Learn more

So what can you do with Windows Azure? Check out this video or if you are based in New Zealand please drop me an email with any questions at jaronb@microsoft.com

TechDays Windows Server 2012: NEW DATES

Jaron Burbidge — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 08:18:13 GMT

Our first two Auckland sessions became fully booked quickly, so we have added two new sessions! Come for lecture-style training, then stay for a few drinks and a networking opportunity.

Windows Server 2012 events are coming to over 20 countries - including New Zealand! What's hot and new in Windows Server 2012? Microsoft brings you all you need to know about Windows Server 2012. Join the industry experts at TechDays Windows Server and keep up to date and ahead of the pack!

A Microsoft TechDays Windows Server 2012 event will show you how to build your Private Cloud, offer Private Cloud services or securely connect to public cloud services. It will show you how to increase your efficiency, availability and manageability. It will show you how to leverage an open application and web platform for the datacentre and the cloud. It will show you how to provide secure access to your personalised work environment from anywhere.

Reserve your seat using the registration links below, to make sure you don't miss out!

Auckland : July 18

Auckland : July 19

Windows Server 2012 Licensing. What's changed and what's new.

Jaron Burbidge — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 08:04:00 GMT

On Friday Microsoft announced the new licencing model for Windows Server 2012. The changes bring a lot of clarity and simplicity to the licencing model for Windows Server, and moving from how we do that today this is bound to make a lot of people very happy.

Windows Server Editions Today

Here is now Windows Server is licensed today:

* Pricing is OpenNL in USD

As you can see this model provides flexibility by offering a variety of editions. There are two editions depending on your virtualisation needs and each edition has very different virtualisation rights, features and licencing model.

Announcing Windows Server 2012

Today we are continuing to offer flexibility to address the virtualisation needs of our customers, but have really simplified the model to provide customers with all the features they need no matter what their virtualisation needs and with a licensing model that is consistent across editions, making it easier to manage and purchase licenses

Downloadable Virtual Machines for System Center 2012 SP1 CTP2 Evaluation Now Available!

Jaron Burbidge — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 04:08:40 GMT

The following Virtual Machines are now available for System Center 2012 SP1 CTP2 evaluation:

App Controller : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30163

Operations Manager : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30164

Orchestrator : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30162

Service Manager : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30165

Virtual Machine Manager : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30166

1million IOPS from a Single VM!

Jaron Burbidge — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 07:59:26 GMT

A picture really does say a thousand words.

At TechEd Europe last week, we showcased Windows Server 2012 Hyper-v delivering over 1 million IOPS from a single virtual machine!

Windows Server 8 : What's it all about?

Jaron Burbidge — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 22:31:39 GMT

Overview

When it comes to building a private cloud, offering cloud services, or securely connecting to clouds, organizations want a consistent, integrated approach that helps them solve fundamental business and IT challenges. They also want to take advantage of new applications and services that can be deployed on-premises and in public cloud environments. With the next release of Windows Server codenamed "Windows Server 8" you can cloud optimize your IT infrastructure and get the best possible solution to meet these unique needs.

Windows Server 8 brings the experience from building and operating public clouds to delivering the most dynamic, available, and cost-effective server platform for the private cloud. It offers businesses and hosting providers a scalable, dynamic, and multitenant-aware cloud infrastructure that securely connects across premises and allows IT to respond to business needs faster and more efficiently.

Benefits

It takes you beyond virtualisation

Windows Server 8 offers a dynamic, multitenant infrastructure that goes beyond virtualisation technology to help deliver a complete platform for building a private cloud. Going beyond virtualisation lets you scale and secure workloads, cost effectively build the cloud, and securely connect to cloud services. Windows Server 8 will help you provide:

A complete virtualisation platform that delivers a fully isolated, multitenant environment with tools that can guarantee service-level agreements, enable chargebacks through usage-based billing, and support self-service delivery.
Increased scalability and performance through a high-density, highly scalable environment that can be modified to perform at the optimum level based on your needs.
Connectivity to cloud services using a common identity and management framework for secure and reliable cross-premises connectivity.

It delivers the power of many servers, with the simplicity of one

Windows Server 8 offers you excellent economics by integrating a highly available and easy-to-manage multiserver platform. Windows Server 8 helps IT professionals cloud-enable their infrastructure while satisfying business needs faster and more efficiently by providing a highly available, easy-to-manage multiserver platform with the following benefits:

Continuous availability: New and improved features offer cost-effective, high IT service uptime. They are designed to endure failures without disrupting services to users.
Management efficiency: Windows Server 8 helps automate an even broader set of management tasks and simplifies deployment and virtualization of major workloads, which provides a path to full lights-out automation.
Cost efficiency: Windows Server 8 leverages commodity storage, networking, and server infrastructure, as well as offering increased power efficiency for superior acquisition and operating economics.

It opens the door to every app on any cloud

Windows Server 8 is the broadest, most scalable and elastic web and application platform, giving you the flexibility to build and deploy applications on-premises, in the cloud, and in a hybrid environment, using a consistent, open set of tools and frameworks. Windows Server 8 will help you deliver:

Flexibility to build on-premises and in the cloud: Developers can use the same languages and tools to build on-premises and cloud applications, allowing them to build applications that use distributed and temporally decoupled components.
An open web platform: Windows Server 8 combined with Internet Information Services (IIS) offers a solid platform for both open-source web stacks and ASP.NET, opening up a wide range of choices for application development.
A scalable and elastic web platform: Hosting providers can use new features in Windows Server 8 to increase density, simplify management, and achieve higher scalability in a shared web-hosting environment.

It enables the modern workstyle

Windows Server 8 empowers IT to provide users with flexible access to data and applications, anywhere on any device, while simplifying management and maintaining security, control, and compliance. Windows Server 8 will help you offer:

Access anywhere on any device: Seamless, always-on access to virtualized work environments from anywhere, including branch locations and public connectivity services.
A full Windows experience anywhere: By enabling a personalised and rich user experience from any device while adapting to different network conditions quickly and responsively.
Enhanced data security and compliance: Central audit and access policies enable granular access to data and corporate resources based on strong identity, data classification, and simplified administration for remote access.

Ask for Microsoft Hyper-V at your next renewal opportunity

Jaron Burbidge — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:50:21 GMT

Dear Reader,

You may have been approached to sign long-term license agreements for your virtualization projects. But with the arrival of cloud computing, signing up for a long-term virtualization commitment may lock you into a vendor that cannot provide you with the breadth of technology, flexibility or scale that you’ll need to build a complete cloud computing environment.

Microsoft believes cloud computing, which lets you store information and programs in datacentres and access them from almost anywhere with the same ease as accessing a website, represents the biggest opportunity in decades for organizations to be more agile and cost-effective. Information Technology is evolving into a service accessible from almost anywhere, anytime, and any device. Virtualization clearly played a role in enabling this move toward IT services by simplifying the deployment and management of desktops and datacentres, which is why we made virtualization part of Windows Server. However, virtualization represents only a stepping stone toward cloud computing.

Imagine never having to set up a server, update an operating system or build a database system. That is the promise of cloud computing: the ability to access core services quickly and roll out legacy software and new applications at Internet scale without having to deal with today’s deployment logistics, which exist even with a virtualized datacentre. In other words, if you liked the efficiencies and cost savings of virtualization, you’ll love the cloud.

At Microsoft, we already offer many of the brands you know, use and trust today as cloud computing services, including Microsoft Office, Exchange, SharePoint and SQL. In addition, our cloud computing platform, called Windows Azure, lets organizations migrate legacy applications and roll out new programs written in .NET, Java, Ruby-on-Rails®, PHP and Eclipse across multiple datacentres so they are accessible at scale from almost anywhere.

If you’re evaluating a new licensing agreement with a virtualisation provider, talk to us first.

You have nothing to lose and plenty to gain. Not only does Microsoft offer its virtualization and management solutions at low cost and high value for customers, a recent Microsoft study of 150 large companies showed those running Microsoft virtualization spent 24% less on IT labour on an ongoing basis. Most importantly, as you build out the next generation of your IT environment, we can provide you with scalable worldwide public cloud computing services which other virtualisation providers do not offer.

Learn how Microsoft can help your business with desktop, datacentre and cloud computing. Call me on 09 362 5694 or learn more at www.microsoft.co.nz/virtualisation

We appreciate your business.

Jaron Burbidge
Business Development Manager - Private Cloud
Microsoft New Zealand Limited

The Cloud Computing Opportunity for IT

Jaron Burbidge — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:37:39 GMT

Cloud computing will change the traditional role of IT and cement IT’s leadership role in business, making IT the most flexible and manageable part of business costs. “Cloud” is not simply a description of where data and code are located. Cloud describes a profound change in architecture. Clouds surround and penetrate the organization, radically changing what processes can be measured and managed. IT professionals can reshape their companies by capturing more information about the business, the market and from deep customer engagement through Web services.

Companies and users of cloud computing are literally swimming in data, exposed everywhere to connectivity, which can be marshaled by IT for competitive advantage. Ubiquitous connectivity requires all the control, policies and security that have defined corporate computing, but the cloud puts IT Pros in a new role as architects of value mined from the company’s data about itself. Cloud encompasses the consumerization of IT, as well, so IT Pros will also need to manage computational devices on every desktop and in homes to help users blend work and life with greater ease.

From the beginning, the cloud will require IT Pros expand their planning, management and monitoring expertise. But the cloud’s most significant feature is its ability to evolve rapidly, at a pace previously unseen in the software industry or business. The cloud represents a vast opportunity for increasing the importance of the IT Pro within their organizations and to make IT a highly influential contributor to business performance.

What is “the Cloud?”

So, just what is the cloud? Let’s start with some basic concepts. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) draft definition of cloud computing puts it most plainly:

"Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction"

Within that umbrella description, there are three distinct flavors of cloud services that are available today for organizations considering cloud options:

SaaS—Software-as-a-Service involves the delivery via the network of application software that has traditionally been sold in shrink-wrapped packages. Microsoft Office, for example, will be available as a SaaS offering called Office 365 soon. These services are typically referred to as part of the “public cloud.”

PaaS—Platform-as-a-Service encompasses all the development, service hosting and service management environments needed to operate, for example, a custom .NET-enabled, PHP, JavaScript, C++ or other application at scale, using on-demand compute and storage capacity, network bandwidth and databases managed by a cloud provider. In Microsoft’s cloud portfolio, Windows Azure, SQL Azure fill the PaaS role. PaaS services are generally part of the public cloud and, through management tools like System Center, can be extended into the private cloud that operates behind a company’s firewall.

IaaS—Infrastructure-as-a-Service provides raw computer and storage capacity with management tools, in Microsoft’s case, the System Center suite of products and Hyper-V Cloud server environment, in a company’s datacenter or on a hosted basis. Private cloud services are the typical home for IaaS, but some cloud providers, including some implementations using Microsoft Azure, can be characterized as IaaS.

Elasticity is the most notable feature of cloud computing, whether in a private cloud or public cloud. Services can be provisioned based on actual demand and scale up quickly to meet increased demand or release hardware resources that are going unused, turning the fixed costs of over-provisioning that was necessary in the datacenter into lower variable costs.

Flexibility of resources provides savings, because the same hardware can be deployed at different times of the day to handle different workloads. Virtualization of servers in the cloud, whether in an on-premise datacenter or on a hosted platform, allow the hardware that was once dedicated to a single workload—often leaving CPUs idle when they could be used elsewhere—to be used at full capacity. The savings created by a flexible infrastructure can be substantial.

Thoughts on the Cloud

Jaron Burbidge — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 23:20:00 GMT

It is an interesting time for the IT industry right now; a pivotal point in IT history that has a profound effect on our lifestyle. The “Cloud” has reached mainstream status, infiltrating everyday life with offerings from email to minute by minute status updates on aspects of our personal lives. Cloud services are changing how we deploy and use technology more and more. There are many customers I speak with who are either saying it is just another XaaS (substitute X to make your favorite offering as a Service) or believe it simply means running servers in a 3rd-party datacenter. Though a vast number of IT professionals are still digesting the cloud’s potential, those on the leading edge or those that have a mature IT services model as a pervasive part of an operational framework understand that the Cloud promises to be the most compelling IT story yet.

Currently, the cloud can primarily be divided up into two general types; Public and Private (although there are others such as community and hybrid). The public cloud is a bit more mature and understood as a collection of capabilities that come together to offer just what we ask of it; an application, a specific service, a server or even an entire infrastructure. Additionally, the public cloud’s pay-for-what-you-use model is exceptionally cost effective, eliminating upfront capital investments. Most importantly, you can focus more time on adding business and operational value to your organization’s strategic initiatives rather than chasing down the reason a network port just went offline, for example.

Cloud’s potential impact on driving efficiencies and cost savings is not yet well defined. CDW’s recent Cloud Computing Tracking Poll surveyed 1,200 IT professionals from eight business segments to gauge organizations’ progress toward cloud adoption as well as their future plans for moving to cloud solutions. The results are surprising and illustrate how quickly the cloud is being adopted. For instance, large businesses and higher education institutions lead cloud adoption at 37% and 34%, respectively.

Business and IT leaders will dictate their rate of progression to the cloud based on organizational goals. In fact, many organizations have already moved one of their most critical applications to the cloud, email. This is a good indication of an organization’s wiliness to enable seamless remote access to a critical application running in the cloud.

There are many services beyond email that can benefit from moving to the cloud. Expect to see many other offerings from major software vendors in the near future. While the public cloud has dominated the offerings from major providers, we shouldn’t overlook the private and hybrid cloud approaches.

Private cloud promises much of the same value as the public cloud; we can start to liberate ourselves from the nitty gritty details of IT and start to think (and act) at a higher level. We want to deploy line of business applications, not hard drives, network cards, servers, operating systems, etc.. Private cloud enables us to take advantage of the benefits of the cloud while knowing that our data and security are still completely within our control or domain. This does not mean, however, that a private cloud has to be on premise; it can be housed in a 3^rd-party datacenter with proper physical security controls. Private cloud, no matter the location, is an assembly of technologies, processes, automations and flexibility rolled into one package.

For many there is an erroneous understanding that virtualization = private cloud. While virtualization is an important enabler to private cloud, it is important to note that it is just one part of the overall story. Private cloud provides for ease of deployment and advanced systems management. Virtualization lets us build a Virtual Machine by selecting the processor, network and storage. Following these decisions, it would be necessary to install the operating system and any necessary applications. With a private cloud solution however, a user can provision a pre-staged, fully operational service in just minutes with only a few mouse clicks. This may include multiple virtual servers, network load balancers, storage provisioning and application configuration. Not just a single virtual guest server. Through the combination of process and automation, a private cloud streamlines virtualization, allowing VMs to be fully managed, not simply run as separate servers operating on a consolidated host.

Building a private cloud requires deep knowledge of server, storage and networking coupled with an understanding of the business workflow and process automation. For large organizations this means coordinating activities across many teams or groups. In small organizations, it can increase the necessary knowledge to levels that may not be found currently inside the company. It is essential to have specialists with deep technical knowledge that understand the needs of the organization when implementing a private cloud solution.

Identify the business goals – Work with stakeholders to identify how a private cloud fits into the overall organizational strategy.
Support and Maintenance – Anytime a new technology is brought into operation you must consider support resources and costs. Incidents rarely happen when we are ready and available to take on a new task. Formalizing a support process will ensure incidents are addressed in a timely manner.
Avoid Shelf-ware. It is easy to fall into the lure of the “Deluxe” “Pro” “Plus” technology packaging schemes. Understand your organization’s needs and requirements to avoid over purchasing.
Business process analysis – Private cloud helps streamline the manner in which services are deployed and maintained in the datacenter. Determine what functionality can be moved away from high cost sys-admin personnel to other personnel in the organization. Your investments should not be to simply make it easier on IT, but to enable the business to be more nimble and agile.
Leverage a partner – Technology providers can bring perspective and knowledge that is often difficult to know unless you specialize in that particular technology/solution. It’s not really a cloud if you have to start from square one. Your time is valuable too. When creating solutions from scratch, many times the best of breed philosophy comes into play. Though there are some advantages to a best-of-breed approach, it is important to consider how this may impact the level of support you receive from each of the chosen vendors. A technology partner should be able to help identify reference architectures which have been deployed and have the deep vendor relationships necessary to escalate issues to knowledgeable resources on your behalf.

Ultimately, the goal of cloud computing is the ability to be more efficient in IT operations. It brings technology together so it is cheaper, faster and easier to deploy. Not too long ago the industry disputed the details of each component to determine which one would work best in any given architecture. Today, there is less concern, as functionality has become so evenly matched between suppliers. When the technology just works, we don’t need to question and examine each little detail. The commoditization of computers and components has simplified the industry a great deal. Virtualization is fast becoming a commodity offering as well. From a performance and reliability standpoint, there is little difference between any of the major Hypervisors.

As technology evolves, it is the natural course that technologies which become commonplace get adopted by every vendor. We are moving past differentiation in many hardware and software technologies to differentiation solely in how these almost identical technologies are implemented and managed. The real value of the private cloud is that it promises to provide the glue to bind together many of the various common hardware and software technologies. It allows a large part of the functionality to be managed as a whole rather than as numerous individual technologies.

In CY 2011 Q1 Microsoft announced the release schedule for an overall update to its System Center family of products. Within this release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 will be some very promising capabilities for private cloud management. The most compelling part of the story is the commitment of support for many of the major technology vendors. Regardless of which brand of storage, virtualization and servers are being used, everything to support a cloud environment will be manageable thru a single console. This unification is game changing. Coupled with Service Desk functionality and data center process automation enabled by new orchestration tools, this vision is a fresh approach to what has been coming from Redmond for the past couple of years. We are excited to see where this takes us.

Guest post courtesy of Derrek at CDW:

Private Cloud Computing: It’s all about the Apps

Jaron Burbidge — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:02:00 GMT

It was a big week last week for Microsoft and many of our enterprise IT customers. We hosted the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas, a sold-out IT conference.

The theme of MMS is “You. Empowered,” which is particularly relevant to cloud computing – especially private cloud computing. In this new computing paradigm, we see the ability for IT organisations to empower their companies to more effectively deliver the business applications they need to compete and succeed.

We have just undergone a period in IT where cost pressure drove an intense focus on server consolidation and virtualisation. It is important, however, that our industry recognizes that the promise of cloud computing is different from virtualisation. While virtualisation benefits were “all about the infrastructure,” cloud computing will prove to be “all about the application”.

In fact, an agile infrastructure that is disconnected from the applications it supports simply does not serve the business. I hear this every time I speak with IT leaders. They tell me service level agreements for applications are top of mind, including speed of deployment, troubleshooting and overall visibility. Ultimately, they are looking to ensure that their apps reliably do what they are intended to do for employees and customers.

In cloud computing, I see great opportunity for these customers. If you think about it, cloud computing is, at its core, focused on applications. In the very large cloud centers, where we run the Windows Azure, Office 365, Xbox Live and Bing services (among others), application service levels are all that matter. We have optimised everything – the facility, the infrastructure, the processes – to deliver on-demand, standardised IT services that run on shared resources. While Microsoft’s investment in these types of cloud centers is unique, the best practices can be directly applied to every IT environment.

So, how does a company get there? Certainly virtualisation is an important step, and many organisations are at that phase in their “journey to the cloud.” But how can you be sure your company is well positioned to move to cloud computing, ready to meet the business demands for faster, more reliable application services?

You start with a management infrastructure that is designed to empower IT. A management infrastructure that brings together the network, storage and computing islands into an integrated fabric. A management infrastructure that can create clouds with just a few clicks. Management that empowers the business to build, deploy and scale applications on their terms. And management infrastructure that is not just “virtual machine aware,” but delivers the application insight that your business depends upon, spanning both private and public cloud services.

That kind of management can make the difference between IT really delivering business value and just managing cost and complexity. In addition, IT administrators will find that it unlocks career opportunity, as well. Just as we move from individual servers to infrastructure fabric, server administrators will see an opportunity to lead the journey to the cloud.

That’s what we’re showing at MMS right now. Our management offerings are designed to help IT organisations build private cloud solutions that deliver application services, not just virtual machines. With our approach, the applications drive the IT infrastructure, not the other way around. The management technologies at the center give both IT managers and application managers throughout the company a unified view into applications in private, public and hybrid cloud scenarios.

Finally, with a Microsoft private cloud, customers can use the infrastructure they know and own today to build and deliver private cloud computing as a managed service, including other vendors’ tools, platforms and virtualisation technologies. We emphasise putting our customers’ needs ahead of any particular technology.

If you’re interested in more details, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further with you and can be contacted either on 09 362 5694 or email jaronb@microsoft.com