Dynamic Data Center Alliance Blog

Microsoft introduces Cloud Guide for IT Leaders

Dynamic DC Alliance — Fri, 28 May 2010 17:58:36 GMT

Today, Microsoft launched its Cloud Guide for IT Leaders, an online digital resource for information technology and business leaders interested in cloud computing.

Wondering how the roles of IT staffers will change with cloud computing? Curious why organizations have left Google Apps? The Cloud Guide for IT Leaders provides access to a steady stream of rich content—highlight videos, executive interviews, images, blog entries and keynote replays—addressing those issues.

Learn more by visiting the Cloud Guide at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/cloud/ and follow us on Twitter via http://twitter.com/STBNewsBytes.

Guest Blog by NetApp: Great Ideas + Fast Execution = Innovation Hosters Can Monetize

Dynamic DC Alliance — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:32:00 GMT

By Lee Gates, Sr. Manager, Microsoft Solutions Engineering, NetApp

The Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters (DDTK-H) has been gaining mindshare since its launch last year, as Service Providers look for guidance to create private and public cloud offerings based on Microsoft's Hyper-V with integrated management via System Center.

For technology partners like NetApp, working through the Dynamic Data Center Alliance (DDA) offers a great way to quickly contribute IP to the DDTK-H community, enhancing the integration of advanced virtual storage and data management functionality so hosters realize a faster time to market for affordable enterprise-class service offerings for SMB’s.

NetApp is embracing the DDTK-H and our first solution integrating SnapMirror, our storage based replication product, delivers automated disaster recovery (DR) and was showcased at the MS Hosting Summit last month. Bob Muglia demonstrated the capability during his keynote, showing live failover of hosting partner nGenX's Hyper-V environment between a production data center in Indiana and a secondary data center 470 miles away in Wisconsin. We talked with many hosting executives at the event and the consensus was that it was an innovative solution and a great kickoff to the NetApp-Microsoft collaboration around DDTK-H. The PowerShell code and configuration guidance that represent this initial work are published on codeplex. A case study of the nGenX implementation and Microsoft’s press release give further context.

Going forward, NetApp will aggressively expand our contributions to the DDTK-H. The Microsoft Solutions Engineering team at NetApp is already testing additional support for Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). This provides additional local datacenter service level availability while still enabling the long distance DR. Another imminent addition integrates SnapManager for Hyper-V, providing policy based backup and recovery for both standalone and CSV Windows environments.

As we lay the Hyper-V and NetApp foundation for Service Providers and Hosters through DDTK-H integrations, we’re highly focused on enabling best of breed solutions through PowerShell implementations for rapid deployment and reuse. We’ll be publishing the CSV and SnapManager for Hyper-V extensions to this solution before Microsoft TechEd next month.

At TechEd NA 2010, we will also release rapid provisioning for the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center (DIT-SC) enabling enterprises to build private clouds. To learn more, please stop by to meet our team at NetApp booth #801.

What's coming up with the next versions of SCOM and VMM!

Dynamic DC Alliance — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:24:00 GMT

For the folks onsite at MMS with us, hope you are having a great time! For the rest of us, we're trying our best to keep you informed of the happenings in here!

Among a ton of exciting vision from Bob Muglia’s keynote on April 20^th, we're also announcing the capability set that we are working on for the next version of System Center. Our goal is to provide a unified management solution that delivers datacenter services across physical, virtual and cloud environments using an integrated app/service-centric model.

With that in mind, I’ve included below some of the Dynamic IT / cloud capabilities that Virtual Machine Manager vNext and Operations Manager vNext will deliver to lower operational expense and increase agility in the enterprise datacenter. Some of these capabilities will take a few cycles to fully realize, but we’re going to get rolling on them in the next version J

System Center Virtual Machine Manager

· Service lifecycle management, including creation, deployment and updates to cloud apps/services - Leverages app virtualization technology and service modeling to perform image-based service composition, deployment and updates.

· Creation of private clouds - Enables “Infrastructure as a Service” for the enterprise datacenter and allows self-service scenarios; discovery and assignment of logical/virtualized network and storage pools to apps/services

· Federation across clouds - Enables workload mobility between on-premises, service provider and public clouds (e.g. Windows Azure) in a secure manner

· Policy-based dynamic resource optimization – Ensure optimal utilization of your datacenter resources (e.g. policy driven power management), deeper Operations Manager/PRO integration

· Deeper Opalis Integration – Offers deeper integration with Opalis for enhanced orchestration and automation across multiple sub-systems

System Center Operations Manager

· Unified on-premises and cloud monitoring - Enables hybrid cloud deployment scenarios with “single pane of glass” monitoring

· Outside-in/end user experience monitoring for geo distributed cloud services (based on synthetic transactions)

· Service oriented network and storage monitoring (e.g. monitor and troubleshoot network and storage resource pools assigned to services)

Also check out this video I recorded to get additional information on our Datacenter vision and SCOM/VMM vNext.

Finally, I also wanted to highlight the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center, which will allow you to build your private cloud foundation very soon to help you accelerate your journey to the cloud. What's more, this solution is built on top of technology you currently have and are very familiar with - System Center and Windows Server!

We will provide additional details on these capabilities (and others) as we finalize them!

Ananthanarayan Sundaram, Product Marketing Manager - System Center, Microsoft Corp.

UPDATE: Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Dynamic Data Center — Final Release Now Available!

Dynamic DC Alliance — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:29:00 GMT

In March we told you about a new guide that the Solution Accelerators team was working on—Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Dynamic Data Center. The beta for this guide has closed and the final release is now available. Be sure to download a final release copy of this free guide for insight into how your organization can strategically plan a Dynamic Data Center infrastructure that is designed for ease of manageability.

Next Steps

· Download the IPD Guide for Dynamic Data Center. Learn more about IPD Guides for Virtualization and System Center.

· Download other best practices from the Infrastructure Planning and Design series for products such as Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, SQL Server 2008, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, System Center, and much more at the IPD home page on TechNet.

· Check out other Solution Accelerators.

Join us tomorrow, Thursday, March 18 for the Desktop Virtualization Hour!

Dynamic DC Alliance — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:18:00 GMT

Don't forget to join Microsoft executives, industry experts and IT leaders on Thursday, March 18 at 9:00 am Pacific for the Desktop Virtualization Hour.

This will be a valuable session for both IT Pros and Business Executives interested in desktop virtualization. Hear from top experts and companies using Microsoft's comprehensive desktop virtualization technologies to help drive down costs, improve flexibility and control, and streamline desktop management. And learn about Microsoft's latest array of virtualization technologies, spanning from the datacenter to the desktop.

Please join Gartner Analyst Mark Margevicius and Microsoft Executives Garth Fort and Gavriella Schuster for this can't-miss session on one of today's most compelling IT technology advances.

Read more about this interactive live broadcast here.

Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Dynamic Data Center—Join the Beta Now!

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:03:54 GMT

The Solution Accelerator team is working on a new guide: Dynamic Data Center.

The design process in the free Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Dynamic Data Center allows your organization to strategically plan a Dynamic Data Center infrastructure that is designed for ease of manageability.

Key benefits of the guide include:

The infrastructure is designed using best practices to reduce the administrative burden of managing the Dynamic Data Center.
A single set of requirements is tracked throughout the entire design process and then transferred to the appropriate supporting Infrastructure Planning and Design guides.
The infrastructure design of the virtualization hardware and the management software includes determining the scaling and architectural limits of each component.

With this guide, you can design a Dynamic Data Center that will allow your organization to be responsive to changing market conditions by presenting new ways to develop, deliver, deploy, and manage applications and IT infrastructures.

Strategically planning your infrastructure can help you avoid problems before they begin, allowing you to serve your customers more accurately and reliably, as well as saving you time and money.

Next Steps

Download the IPD Guide for Dynamic Data Center. Learn more about IPD Guides for Virtualization and System Center.
Download other best practices from the Infrastructure Planning and Design series for products such as Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, SQL Server 2008, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, System Center, and much more at the IPD home page on TechNet.
Check out other Solution Accelerators.

Microsoft Virtualization Summit 2010 – February Update

Dynamic DC Alliance — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:54:00 GMT

In our mid-February blog post we announced the launch of the Microsoft Virtualization Summit 2010 – From the Desktop to the Datacenter that is happening across 45+ countries and representing 100+ customer events.

The summit is off to a good start and will run across the globe through June this year. The inaugural event took place in Paris on Feb-10 at MS TechDays – France. This was followed by the second event ‘A day @ Microsoft Cloud’ in Seoul (Korea) on Feb-24 wherein 1000+ customers and partners and participated. 47 articles were published in general daily, business, IT print and major online sites. The most popular track (attended by 50% participants) was the one on Virtualization, VDI, and Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center.

March will witness the execution of 35 additional events. Find a Virtualization Summit in your nearest city and learn how Microsoft can help you discover choices, preserve & extend your existing investments.

Join Microsoft, industry experts and IT leaders online for a Desktop Virtualization Hour on March 18th at 9:00am PST. Save the date on your calendar.

Guest Blog by F5 Networks: Where’s the (Infrastructure) Beef?

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:16:00 GMT

By Lori Mac Vitte, Technical Marketing Manager

The often touted benefits of “saving money” and “reducing expenses” associated with virtualization and cloud computing are often discussed in the context of reduction or elimination of servers. The softer savings associated with both technologies are rarely mentioned, perhaps because they are intangibles and peculiar to the organization. These savings can be as substantial, however, as the hard dollars saved through consolidation or leveraging of cloud computing providers when virtualization capabilities move from the test lab into the production data center.

The dynamic nature of virtualization capabilities herald a new, more efficient data center that exhibits stronger fault tolerance and improved deployment procedures. Microsoft’s Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center (DIT-SC) is designed to help customers realize the benefits of a dynamic infrastructure. These benefits can be further increased when efficiencies extend into the operational processes that keep the data center running day after day, such as those encompassing network and application delivery network infrastructure solutions.

Realizing Higher Benefits with Leaner Provisioning Processes

F5’s partnership with Microsoft will extend dynamic virtualization capabilities into the network. After all, if the network is not in sync with virtual images being created and/or moved on-demand, you’ve only got a partially dynamic data center, and probably only seeing half the benefits. By integrating with System Center Operations Manager 2008 R2 & Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, F5 enables the same fluidity and flexibility enjoyed by servers, operating systems, and applications today.

DIT-SC is a free, partner-extensible toolkit that provides a framework for creating agile, virtualized IT infrastructures. F5 is doing just that by building on its proven, standards-based control plane, iControl, to integrate via PowerShell to enable customer control and efficiency into the application delivery tier of their virtualized architectures. Using DIT-SC customers can integrate the provisioning of application delivery services such as load balancing for rapid elasticity and automatic scalability.

Providing Complete Network Nutrition Information for More Informed Decisions

You can’t choose a healthy meal without nutritional information on hand and the data center is no different; you can’t make the best scalability and application delivery decisions without the right information. The “nutritional content” of the infrastructure provided to System Center allows the most efficient decisions based on current conditions across the delivery chain – from user to infrastructure to application.

F5’s integration with DIT-SC provides System Center with the network and application network data necessary for informed decisions including factors that may affect the availability and performance of virtualized applications. For example, using System Center Operations Manager with Virtual Machine Manager and F5’s PRO-enabled Management Pack, customers can execute a script that re-provisions F5 BIG-IP to place a newly launched VM into an application pool - enabling it to start receiving end-user requests. While BIG-IP does not make the decision to launch the VM, the decision can be based on BIG-IP provided network, pool, and pool member state data. When invoked, the script executes a series of normally manually executed tasks automatically, moving customers toward a more dynamic - and ultimately both operationally and financially efficient - infrastructure.

By collaborating with Microsoft on extending the DIT-SC for load balancing and scalability services, F5 is enabling the dynamic data center to achieve greater efficiency of operational processes and more effectively control and manage the entire application delivery process.

Don't Miss the Webcast This Week on Thursday, February 25th, 2010!

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:36:00 GMT

Dynamic Infrastructure ToolKit for System Center Deployment: Scenario Walkthrough

Attend this webcast to learn how to set up the foundation for a private cloud in your enterprise with the help of Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center (DIT-SC) scenarios such as:

· Enabling independent hardware vendor and system integrator partners to extend the toolkit's powerful extensible features.

· Simplifying IT scenario of end-to-end business unit IT (BUIT) on-boarding.

· Simplifying IT scenario of infrastructure request/allocation processes.

· Enabling end-user self-service portal for virtual machine provisioning.

Join us and find out how NetApp delivered a storage solution to reduce virtual machine storage needs.

Date: Thursday, February 25, 2010

Time: 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Presenters:

1. Suveen Kumar Reddy Vuppala, Senior SDE, Solutions Accelerator Team, Microsoft Corp.

2. Ananthanarayan Sundaram, Senior Product Manager, Virtualization Marketing, Microsoft Corp.

3. Richard Preston, Technical Alliance Manager, NetApp

In case you missed any of the earlier webcasts in our series, you can view them here.

Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center (DIT-SC): Sneak peek into “on-boarding”

Dynamic DC Alliance — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:45:00 GMT

Hello. I am Luis Camara Manoel, Senior Group Program Manager with the Solution Accelerators Team at Microsoft. I wanted to give you a peek into the progress we are making on implementing some of the IT scenarios we are building into the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center (DIT-SC- formerly known as DDTK-E).

As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, DIT-SC includes an on-boarding wizard which guides Business Unit IT Managers (BUITs), through: 1^st registering their business unit, and 2^nd in capturing the requirements of their new IT service in an Infrastructure Request. The latter is a process that demands some planning on the BUIT’s part, defining and capturing the infrastructure needed to support these services, such as storage, compute, load-balancing, and network resources, user access, etc.

To gain a better understanding of the hierarchical structure of an Infrastructure Request, consider the following:

1. Infrastructure:

a. Defines the high-level resource requirements and creates a pool from which to build and deliver infrastructure services (defined below).

b. Properties captured at this level include “BU Detail”, “Business Justification”, “Memory”, and “Storage” requirements.

2. Infrastructure Service:

a. Captures IT service-level infrastructure requirements that consume resources for the pool from the Infrastructure requested above.

b. A typical example of an infrastructure service can be a development, test, or production environment.

c. Can include a single or multiple service Roles.

d. Properties captured at this level include “Environment”, “quota”, “network”, “template”, “and access control”, “SAN”.

3. Service Roles:

a. Service Roles define the way a VM would be used and assign resources to those or groups of VMs to be created in the environment.

b. Typical service roles could include “front-end’, “reporting service”, “data store” etc.

c. Properties captured at this level include “role”, “network”, and “load balancing”.

Here’s a visual representation of an Infrastructure Request.

Note that once an Infrastructure Request is submitted, it is sent to a Data Center Administrator (DC Admin), who is then responsible for verifying the availability and capacity of the requested resources in the data center infrastructure. This process might require verification and coordination with network, storage, and other datacenter administrators. If the requested resources are available, the DC Admin will then proceed to provision these assets by mapping them to the Infrastructure Request, and approving the request. At that point, BUITs can access their self-service portal and begin using their environments.

Here are some on-boarding screenshots… bear in mind, this is a pre-beta build, and as usual, all screens are subject to change.

Figure 1- The starting point for a new Infrastructure Request

Figure 2- Capturing requirements for an Infrastructure Service

Figure 3- Capturing Network and Directory requirements

Figure 4- Defining Service Roles and their required Netowrking and Load Balancing requirements

Figure 5- Selecting Templates

Figure 6- Summary page- prior to submission

Announcing! Microsoft Virtualization Summit 2010 – From the Desktop to the Datacenter

Dynamic DC Alliance — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:22:00 GMT

Looking at virtualization but unsure about your options? Thinking about migrating to Windows 7? Interested in VDI and Server Virtualization? Want to save on costs but wondering about ROI? How to improve IT flexibility? Have more questions than answers?

Ready, Set, Virtualize.

Join us at the Microsoft Virtualization Summit 2010 in your nearest city and learn how Microsoft can help you discover choices, preserve & extend your existing investments. Interact with Microsoft personnel, industry experts, IT leaders and get your questions answered.

Learn how server & desktop virtualization can help you

· Build a desktop virtualization management strategy that helps you manage your applications, data, mobile workers and multiple physical and virtual form factors.

· Reduce desktop costs.

· Enable flexible and agile IT through virtualization.

· Increase desktop security and compliance.

· Improve business continuity and end user productivity.

· Understand how Microsoft is building a solid foundation for a private cloud.

· Increase end user productivity and streamline your IT management with Windows 7.

Event Highlights

· Explore your options and evaluate which virtualization solution is right for your organization.

· Learn about new licensing programs and latest product updates.

· Take a technical deep dive and attend expert-led sessions.

· Find out about special offers and how you can start evaluating these technologies today!

· Discover Microsoft’s Dynamic Data Center toolkits.

Guest Blog by NetApp: Delivering Practical, Proven, Integrated Cloud Solutions

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:24:00 GMT

By Wally MacDermid, Director of IT as a Service Solutions at NetApp

The word “dynamic” is very appropriate when discussing topics such as cloud and the transitions in customers’ data centers.

A year or so ago many of my conversations with customers, partners, and fellow NetApp employees included questions such as “What is cloud?” or “We have been told to build a cloud ... where should we start?” Today, our customers want to talk about the reality: “OK. I get it. Expanding my virtual environment to include a private cloud may be the key to addressing cost constraints and time to market demands. So tell me how we’re going to do it.”

That’s where we see the critical need for deep, collaborative partnerships such as the one between Microsoft and NetApp.

Microsoft & NetApp’s joint integrated solutions provide virtualized infrastructure building blocks

Almost by definition, it will be difficult for a single IT vendor to provide end-to-end, virtualized, service-oriented infrastructures on their own. From application to server to network to storage – with integrated management from end-to-end – there are significant challenges to be addressed and capabilities required at each layer of a virtualized infrastructure. Microsoft is a leader in application, server, and management solutions. NetApp is a leader in highly efficient and flexible storage solutions. By integrating our solutions, Microsoft and NetApp are able to jointly show the customer “how to do it” by providing the virtualized infrastructure building blocks.

There's a great new video where Microsoft's Zane Adam discusses infrastructures for private clouds and how our collaboration on the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center will help customers deploy cost-effective IT as a service infrastructures.

As Zane points out, Microsoft and NetApp are jointly developing integrated solutions for:

§ Server, storage, and management: Integrating Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Microsoft System Center and NetApp® storage technologies and leveraging the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Centre (DIT-SC) to create an end-to-end architecture that helps streamline VM provisioning, backup, recovery, and the overall management of virtualized infrastructures.

§ Application, storage, and management: Integrating Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and Microsoft SQL Server with NetApp storage systems improves communications and collaboration plus can greatly accelerate software development and testing.

§ Enterprise IT customers as well as Service Providers and Hosters: while many aspects of virtualized, service-oriented infrastructures are similar between internal/private clouds and external/public clouds, there are certain differences (variety and nature of service levels, cost and chargeback processes, etc.). Microsoft and NetApp have dedicated teams working with both types of customers to understand their specific requirements and to tailor our integrations to meet these requirements.

In fact, last month NetApp and Microsoft announced a formal three-year strategic partnership focused on continuing to deepen our technical integration efforts for virtualization, private cloud computing and storage management.

What will the “dynamic” world of enterprise IT bring us over the next year? I believe far less confusion and discussion about what terms and words, and many more practical, proven, integrated solutions that solve real problems as customers continue to build out their dynamic data centers.

Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters: An Update on Momentum and the Road Ahead

Dynamic DC Alliance — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:50:00 GMT

Over the last six months since the launch of the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters, we have seen tremendous interest by the Hosters and Telcos from around the world. I am pleased to report that we have over 100+ Hosters who are in various stages of developing cloud services based on Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters (DDTK-H). About 17 have already launched their cloud offers based on the DDTK-H. We are expecting an additional 20 of them to launch by March 2010.

We are also working to update the toolkit and the next version of DDTK-H is going to launch around the Hosting Summit in April 2010. However, a few things have changed in the existing DDTK-H and I want to bring those to your attention:

1. All source code for DDTK-H is now consolidated and made available at MSDN Code Gallery. It can be accessed here.

2. We have updated some source code and the updates have been posted . These came from bugs reported by hosters. Please download and use the new bits when you get a chance. All interfaces are preserved; so your code should just work as before (but will require a new round of testing).

3. We have now added a new service that leverages SCVMM to manage Hyper-V instances. This means you can see all machines on all cluster nodes. The older service that made calls directly to Hyper-V is now deprecated. (Again, the interfaces are maintained).

4. A frequent request from hosting providers has been how to be able to access the Hyper-V Guest through the Host in the same way VMM does. We have just published a sample of an ActiveX control that does just this. It is a wrapper around the standard Windows RDP control and should work with Windows clients including XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 as well as Windows Server 2008. Full source code is included in the download.

5. A new license agreement has been created for anyone who wants to use DDTK-H as part of a product they intend to resell. Like the original license, this is also free of charge. The default license agreement that is provided with the installer is geared for hosters to use in their own management code. So, in response to our customers, control panel vendors and ISVs may license DDTK-H code with this new agreement. If you would like to use the DDTK-H in a product for resale, please contact your local Microsoft account rep who will supply the agreement.

6. SharePoint 2010 Multi-tenant management services have now been added to the DDTK-H samples. The samples can be downloaded from the MSDN Code Gallery. It can be accessed here.

In the upcoming Hosting Summit, we are going to release the next version of DDTK-H. It will contain many exciting new samples and whitepapers/guidance on how to leverage the features of Windows Server 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010.

While you build your offers on DDTK-H, I would like to offer you our assistance. Please reach us through this blog on the discussion page if you need any assistance.

More importantly, PLEASE share your SUCCESS with us. We would love to hear from you!!!!

Hyder Ali, Industry Solutions Director, Hosting Business, Microsoft Corp.

HP, Microsoft and the Future of IT

Dynamic DC Alliance — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:24:00 GMT

Posted by Brad Anderson
Corporate Vice President, Management And Services Division

Today Microsoft and HP announced some great news for customers and partners of our infrastructure software and server applications: a $250 million engineering, sales and services partnership to advance cloud computing and help customers better use IT for business success. You can read the press release and watch videos of executives commenting on the agreement here.

This is a broad, far-reaching agreement with a range of components, building on our 25-year partnership with HP and ongoing efforts to deliver what we call Dynamic IT. As one of the main architects of the agreement, I wanted to provide some insights about what it means for customers and partners.

This is clearly a big commitment on our part. Overall, our intent is to deliver no less than a next-generation computing platform. The goal is to lead the adoption of cloud computing while helping companies realize immediate business benefits through IT. With this partnership the two companies are working toward new models for application delivery, hardware architecture and IT operations.

Together HP and Microsoft will deliver a deeply integrated IT stack for business applications. We are driving architectural innovation that connects IT infrastructure to applications for better performance, reliability and availability of the industry’s top business applications with push-button simplicity – all at a lower cost of ownership than ever before.

For example, pre-integrated hardware, software and application solutions, based on HP Converged Infrastructure and optimized for Microsoft Exchange 2010, will help customers boost employee productivity and protect sensitive information at a lower cost per mailbox.

Key to this deal is integrating virtualization and systems management across heterogeneous datacenter and cloud environments. Seamless management for both physical and virtualized systems will provide automatic provisioning, power management and self-tuning, which together will help customers streamline the deployment of new business capabilities across their companies.

For example, we’re integrating HP’s Insight Software and Business Technology Optimization software portfolio with Microsoft’s System Center suite. That will enable customers to uniformly manage virtualized IT services in mixed datacenter environments, which will dramatically simplify management for administrators and increases their contribution to the business.

We’re excited about our joint engineering roadmap and commitment to innovation for both today and the future. I feel strongly that this partnership will give customers the confidence to deploy new business solutions using IT they already have in place, and take advantage of the new world of private and public cloud resources. Case in point: HP and Microsoft will collaborate on the Windows Azure platform, with HP offering services and Microsoft continuing to invest in HP hardware for Windows Azure infrastructure.

The partnership also entails big investments in HP Technology Services and Microsoft Services to provide design, implementation and support for our joint technologies. And we are increasing our joint investment in our HP/Microsoft Frontline channel partner network by 10 times, empowering partners to help customers implement and manage the solutions.

This is a big day for Microsoft and HP. More importantly, it represents the beginning of a new period of opportunity and possibilities for customers and partners worldwide.

Video: Watch Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, HP chairman and CEO Mark Hurd, and other executives discuss today’s agreement to simplify technology environments for businesses of all sizes.

Tweet your questions using with the Twitter hash tag #HPMSFT.

Don't Miss the Webcast This Week on January 15th, 2010!

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:45:00 GMT

Dynamic Data Center Alliance: Connecting Partners to the Enterprise Market

Designed as a benefit specifically for partners who are creating cloud and virtualized services using the Microsoft Dynamic Data Center Toolkits, the Microsoft Dynamic Data Center Alliance is helping partners grow their businesses by providing them with the tools they need to tap into the emerging enterprise market. The Dynamic Data Center Alliance is bringing together a collection of top notch partners, such as hosters, system integrators, hardware manufacturers, and software vendors, who are working on rich integration with our Dynamic Data Center Toolkits.

Also joining us in the webcast are our two partners: Compellent and RackForce. Compellent will explain how a feature rich virtualized storage platform shortens time to project deployment and contributes eye-popping TCO benefits in a cloud-based environment. RackForce will explain the vital relationship between the Partner and the Dynamic Data Center to access the emerging enterprise market, how the relationship works and recent enterprise sales success stories.

Attend this webcast, to learn how you can take advantage of the alliance benefits and participate in the program.

Date: Friday, January 15, 2010 Pacific Time

Time: 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Level: 200

Presenters:

1. Isaac Roybal, Product Manager, Microsoft Virtualization

2. Stephen Anderson, Director Alliances, Compellent Technologies

3. Brian Fry, Vice President - Sales and Marketing, RackForce

This is the fourth webcast in our series. In case you missed the previous webcasts, you can view them here.

Guest Analyst Blog: The Future is Hybrid

Dynamic DC Alliance — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:59:00 GMT

There has been a lot of marketing fuzz around the “cloud” during the past few months. Things have become a little sharper right now – less cloudy, in other words. There are two major points which are increasingly understood: Cloud Computing is mainly about services. The target is to enable IT to choose the best service providers for the required services. Best means not only “cheapest”, but the ones which fulfill the requested service levels. That might be internal or external service providers. And this directly leads to the second major point: Clouds will be hybrid. Most companies won’t just use external services; neither will they rely only on their internal services. In fact the IT world is hybrid for most organizations even today – they are using web conferencing services, email services, external backup services or web hosting services besides their internal IT, to name just a few.

This “hybrid” nature means, that companies have to enable their internal IT in a way that it can act like a public cloud service provider. Enablement includes a strong service management approach and a technical infrastructure which makes data centers much more dynamic than they have been before. Thus, cloud computing requires a strong foundation at the infrastructure layer. The data center has to become SLA driven, highly automated, and “elastic”. That requires tools. And best-of-breed tools will support this for internal data centers as well as public data centers, including the ability to move instances between different data centers and to manage services consistently across such distributed infrastructures.

By the way: When looking at these major initiatives around Cloud Computing it becomes obvious that Cloud Computing isn’t that new. Virtualization is a topic since a while, and service management is as well discussed for a long time. What’s new is the integrated view of all these initiatives and the move from tactical approaches at the data center level or IT Service Management level towards a strategic initiative which makes IT more flexible and adaptive than it has been before.

The post was contributed by Martin Kuppinger, an analyst from Kuppinger Cole.

Guest Blog: IPX Server, one of the leading hosters in Germany, is currently releasing 400 test servers available under the new portfolio of www.dynamic-datacenter.de

Dynamic DC Alliance — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:37:00 GMT

Hello. I am Jörg Ehrhart, Managing Director, IPX Server, Germany. Our new portfolio of server products are all based on Microsoft’s Dynamic Data Center concept. They provide us with a set of operational efficiencies and a rich array of new features that will increase the value of our products, such as high availability, burstable estate, performance monitoring and back up – enabling complete transparency to our customers who can log in and manage their own environment through their control panels.

Websites are becoming more business critical with current e-commerce implementations and IPX Server is now better positioned to address this growing market, thanks to the richness of Hyper-V and System Center.

A usage scenario that we expect much demand from is to sell estates of VDSs to Enterprises that run large scale campaigns and actions through their website. As visits to the websites are highly variable, the Dynamic Data Center enables websites that can easily scale up and down during the week or month, and you pay as you use.

Below are some features that we’ll be launching based on the Dynamic Data Center.

· Management and reseller functionality through a self-care portal

· High availability

· Manage Linux and Windows on one platform

· Fully automated Provisioning

· Adhoc availability of new servers

· Fully scalable: HDD, RAM, CPU

· P2V- Physical to Virtual – Migration

Our journey started with the Microsoft FastStart program. We received the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters from Microsoft, which was followed with training for our technical staff at the Bootcamp in Amsterdam. By applying the best practices we could jump start our developments and with the support from local Microsoft resources in Germany we can now build a fool proof and scalable environment.

With the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit, IPX Server is introducing a completely new product portfolio. High Quality V-Servers based on Microsoft System Center and Hyper-V, running on well-known high-end hardware and hosted by one of the best colocation infrastructures in Germany with 70Gbit/s+ capacity, high redundancy, and fully certified by TÜV, will offer all benefits of Server Virtualization to the customers. 400 of these servers are now offered to be tested at www.dynamic-datacenter.de .

IPX Server and Microsoft have partnered on bringing the newest technologies based on Hyper-V, Microsoft System Center and the Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Server family to the German market. The long-term objective of the cooperation is to make IPX Server a technology leader so that IPX customers can be sure to always be provided with the newest technologies available for their needs.

On-Demand Webcast Available For Viewing

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:08:00 GMT

Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises: Enabling the Foundation for Private Cloud

This is the third webcast in our series. In case you missed it, the on-demand webcast is now available for viewing. Click here.

This webcast gives you an overview of how you can build the foundation for a private cloud infrastructure on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 using the Microsoft Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises (availability scheduled in 2010).

This free, partner-extensible toolkit provides an architectural road map, deployment guidance, best practices, and familiar tools for creating agile, virtualized IT infrastructures.

View the webcast recording to learn more about the components of the Data Center Toolkit and how you can improve your data center efficiency by lowering the overall costs of on-boarding, deployment, and management.

Systems Integrators of All Sizes: Tapping Into Microsoft Hosting Revenue Momentum

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:31:00 GMT

The Dynamic Data Center concept supports a hosters’ need to move his infrastructure to a scalable model, thereby enabling his customers to both scale and manage their environment either through automation or through on-demand. We are experiencing great success deploying the concept alongwith with many of our long-time hosting partners, and are now focused on expanding our Dynamic Data Center footprint around the world. As a channel driven company, we want to do it with our Systems Integrator partners.

Financial Opportunity for SIs

The Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters is a shortcut to creating a cloud for the customers of hosters of ALL sizes. This creates a great opportunity for Systems Integrators of ALL sizes because the services around deploying the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit walk the fine line between ‘roll-your-own’ for the large hosters and ‘engage a trusted advisor’ for the resource challenged…..and as I like to say to channel partners, “where there is mystery there is margin”. The engagement model for SIs not only creates work-for-hire service offering with hosters, but it can also empower your own datacenter NOC to manage the environments you build.

The best of all worlds: a transaction that creates recurring revenue.

Opening Door to Enterprises

We are currently engaging in ‘train the trainer’ sessions around the world to enable Systems Integrators to build, manage and scale Dynamic Data Center Infrastructure. Soon to follow will be the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises which will complement our Software + Services vision around private and public clouds. Not only is there a financial opportunity for the SIs, there is also empowerment/ capability that will open doors to enterprises and provide you with the skill sets to deliver a true Software + Services environment.

This might be the single biggest opportunity in IT services today since we are focused as a company on increasing our market share of web-facing servers by enabling our web developer ecosystem and driving demand to our hosting partners.

If you are a Systems Integrator who wants to tap into this strong marketing motion, email me at mhaynes@microsoft.com and I will make sure you get into the action.

Matthew Haynes, Worldwide Industry Director – Hosting, Microsoft Communications Sector

Microsoft Acquires Opalis Software

Dynamic DC Alliance — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:29:00 GMT

Great news for enterprise, government and service provider customers who use System Center!

Hello. I am Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of the Management and Services Division (MSD) at Microsoft. I’m excited to announce that Microsoft has acquired Opalis Software, a Toronto-based private company that is a leader in IT process automation software. Opalis will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft.

The acquisition brings together the data center automation expertise of Opalis with the integrated physical and virtualized data center management capabilities of Microsoft System Center.

I believe this acquisition is a pivotal piece to deliver on our dynamic data center initiative, which I’ve spoken about before. This deal brings together the deep data center automation expertise of Opalis with the integrated physical and virtualized data center management capabilities of Microsoft System Center. I believe Opalis’ software together with the System Center suite will improve the efficiency of IT staff and operations, and customers will gain greater process consistency. Opalis’ software captures the IT processes, in a documented and repeatable way, which can be run over and over again. These capabilities will be added to Microsoft System Center to help customers automate complex IT processes, increase cost savings and shorten timeframes for IT service delivery across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.

So why is IT process automation so important to us? We know that as customers and service providers use Microsoft server infrastructure, tools and applications in more - and larger – data centers, these customers require a greater level of automation in their operations. This is especially important as our customers build out highly automated and scalable virtual environments. Advanced workflow processes will be vital for optimization and to avoid potential virtual server sprawl. I read that Gartner believes that, by year-end 2010, at least 50% of the automation and workflow management tasks in support of virtual server infrastructures will be supported by evolving RBA-based tools. Reliable automation of processes across their complex, heterogeneous datacenter not only reduces costs but also ensures the services that drive their business are always available.

Why Opalis?

First, Opalis customers have told us that the Opalis employees are a strong set of individuals. Second, customer feedback is that the Opalis software is easy to use, easy to deploy and delivers value in a short period of time. This part is important. Out of the box, Opalis products integrate with System Center, and will allow System Center to integrate with other infrastructure software from CA, BMC, HP and others to integrate across an IT organization.

So if you don’t know Opalis products, you should get to know them. Their products include:

Prepackaged workflows and automation expertise for the common tasks in managing a data center. Examples include Run Book Automation, virtual machine lifecycle management, and incident ticket management.
An automation platform that lets customers create and execute workflows across datac enter management tools.
Deep integration capabilities to orchestrate tasks across server infrastructure and systems management products, including those from BMC, CA, IBM, HP, Microsoft, and Symantec.

So what does this acquisition mean for Opalis and Microsoft customers?

Opalis will continue to fulfill its existing commitments to customers and continue to deliver support as we transition Opalis to the Microsoft systems and processes. What’s interesting is that a large majority of Opalis customers use System Center today. We intend to make RBA capabilities a core part of System Center going forward. You can get more details of the transition at Microsoft Pathways. This site will provide the most current information on the transition and provide answers to frequently asked questions.

Also, be sure to read today’s blog post from Todd DeLaughter, CEO of Opalis: http://www.opalis.com/Blog.asp

For Microsoft customers this acquisition provides access to a new set of capabilities to help you automate your processes and tasks in your data center environment. Our virtualization stack just became more complete with the capabilities of Opalis. I sat down for a video interview recently to share more of my thoughts, see it here.

Guest Blog: Microsoft Partners with NetApp to Drive Efficiency and Agility in the Data Center

Dynamic DC Alliance — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:47:00 GMT

By Lee Gates, Senior Manager – Microsoft Solutions Engineering at NetApp

NetApp and Microsoft jointly announced a new three-year strategic partnership focused on deepening our technical integration efforts for virtualization, private cloud computing and storage management for Microsoft infrastructures and applications including Exchange Server, SQL Server, SharePoint Server and other workloads.

This announcement reflects the work that our respective product teams are doing to help our mutual customers design and implement truly dynamic data centers based on flexible, cost-effective infrastructure.

Admittedly, as soon as we start tossing around terms like “flexible” and “cost-effective” this starts to look like marketing fluff. So let me give you some specifics.

Microsoft’s Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center Will Help Us Enable Our Joint Customers to Rapidly Provision a Virtual Infrastructure

Since last summer, NetApp, a charter member of Microsoft’s Dynamic Data Center Alliance, has been working closely with the Microsoft Windows Solution Accelerator Team as they develop the Microsoft Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center (aka DIT-SC; availability scheduled in the first half of 2010). The DIT-SC is a free, partner-extensible toolkit that provides a framework for creating agile, virtualized IT infrastructures. IT teams can leverage the toolkit with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and SCVMM 2008 along with partner extensions to plan, operate and deliver the foundation for a private cloud.

Many analysts agree that NetApp is the leading innovator in storage for virtual environments, and we’ve been working closely with Microsoft to align our solutions. For example, our newly released SnapManager for Hyper-V product supports new Windows Server 2008 R2 capabilities such as Cluster Shared Volumes and we recently released a new Management Pack enabling centralized storage monitoring for virtual and physical environments via System Center.

By partnering with Microsoft on the DIT-SC, we enable our joint customers to take advantage of our unique capabilities as they progress in with their private cloud implementations, plus capabilities associated with a multitude of other products and tools from other Microsoft partners through a single common Microsoft interface.

One initial area of focus for the toolkit involves enabling our joint customers to rapidly provision a virtual infrastructure. NetApp’s cloning technology has a unique value-add in this area that enables VMs to be provisioned near-instantaneously with space-efficient virtual copies of golden VM images. We enable rapid cloning with a set of PowerShell scripts and cmdlets that integrate with SCVMM that are called by the DIT-SC as part of the workflow for provisioning VMs.

Our engineering, product, sales, and marketing teams are excited about the joint solutions NetApp and Microsoft are developing and enhancing together. Stay tuned. We’ll keep you posted on our integration with the DIT-SC with regular updates on the NetApp for Microsoft Environments blog.

Don't Miss the Webcast This Week on December 11th, 2009!

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:36:00 GMT

Building a Private Cloud with the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises

You can build the foundation for a private cloud infrastructure on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 using the Microsoft Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises (availability scheduled in the first half of 2010). This free, partner-extensible toolkit provides an architectural road map, deployment guidance, best practices, and familiar tools for creating agile, virtualized IT infrastructures.

Attend this webcast to learn more about the components of the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises and how you can improve your data center efficiency by lowering the overall costs of on-boarding, deployment, and management.

Date: Friday, December 11, 2009

Time: 11:00 am to 12:00 pm Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Presenter: Luis Camara Manoel, Group Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Level: 300

This is the third webcast in our series. In case you missed the previous two, you can view the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters on-demand webcast here, and Building the Foundation for a Private Cloud Infrastructure on-demand webcast here.

Reliance and Netmagic, Two Leading Hosters in India Announce Cloud Computing Solutions Using the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit, Windows Server and System Center

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:49:00 GMT

In the first ever Hosting Days Event organized in India, two leading Hosters of the country: Reliance Data Center and Netmagic Solutions announced their respective cloud computing offerings leveraging the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center.

Reliance Data Center

A hosted infrastructure service based on the Microsoft platform for Enterprises and SMBs - geared to deliver India’s largest cloud infrastructure.

At a press conference launching the offer, George Varghese, President - Enterprise Business, Reliance Communications said: ‘Leveraging Microsoft's cutting edge technologies, Reliance Data Center will deliver access to enterprise-class scalable, secure and reliable hosted IT infrastructure to help large, mid-sized and small medium businesses leverage cloud computing technologies’. He further added, ‘Thanks to Microsoft, we can cut down on server sprawl and related capital costs across Reliance Data Centers – and are geared to deliver what is arguably India’s largest cloud infrastructure today’.

Reliance Cloud Computing Services are based on Microsoft's virtualization and management technologies, and the hosting service is made possible through the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Centre, which is a tool for leveraging virtualization infrastructure on Windows Server 2008 R2. This is also being complemented by System Center Operations Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, to create managed services and partner hosted cloud offerings.

Reliance Data Center, a division of Reliance Communications, spread across 5,00,000 sq ft of hosting space, owns and operates nine level 3 data centers at multiple locations and spearheads Data Center operations of India's largest Integrated Telecom Service Provider.

Netmagic Solutions

Sharad Sanghi, CEO, Netmagic Solutions announced their commitment to launch the next level of their cloud offer based on Hyper-V by mid-November 2009. He said: ‘The Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center has helped our teams to cut down the time required to launch the offering by more than half’.

The event was attended by 250 partners. Following which there was a two-day bootcamp which allowed partners to gain hands-on expertise in building a Dynamic Data Center.

There is tremendous excitement around the Dynamic Data Center amongst the hosters in the Indian sub-continent, and we can surely expect more such announcements in the future. So, stay tuned!

On-Demand Webcast Available For Viewing: Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters: Foundation for a Partner-Hosted Cloud

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:18:00 GMT

This is the second webcast in our Private Cloud Computing Infrastructure series. In case you missed it, the on-demand webcast is now available for viewing. Click here.

The webcast gives you an overview of how Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center empower hosters to deliver managed hosting, cloud services, and on-demand virtualized IT infrastructures. You can learn how the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters makes it easy for them to get on this inevitable path. This free, extensible toolkit provides guidance, sample code, and best practices that make it easy to build and launch on-demand infrastructures and cloud services for your customers.

View the webcast recording to see what the toolkit is composed of, how it works, who is using it, and how it can help you.

Coming up next month on December 11^th is the third webcast of the series titled ‘Building a Private Cloud with the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises’. Register now for the webcast.

Guest Blog: Order Delivery Time Reduced By 50%. Support Costs Decreased By 75%. Zero Maintenance Downtime. How Did MaximumASP Achieve This?

Dynamic DC Alliance — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:25:00 GMT

Hello, I'm Ryan Jones, Virtualization Product Manager at MaximumASP. We provide managed hosting services on the Microsoft platform to over 50,000 domains in 120 countries.

MaxV and Microsoft’s Platform with Hyper-V, System Center and Dynamic Data Center Toolkit Provides Our Customers Flexibility of the Cloud.

Twelve short months ago, we launched MaxV, the world's first low cost, highly available, instantly scalable virtual dedicated server. By collaborating with Microsoft and implementing the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit, we were able to provide the flexibility of the cloud, but without the pain of application re-architecture or developer re-training. In addition, we were able to provide our customers with a ‘single pane of glass’, which unified the System Center suite into a single dashboard, to monitor their hosted infrastructure at MaximumASP.

Customer response was remarkable - their hosted IT infrastructure was finally agile enough to meet the ever changing needs of their businesses. Their servers were always available, by leveraging Failover Clustering, with no code changes. They could add additional servers, or upgrade between predefined device configurations, with little more than a server reboot. And since capacity could be added easily, their IT costs tracked demand for IT services.

The Dynamic Data Center Toolkit was a valuable resource for the rapid deployment of the MaxV platform. The toolkit and customer-driven feedback were the leading forces in product development – Dominic Foster, CTO.

Upcoming MaxV R2 Alongwith Full Integration of Microsoft’s Hyper-V, Virtual Machine Manager and Dynamic Data Center Toolkit Addresses the Growing Customer Needs.

Order Delivery Time Reduced By 50%. Support Costs Decreased By 75%. Consolidation Ratios Increased By 10%. Zero Maintenance Downtime. Reduced Power Consumption. Reduced Cost of Delivering Service.

The needs of our customers are continuing to grow. Clients now demand the ability to purchase processor, memory, and storage resources independently of one another. Individuals also want to be able to purchase larger virtual instances, and they want them more quickly than ever. We turned to the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit, and its updated Virtual Machine Manager content, to kick start development of MaxV R2.

With MaxV R2, and its full integration of Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager, customers are able to configure custom virtual servers with a la carte pricing. In addition, customers are able to receive their custom MaxV R2 instance in up to 50% less time than with the initial MaxV offering. During maintenance windows, customers experience no downtime, with the advent of Live Migration in Hyper-V and Maintenance Mode in Virtual Machine Manager.

In addition to providing significantly improved services on the R2 platform, we have also been able to significantly reduce support costs. Our virtual machine provisioning code was decreased by over 75%. With clustered shared volumes and improved memory management in Windows Server 2008, consolidation ratios have increased by 10%. Power Management technologies, including Core Parking and Core Affinity, have also significantly reduced the power consumption of the MaxV infrastructure, lowering the costs of delivering the service, and decreasing environmental impact.

Ultimately, by leveraging the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit, and its regular updates, MaximumASP has been able to provide new products and services which meet the changing demands of the marketplace, while decreasing both product development and operating expenses.

MaximumASP was a pilot partner during the development of the DDTK-H, and is a charter member of the Dynamic Data Center Alliance.