New EMC information infrastructure solutions for Microsoft Hyper-V help customers accelerate journey to private cloud

EMC Corporation has announced new reference architectures, best practices and technology offerings based on EMC information infrastructure and Microsoft virtualisation environments - including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center - that provide customers with measureable steps to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

According to John Jordaan, Business Development Manager of EMC Southern Africa, with these new solutions from EMC, customers can deploy more flexible, resilient and protected Microsoft virtualisation environments and accelerate their respective journey to the private cloud.

“EMC solutions for Microsoft Hyper-V environments help customers meet their requirements to extract the highest value from their investments through optimised deployment, scalability, consolidation and protection within virtualised environments,” he says.

Dai Vu, Director of Solutions Marketing in the Windows Server and Cloud Division at Microsoft, says: “Customers need computing environments that can dynamically pool and allocate computer, network and storage resources so that their core applications can be deployed quickly and scaled to meet spikes in demand as they occur. By using technologies from EMC and Microsoft, customers can increase control and customisation, and scale efficiently to provide the agility required to deploy more projects to the cloud.”

Customers look to their virtualised environments to reach new heights in efficiency. To help bring this forth, EMC E-Lab architected a virtualised infrastructure that included EMC Symmetrix VMAX, Windows Server R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V, which proved to scale to support 1 024 virtual machines. In addition, EMC TimeFinder local storage replication was used to accelerate the deployment of virtual machines by up to 27 times faster than a scenario employing traditional network-based methods. This solution was validated through in-depth testing and analysis by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) Lab.

In addition, customers need to significantly consolidate resources needed for a broad deployment of Microsoft Exchange 2010. To address this, EMC, Cisco Systems and Microsoft collaborated to design and build a reference architecture modelled on a virtualised Storage Area Network (SAN) and based on EMC Unified Storage, EMC Virtual Provisioning, Cisco Unified Computing System, and Microsoft Hyper-V. The SAN proved to support more than 32 000 Microsoft Exchange users and consolidated server requirements by a 3-to-1 ratio compared to non-virtualised environments.

Furthermore, customers need to optimise performance and data protection for deployments of Microsoft Exchange 2010 within Microsoft Hyper-V environments. To help successfully guide them through this effort, EMC, Brocade, Dell and Microsoft combined efforts to create a reference architecture based on a multi-site, virtualised SAN that leveraged EMC storage, Dell servers, Brocade end-to-end network, and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. After deploying the new EMC Replication Enabler for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 storage-based replication, the reference architecture proved that 20 000 Microsoft Exchange users could be protected against data loss.

To complement these new solutions, EMC Global Services provides customers with a broad portfolio of consulting offerings that extend the value of Microsoft Hyper-V and optimise deployments to retain flexibility, control costs and enable future growth. Services include strategic design, planning, migration and deployment of Microsoft Exchange, Hyper-V, SQL Server, Windows Server and other platforms.

Brian Garrett, Vice-President, ESG Lab, Enterprise Strategy Group, says: “While a growing number of organisations have taken advantage of the tremendous efficiency and savings that can be realised with server virtualisation technology, broad-based adoption throughout the data centre often stalls due to a number of challenges, including scalability, reliability and ease of deployment. EMC Unified Storage and Microsoft Hyper-V server virtualisation technologies can be used to address all of these challenges and create a flexible and highly available virtual infrastructure.”

From the desktop to the data centre, new offerings from EMC can help simplify management and enhance identity protection within virtualised storage environments. For example, the new EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) helps IT administrators simplify management of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V environments of all sizes via integration with EMC CLARiiON and EMC Symmetrix storage systems. Customers can leverage VSI to efficiently view, map and migrate virtualised computers across an information infrastructure.

Also, the new integration of RSA SecurID two-factor authentication with Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) 2010 Service Pack 1 Direct Access enables customers to better protect user identities, information and infrastructures when remotely accessing physical or virtualised network resources.

This integrated secure access solution increases network protection for customers who have migrated to Windows 7 Enterprise and helps ensure users stay productive and secure wherever they may be.

“With the Digital Universe expanding by a factor of 44 over the next 10 years, organisations will be harder pressed than ever to effectively manage their data centres, maximise storage assets and meet service-level agreements,” Jordaan says. “EMC can help customers seize control of the information explosion and accelerate the cost, service-level, and agility benefits of a private cloud architecture by optimising EMC storage and Microsoft virtualisation environments.”