Microsoft® Integrated Virtualization

Whitepaper

Published: June 2010 (Version 1.0)

© 2010 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

For the latest information, visit http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization

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Contents

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 3

2. Virtualization Trends and Customer Needs ............................................................................................................... 3

3. Microsoft Virtualization Enables Dynamic IT ............................................................................................................. 4

4. How Microsoft® Virtualization Changes the Game ................................................................................................... 5

4.1 Microsoft Integrated Virtualization: From the Desktop and Datacenter, to the Cloud ...................................... 5

4.2 Microsoft Virtualization Key Benefits .................................................................................................................. 6

Better Value ......................................................................................................................................................... 6

Increased Availability ........................................................................................................................................... 6

Improved Business Agility ................................................................................................................................... 6

4.2 Top 5 Reasons to Choose Microsoft Virtualization .............................................................................................. 7

5. What Key Components Make Microsoft® Virtualization Unique?............................................................................. 8

5.1 Datacenter – Dynamic Foundation ...................................................................................................................... 8

5.2 Desktop – Flexible Access .................................................................................................................................. 10

Microsoft Optimized Desktop Virtualization Benefits ....................................................................................... 10

Windows® Optimized Desktop Virtualization Scenarios ................................................................................... 11

5.3 Cloud – Elastic Infrastructure ............................................................................................................................. 13

5.4 Integrated Management – Service Centric ........................................................................................................ 15

6. How Customers See Tangible Value ........................................................................................................................ 16

7. How to Get Started .................................................................................................................................................. 17

Related Resources ............................................................................................................................................. 17

8. Appendix - Deep Dive to Key Components ............................................................................................................. 18

8.1 Key Microsoft® Desktop Virtualization Technologies Explained ....................................................................... 18

8.2 DataCenter – What’s New in Windows Server® 2008 R2 .................................................................................. 19

Enhanced Storage and Cluster Support............................................................................................................. 22

Streamlined Process for Managing Host Upgrades ........................................................................................... 23

Other VMM 2008 R2 Enhancements ................................................................................................................. 23

8.3 Cloud Computing ............................................................................................................................................... 24

8.4 Unified Management – System Center .............................................................................................................. 26

Datacenter Management: ................................................................................................................................. 26

Client/Desktop Management: ........................................................................................................................... 27

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1. Introduction

Companies are under more pressure than ever to reduce costs while supporting business agility. More and more

businesses are turning toward virtualization as a means to lower costs, increase availability of their infrastructure, and

give end users improved services levels. Microsoft ®Virtualization solutions provide you with the way to optimize your IT

infrastructure by reducing costs, increasing availability, and improving agility responding to your fast changing business

needs. Microsoft Virtualization provides an approach to pooling and sharing of IT resources so IT Services can meet the

organizational demands moving organizations closer to Dynamic IT. Microsoft’s comprehensive approach — from the

desktop and datacenter, to the cloud— is unique to the industry by delivering solutions that address virtualization at the

hardware, application and management levels. Microsoft’s approach is not only one of the most comprehensive in the

market today, but it is also one of the most economical. This combination brings strategic advantage and cost savings to

an organization. This whitepaper:

1) Illustrates how Microsoft’s Virtualization solutions can help organizations move towards Dynamic IT and help

customers achieve the following benefits:

• Realize Better Business Value • Increase Availability • Improve Business Agility

2) Takes an in-depth look at Microsoft’s unique approach to virtualization and how it offers businesses a choice when

moving to a completely virtualized infrastructure from the desktop and datacenter, to the cloud. Microsoft Virtualization offers a comprehensive set of solutions through these four key components:

• Desktop • Datacenter • Management • Cloud

3) Provides customers with step-by-step guidance on how to get started through comprehensive resources.

2. Virtualization Trends and Customer Needs

Virtualization transforms how companies examine and deliver IT in their organization—how IT is managed, what is

purchased, how it is deployed, and how companies plan their IT strategy. Virtualization, along with integrated

management, allows IT to treat the applications they provide and consume as services instead of as distinct servers and

operating systems. In the datacenter, companies focus on how to best deliver these services to meet their customer

demands and guarantees (either within their own business or externally). At the desktop, IT departments are concerned

with providing the optimal experience for the end user in consuming the services they provide regardless of the user’s

location, what kind of connection they have, or what type of device is being used. With this service-centric view, IT will

need the integrated management capabilities Microsoft® provides, to simplify the operations and meet their Service

Level Agreements.

Server virtualization has gone main stream and has become a central tool to reduce hardware costs, improve server

management, and reduce datacenter power consumption. Server virtualization has enabled datacenter professionals to

automate many server tasks, such as the provisioning and configuration of the applications and the operating

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environments they run upon. Many IT shops have also begun to focus on enhancing desktop flexibility by evaluating and

deploying virtual desktop infrastructure. Alongside these trends, the emergence of cloud computing has become one of

the hottest topics in IT.

As IT departments strive to become more efficient, they need to provide their users and applications access to the

resources they need when they need them. Microsoft provides the most practical and comprehensive solutions in the

market today— from the desktop and datacenter, to the cloud—providing customers with a clear roadmap and vision

on how they can move toward Dynamic IT. With Microsoft’s Dynamic IT and cloud strategy, organizations can now move

forward with the confidence that the existing investments in their datacenter can be leveraged in the future.

3. Microsoft Virtualization Enables Dynamic IT

Microsoft’s® Dynamic IT Vision

Dynamic IT is Microsoft’s long-term strategy for providing critical technologies that enable IT and development

organizations to become more strategic to their business. It is Microsoft’s vision for what an agile business looks like—a

business where IT is able to meet the demands of a rapidly changing environment. The Dynamic IT strategy helps

businesses enhance the capability and efficiency of their people, processes, and IT infrastructure. It helps customers to

achieve continuous innovation with unified and virtualized, process-led and model-driven, user-focused, and service-

enabled IT infrastructure.

Microsoft Virtualization Is a Key Enabler for Dynamic IT

Microsoft Virtualization is a key component of Dynamic IT. It delivers an environment that helps organizations anticipate

and respond to the ever changing business challenges and opportunities, and is a key enabler for making IT more

dynamic and efficient. Microsoft Virtualization solutions help customers optimize IT structures to reduce costs, improve

application availability, and enhance business agility—enabling IT organizations to be more productive service providers

for their companies.

Virtualization is Not the End game—Virtualization Fuels Cloud Computing Trends

Virtualization is a crucial enabler for cloud computing (more specifically, for IaaS and PaaS). Given its importance and the

economies that are fueling this trend, Microsoft helps make cloud computing a reality. The consolidation of virtual

machine resources represents the next wave of change.

Cloud computing is changing the software landscape by presenting new ways to develop, deliver, and deploy

applications and IT services. This shift in thinking can help lead to a number of benefits, such as the ability to scale as

needed where you no longer need to buy for peak, reduce upfront costs in implementing new services and applications,

and be more responsive to changing market conditions. As a part of its Dynamic IT vision, Microsoft provides the broad

cloud strategy. Microsoft also offers a new service line to enable private clouds and a new offering for hosting partners

for enabling public clouds. Microsoft Cloud Computing—the natural evolution of and foundation for our Dynamic IT

vision—is designed to help you create a service-oriented infrastructure by combining a set of products, technologies,

and offerings with best practices and guidance, helping you along your journey from Private Cloud to Public Cloud.

Microsoft continues to evolve its Dynamic IT vision by delivering choices across a broad range of cloud computing

offerings.

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4. How Microsoft® Virtualization Changes the Game

4.1 Microsoft Integrated Virtualization: From the Desktop and Datacenter, to the Cloud

Microsoft Virtualization delivers a choice of end-to-end comprehensive solutions that organizations can use to move

forward with confidence as they increase their business flexibility and reduce IT costs. Microsoft differentiates

virtualization into three categories which, combined together, provide an end-to-end suite of virtualization products and

technologies all tied together by unique integrated management solutions.

Microsoft virtualization provides a dynamic foundation for your datacenter infrastructure. It allows an organization to

deliver dynamic resource allocations to services when needed, as well as reduce operating costs and improve service

levels. For Client side, the Windows® Optimized Desktop scenarios give your business the ability to choose the optimal

desktop experience that is best suited to your user’s needs. Employees can receive flexible access anytime, anywhere,

through any device with more productivity, while lowering the costs needed to manage and maintain these desktops.

Microsoft System Center gives you unparalleled integrated management functionality for your physical and virtual

environments all the way through the application layer, and is the only solution that lets you manage Hyper-V and

VMware virtual machines, through one console. Microsoft cloud technologies deliver the solutions that allow

enterprises to move towards a private cloud within their existing datacenters and enable the journey to public cloud.

With the Microsoft cloud strategy, you can now deploy cloud computing models with confidence. This new paradigm

will help you move towards Dynamic IT.

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4.2 Microsoft Virtualization Key Benefits

Better Value

In these current economic times, businesses are under increasing pressure to reduce costs and ensure the best return on investment possible. With Microsoft Virtualization, you can lower TCO by:

• Reducing power consumption and datacenter space

• Increasing hardware utilization

• Lowering upfront costs – including licensing fees

• Simplifying application and desktop lifecycle management

• Lowering operational costs for both maintenance and

training

• Leverage the skills already in place

• Utilize already purchased capabilities

Increased Availability

Microsoft Virtualization gives businesses the opportunity to increase the availability of services, thereby increasing end user satisfaction. With Microsoft Virtualization, you can increase availability by:

• Improving service levels

• Minimizing disruption to services

• Enhancing desktop business continuity

• Providing access to applications regardless of location

• Reducing application and user data deployment time

Improved Business Agility

Microsoft Virtualization helps your business become more flexible and adaptable. IT departments can provide the resources their organization needs when they need them, and improve business agility by:

• Integrating physical, virtual, and application management

• Accelerating responses to changing business needs

• Performing flexible desktop deployments

• Easily migrating to a new version of Windows®

• Providing capacity on demand

Fpweb.net saved $971,000 in

datacenter costs with an integrated virtualization solution

Swedish Medical Center saved more than $1 million in the first year alone on licensing and personnel-related tasks such as testing, deployment and associated helpdesk support

TUV Nord: In the event of a disaster, users can access their virtualized applications on-demand from other computers without major interruptions to their work

KIDC: By launching the Advanced Datacenter Virtualization solution, customers can create a dynamic infrastructure within their datacenters that can expand to meet demand

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4.2 Top 5 Reasons to Choose Microsoft Virtualization

# 1 Less Complexity with Unified Physical, Virtual, and Application Management

The more you virtualize the more complex your environment can become, and the more essential a comprehensive management system is to enabling a cost-effective, dynamic infrastructure. Microsoft System Center is a comprehensive solution that lets you easily manage you applications, physical machines, and provide both host and in-guest management of virtual machines—all through one integrated suite of tools. The combination of Hyper-V and System Center delivers critical insights into the virtual infrastructure at the application and service level, and tools to leverage that knowledge. Microsoft can manage your existing non-Microsoft virtual machines, as well as your Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines, through the same integrated system.

# 2 Better Value With the Same Amount of Investment

Microsoft Virtualization solutions are proven to save more money and cost less (often up to one-sixth less) than competitive products. These services help you dramatically lower TCO and realize the greatest ROI by streamlining many datacenter and desktop management tasks, and allowing you to take advantage of your existing Windows® expertise. With Microsoft Virtualization built into the Windows® environment, you don’t need to support an extra layer or pay a virtualization tax.

# 3 Enhanced Agility and Competitiveness

Cost savings alone would not be reason enough to make the switch if Microsoft Virtualization did not provide all the customer-required capabilities and deliver substantial business advantages. For virtualization to significantly impact your business, it must span your enterprise. With the Microsoft System Center suite of integrated solutions, there is no added complexity when it comes to end-to-end management.

# 4 Proven Built-in Virtualization

Microsoft built virtualization directly into the operating system with Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V and into the

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management platform with Microsoft System Center. With Microsoft, your virtualized infrastructure consists of the three computing layers you already have: hardware, operating system, and applications. Virtualization is simply a role within Windows®. When you use Microsoft Virtualization solutions, your IT team already has the knowledge and tools needed to administer a virtualized environment. You do not need to manage an extra layer and pay a virtualization tax to get the functionality you require.

# 5 Comprehensive Solutions Fueling Cloud Computing and Dynamic IT

Because Microsoft is a platform company, not a niche vendor, we have the broadest view of a virtualized infrastructure and the most extensive portfolio of proven virtualization solutions, including Windows Server® 2008 R2 with Hyper-V, Windows® Virtual PC, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, Terminal Services, Microsoft Application Virtualization, and the Microsoft System Center family—the heart of the whole solution. We address all aspects of the infrastructure—servers, applications and desktops—and enable you to easily manage whole virtualization stacks. With the breadth of Microsoft solutions from the desktop to datacenter, you can create the virtualized environment that best suits your business.

5. What Key Components Make Microsoft® Virtualization Unique?

5.1 Datacenter – Dynamic Foundation

IT Organizations must provide efficient use of IT resources and provide the Services their business units require. Microsoft’s datacenter virtualization solutions provide a fluid pool of resources managed through the virtualization platform that can dynamically reallocate services and applications between servers, automatically. The benefit is increased server utilization, reduced operating costs, and improved service levels.

More than Saving Costs and Increasing Utilization

With Microsoft Datacenter Virtualization a company can decrease costs and increase utilization through server consolidation, allowing IT to take many physical servers that are not efficiently using their resources and consolidate them down to a much smaller pool of physical servers which now utilize the infrastructure very efficiently. Once these virtualized environments are stored on a shared storage device, like a Fibrechannel or iSCSI SAN, companies can gain the agility of allowing the resources to dynamically shift between the physical infrastructures as the resource needs change.

Applications Get the Resources They Need When They Need Them

When you couple the Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V platform’s dynamic capabilities together with the health and performance monitoring capabilities of System Center, you can now reallocate resources automatically on the fly.

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Hyper-V utilizes a technique called Live Migration to move a workload from one physical server to another with no interruption of service. System Center will monitor the applications through PRO (or Performance Resource Optimizations) enabled Management Packs. These Microsoft or Partner created PRO Management Packs can monitor specific elements of the infrastructure whether it is the physical hardware, the virtualization layer, or the applications and services. As the health of the monitored element changes, the PRO enabled management pack will take action on the Virtualization Layer or the infrastructure to resolve the issue. This enables applications to get the resources they need when they need them and can redistribute resources evenly.

Transparent Monitoring Throughout the Entire Virtualization Stack

The integrated management capabilities of Microsoft System Center helps lower the costs of delivering datacenter services through integrated, end-to-end management of physical and virtual environments. Customers are able to standardize their datacenter management environment for significantly lower costs than competitive solutions while implementing best practices that can deliver thousands of dollars of operational savings each year. This is delivered through simplified management of the datacenter via an integrated set of tools that automate server management and optimize the use of server and datacenter resources. For example, Pro Tips provides the capability to monitor the entire virtualization stack—not only monitoring the virtual layer, but also the physical and application layers inside. System Center with PRO Tips provides the capability to react according to triggers in the virtualized environment like resource usage, response latency, or storage capacity. When PRO Tips are enacted, System Center Virtual Machine Manager will take action on the virtualized environment. Virtual Machine Manger may move a VM to another box, or deploy a new virtual environment, or perhaps dynamically expand a LUN. These capabilities help to dynamically redistribute resources evenly, or correct current hardware conditions, and make decisions about how the resources should be leveraged.

Site Recovery

Working together with partners, Microsoft provides unique site recovery solutions. Organizations can utilize virtualization to decrease the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for a Site Recovery Plan. With a virtualization implementation being low in cost, Organizations can provide site recovery capabilities to more applications and services than they could before. By utilizing multi-site clustering, Microsoft site recovery solutions can support the capabilities that allow the desired VMs to move over to another site in case of a site failure. When the site failure has been resolved you can simply resynchronize the data back to the original site and then fail the workloads back to the primary site through either long distance live migration, or failing back the cluster node, simplifying the failback process.

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5.2 Desktop – Flexible Access

Microsoft® desktop virtualization encompasses a broad set of solutions that empower companies to address their

unique business, IT, and end user challenges while preserving their existing IT infrastructure investments. With offerings

to virtualize the application, data, and Windows® operating system (OS) layers, companies can choose the technologies

that allow them to best optimize and manage their desktop infrastructure.

Customers new to desktop virtualization may begin by virtualizing applications and user and data settings to help

immediately reduce operational costs and standardize the desktop environment. Upon laying that foundation, they can

then evaluate the desktop virtualization technologies at the OS layer. These solutions are particularly valuable for

increasing business flexibility by introducing new deployment methods.

Microsoft Optimized Desktop Virtualization Benefits

Microsoft provides customized optimized desktop scenarios depending on different business requirements for balancing

user flexibility and centralized control. You can reduce TCO by implementing application and user state virtualization. If

you are pursuing agility then remote desktop services and virtual desktop infrastructure are the right solutions for you.

But keep in mind that desktop virtualization does not solve all your desktop issues and must be coupled with a strong

management strategy.

Microsoft’s client virtualization solutions completely align with your business requirements to:

• Reduce desktop TCO with Application Virtualization

• Increase Business Agility with Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

• Streamline IT Management with System Center and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP)

The Windows® Optimized Desktop Scenarios give your business the ability to choose what is best for your particular user

needs. Through virtualization, employees can access their applications and data in a way that is optimized for the

specific device they are connecting through. They can now receive anytime, anywhere, through any device access

allowing them to be more productive while lowering the cost to manage and maintain these desktops. On the IT side,

virtualization accelerates deployment of new capabilities (like application or OS upgrades). It also helps reduce

application testing and compatibility issues and simplifies disaster recovery and compliance.

Deliver Essential Capabilities

• Reduce Total Cost of Ownership

• Increase Business Agility/Continuity

• Enable Anywhere Access

• Improve Security and Compliance

• Allow Anywhere Access for Users

• Provides a Comprehensive set of Solutions from Datacenter to Desktop

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Leverage the Platform You Own

• Choice of solutions for your business needs

o Leveraging the software you already own, you can create business solutions for the challenges you face

o With a Windows® software agreement you may already own the ability to upgrade to Windows® 7 and

all the virtualization benefits it provides

o If you own Windows Server® 2008, you own Virtualization

• Preserve your existing investment

o You have already made an investment in your infrastructure. With the tools you already own, you can

begin to take advantage of Microsoft Virtualization, and begin to see the benefits Virtualization

provides.

Integrated Management

Whether on the desktop to provide the optimal experience for accessing your services, the datacenter to provide the

services to your organization, or into the cloud which provides an elastic scalable infrastructure, Microsoft’s integrated

management solutions give you visibility into your environment while increasing your capability to respond to ever

changing business requirements. System Center delivers the integrated management tools necessary for managing

physical and virtual environments through a single console.

o Provides the ability to deliver users targeted physical and virtual applications, software updates, and

other configuration management services

o Features integrated incident awareness, response, problem tracking, helpdesk support, remediation,

recovery, and reporting across physical and virtual PCs and applications

o Offers centralized policy-based management

Windows® Optimized Desktop Virtualization Scenarios

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Data & User Settings

Enable users to

access their data from

anywhere, at any time

Microsoft User State Virtualization ( For All Desktops ) o Let’s users access their data and settings from anywhere, at any time o Provides easier recovery from PC failure and theft o Simplifies IT management of user data and settings

Applications

Deliver applications on

demand to users.

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) or RemoteApp (For All Desktops)

o Helps deliver immediate cost savings o Provides maximum flexibility for users by making applications available from

anywhere, at any time o While both App-V and RemoteApp host applications remotely, applications

delivered with RemoteApp appear to be running side-by-side with local applications

Operation Systems

Deploy a single image

across physical and

virtual environments

Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

with Remote Desktop Services (RDS)

(For Connected Desktops Where Personalization is Important) o Gives users anywhere access to their personalized Windows-based desktops,

hosted in the datacenter o Increases security and data protection, while also improving business agility and

continuity o Can be particularly effective for providing a managed desktop to unmanaged

devices

Centralizing desktop management for remote locations

Task worker scenarios

Desktops that demand high levels of security and compliance

Session Virtualization* with Remote Desktop Services

(For Connected Desktops Where Personalization is Not Important)

o Delivers session-based desktops or applications in high-density situations o Works for low complexity or task worker scenarios o Requires less hardware and server management than VDI

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V)

( For Connected Desktops with App-OS Compatibility Issues )

o Enables companies to deploy Windows 7-based desktops without having to worry about application compatibility

o Runs applications locally in a Windows XP-based Virtual PC o Provides companies with the ability to run two operating systems on one device,

adding virtual image delivery, policy-based provisioning, and centralized management

* Formally known as Terminal Services

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5.3 Cloud – Elastic Infrastructure

As an organization’s needs change, or if an organization needs elastic capacity rapidly, they can turn to Cloud technologies to get those resources. Cloud Services provide an on-demand infrastructure that can offer IT as a service or capacity on demand according to business requirements. Cloud computing means flexibility and agility through highly automated infrastructure, applications, management, and security. Microsoft cloud computing is never an all-or-nothing decision – you can deploy deeply integrated solutions on-premises, in the cloud, or in combination. And cloud computing can help you better manage your IT costs to adapt to shrinking budgets, at the same time reducing environmental impact and creating more time for IT staff to focus on critical projects. This offering will provide customers with architecture and deployment guidance and best practices for enabling the foundation for private clouds, and help customers move along the path to create agile and dynamic IT environments.

Microsoft Cloud Continuum

Microsoft provides products, technologies, and offerings around two types of clouds—each based on the concept of being highly virtualized, managed in a consistent manner, with dynamic and elastic scalability, and focused on service delivery.

• Private Cloud: An internal service-oriented environment optimized for performance and cost, and deployed

within a customer’s datacenter. It is powered by packaged server products, including Windows Server® and

System Center products, and provides compatibility with existing applications.

• Public Cloud: Provided by service providers, public cloud offers customers the ability to deploy and consume

services. In this category, Azure™ is a highly scalable services platform providing pay–as-you-go flexibility

delivered from Microsoft datacenters.

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Microsoft’s Cloud Computing Offerings

Microsoft Cloud Computing offers:

• A flexible and familiar infrastructure with a consistent Windows-based platform across clouds, reducing your

development and deployment.

• Integrated resource fabrics that enable the ability to federate services across clouds, ensuring you have the

capacity and resources you need to deliver your business requirements.

• The agility to develop applications and services once, and then deploy them in and across any cloud

environment, allowing you to rapidly respond to new requirements and business change.

By providing tools that enable customers to manage their fabric and deliver services, Microsoft is providing customers the foundation for cloud computing.

Journey to the Cloud

Today customers can begin their journey to the private cloud by deploying the Microsoft products and technologies they know and trust. The flexible and familiar platform and tools you use today will be the foundation for your private cloud infrastructure. As we enable our customers on this path, Microsoft will deliver the technologies that allow enterprises to build a private cloud within their existing datacenters based on enhancements to Windows Server® and System Center. Microsoft is enabling customers to build the foundation for a private cloud infrastructure using Windows Server® and System Center products with the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit.

Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit

The Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit (DDTK) is a free, partner-extensible toolkit that will enable datacenters to dynamically pool, allocate, and manage resources to enable IT as a service. Whether you are an enterprise customer, a systems integrator, or an independent software vendor, the toolkit will help you create agile, virtualized IT infrastructures. This turnkey solution provides:

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• Customer/business unit on-boarding • Automation and guidance • Dynamic provisioning engine • Self-service portal • Batch creation of VM’s

The Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Hosting Providers (DDTK-H) helps hosters deliver their services built on Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V™ and Microsoft System Center. The toolkit contains guidance to help you establish appropriate service level agreements (SLAs) and create portals that your customers can use to directly provision, manage, and monitor their infrastructure. The DDTH-H enables hosters to build an ongoing relationship with customers while you scale business with these resources:

• Step-by-step instructions and technical best practices to provision and manage a reliable, secure, and scalable datacenter

• Customizable marketing material you can use to help your customers take advantage of these new solutions • Sample code and demos to use in your deployment

5.4 Integrated Management – Service Centric

Virtualization is important, but without a comprehensive management solution, an IT organization will not be able to progress up to and attain Dynamic IT. Microsoft provides a comprehensive management solution that not only manages both physical and virtual resources, but also has the ability to monitor and manage the application layer. Microsoft Virtualization technologies enable your business to optimize its assets, centrally managing both your physical

and virtual resources across multiple hypervisors down to the application level. Virtual machines are not simply objects

to manipulate, but actual computers with real workloads. Managing them, just like managing physical systems, is

imperative. By using Microsoft System Center—a comprehensive set of integrated management tools—you can keep

complexity at a minimum and streamline operations. A common management environment reduces training, ensures

uniform policy application, and simplifies maintenance by leveraging your existing software, personnel, and most

importantly, your existing IT management process. Microsoft System Center offers management solutions for both the

dynamic datacenter and dynamic desktop.

Datacenter Management—Integrated management of physical and virtual, and applications

Microsoft System Center Solutions for datacenter management enable datacenter managers to optimize resources, improve the visibility of IT assets and issues, and meet service levels, all while decreasing costs. Today’s datacenters require more processing power to meet the data and computing needs of the enterprise, while at the same time facing resource constraints. Only Microsoft provides both host and in-guest management of all virtual machines. The combination of Hyper-V and

System Center delivers critical insights into the virtual infrastructure at the application and service levels, and tools to

leverage that knowledge. One of the features that enable this is Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) in Virtual

Machine Manager. It allows optimization at both the host and application levels. This is critical because managing virtual

machines from an application perspective is needed to ensure a reliable, high-performing environment. For years,

Microsoft has invested in inventory, deployment, and monitoring management infrastructure tools. Service Manager

integrates and orchestrates the people process, knowledge, and technology across the Microsoft platform.

Client/Desktop Management - Deliver services with compliance and lower costs

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Microsoft System Center desktop solutions enable IT to empower users by streamlining the connection of any authorized user to any application, regardless of their location or connectivity. These solutions allow users to run their applications by managing the delivery of locally installed traditional, virtualized, and streamed applications, as well as remote-execution terminal services and virtual desktop infrastructures, through a unified system that provides both secure access and the consistent, optimized performance users expect.

6. How Customers See Tangible Value

Microsoft Virtualization offers significant advantages and having seen this, many customers are moving from other

virtualization providers to Microsoft. Following is a sampling of customers that have switched to Microsoft Virtualization

and have taken advantage of the substantial cost savings. Plus, with extensive, integrated management of

heterogeneous environments, customers can run their infrastructure much more efficiently and effectively.

Customer Industry Location In Their Own Words

Avanade Software United States “Hyper-V was significantly more cost effective than those VMware licenses we had used for our test and development environment. Hyper-V also had more than enough performance, scalability, and reliability for our needs.”

Fpweb.net Hosting United States “Virtualization was intended to reduce costs in the datacenter, so we could pass on the savings to customers in the form of competitive pricing. With VMware, we would face an upfront licensing cost of $100,800, adding to our operational expenses and putting pressure on our pricing. By comparison, when we licensed Windows Server®, Hyper-V was included for free.”

Mamut Software Norway “We will be able to support our entire virtual landscape through Microsoft, which already supports the rest of our datacenter. Hyper-V fits better into our Microsoft and simplifies our IT strategy

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by enabling us to work with as few vendors as possible.”

PoundHost Hosting United Kingdom

“We’ve doubled virtual-machine sales with our Hyper-V offering, plus operating costs are lower because Hyper-V is so much less expensive than VMware…. Our profitability has increased by 55 percent.”

University of Miami

Education United States “When we compared Microsoft and VMware from cost, integration, and companion product perspectives, it was clear that Microsoft delivered a much better value than VMware.”

Workplace Safety and Insurance

Health Insurance

Canada “Using Hyper-V, we’ll get better results and avoid having to spend $300,000 in licensing.”

7. How to Get Started

If you want to understand how Microsoft virtualization can help your organization, just follow these four easy steps:

Related Resources

For more information on Microsoft Virtualization solutions and products you can visit the following resources: Microsoft Virtualization Solutions http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization Product Resources: Windows Server® 2008 R2

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http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/default.aspx

Microsoft System Center http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/default.aspx Virtualization Assessment and Planning: ROI Calculator https://roianalyst.alinean.com/msft/AutoLogin.do?d=307025591178580657

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Tool: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb977556.aspx

8. Appendix - Deep Dive to Key Components

8.1 Key Microsoft® Desktop Virtualization Technologies Explained

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) Enterprise IT infrastructures are increasingly complex to manage. The MDOP is a dynamic desktop solution that is available as a subscription for Software Assurance customers. The solution suite enhances application deployment and compatibility, increases IT responsiveness and end user uptime, and helps reduce TCO of your desktop software and IT management. MDOP employs six innovative technologies to increase desktop manageability, reduce TCO, and improve overall infrastructure satisfaction:

1. Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) turns applications into centrally managed services that are never installed, never conflict, and are streamed on-demand to end users.

2. Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) provides deployment and management of virtual PC images to enable key enterprise scenarios, primarily resolving application compatibility with a new version of Windows®.

3. Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) enhances the governance and control over Group Policy through robust change management, versioning, and role-based administration.

4. Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) reduces downtime by accelerating troubleshooting, repair, and data recovery of unbootable Windows-based desktops.

5. Microsoft System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) provides insights into application and operating system failures, allowing helpdesk to be more proactive in managing PC problems, without installing an agent to the endpoint.

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Application Virtualization (App-V) Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) transforms applications into centrally-managed virtual services that are never installed and don’t conflict with other applications App-V allows applications to be streamed on-demand over the Internet or via the corporate network to desktops, terminal servers, and laptops. It automates and simplifies the application management lifecycle by significantly reducing regression and application interoperability testing. It can accelerate operating systems and application deployments by reducing the image footprint and reduces the end user impacts associated with application upgrades/patching and terminations. No reboots required, no waiting for applications to install, and no need to uninstall when retiring an application. It also enables controlled application use when users are completely disconnected Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) MED-V is a core component of the MDOP for Software Assurance. It enables the deployment and management of Microsoft Virtual PC Windows® desktops to address key enterprise scenarios and helps enterprises upgrade to the latest version of Windows®, even when some applications are not functional or supported. MED-V builds on top of virtual PC to run two operating systems on one device, adding virtual image delivery, policy-based provisioning, and centralized management. Remote Desktop Services (RDS) RDS makes it possible to run an application, or an entire desktop, in one location but have it be controlled in another. With RDS, it is possible to install and manage session-based desktops and applications, or virtual-machine based desktops on centralized servers in the datacenter; screen images are delivered to the users and the users' client machines, in turn, send keystrokes and mouse movements back to the server. When using Remote Desktop Services, administrators can present users with an entire desktop environment, or with their individual applications and data which they require to complete their task. From a user perspective, these applications are integrated seamlessly—looking, feeling, and behaving like local applications. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) VDI is one of the many Optimized Desktop scenarios offered by Microsoft to help organizations optimize their IT infrastructure. It is a comprehensive set of Microsoft and partner technologies, enabling centralization of desktops, applications and data. VDI from Microsoft provides Enterprise IT with integrated management of physical, virtual and session based desktops, centralization of user data, and improved application delivery. End users benefit from a rich, remote experience, highly secure and flexible access to their information, and increased business continuity. Virtual desktop infrastructure benefits non-mobile workers in enterprises that have sophisticated and mature IT departments. It is best suited for contract and offshore workers, users who need access to corporate desktops and applications, and for users that work from home occasionally and whose primary desktop is covered by a corporate license. Key benefits of VDI include:

• Improved flexibility, enhancing work scenarios such as work from home and hot-desking

• Improved business continuity through data centralization

• Integrated management of physical, virtual, and session-based desktops

8.2 DataCenter – What’s New in Windows Server® 2008 R2

Windows Server® 2008 R2 delivers valuable new functionality and powerful improvements to the core Windows Server® operating system to help organizations of all sizes increase control, availability, and flexibility for their changing business

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needs. New Web tools, virtualization technologies, scalability enhancements, and management utilities help save time, reduce costs, and provide a solid foundation for your information technology infrastructure. From a virtualization perspective Windows Server® 2008 R2 introduces a new version of Hyper-V, which offers organization increased operating efficiencies allowing organization to dramatically reduce operation effort and power consumption. Core areas of improvement as follows:

Better Flexibility Live Migration Hyper-V in Windows Server® 2008 R2 includes the much-anticipated live migration feature, which allows you to move a virtual machine between two virtualization host servers without any interruption of service. Hyper-V live migration is integrated with Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. With it you can move running VMs from one Hyper-V physical host to another without any disruption of service or perceived downtime. Moving running VMs without downtime using Hyper-V live migration:

• Provides better agility. Datacenters with multiple Hyper-V physical hosts can move running VMs to the best

physical computer for performance, scaling, or optimal consolidation without affecting users.

• Reduces costs and increases productivity. Datacenters with multiple Hyper-V physical hosts can service those

systems in a controlled fashion, scheduling maintenance during regular business hours. Live migration makes it

possible to keep VMs online, even during maintenance, increasing productivity for users and server

administrators. Datacenters can also reduce power consumption by dynamically increasing consolidation ratios

and powering off un-used physical hosts during lower demand times.

Cluster Shared Volumes With Windows Server® 2008 R2, Hyper-V uses Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) storage to simplify and enhance shared storage usage. CSV enables multiple Windows Servers to access SAN storage using a single consistent namespace for all volumes on all hosts. Multiple hosts can access the same Logical Unit Number (LUN) on SAN storage. CSV enables faster live migration and easier storage management for Hyper-V when used in a cluster configuration. Cluster Shared Volumes are available as part of the Windows® Failover Clustering feature of Windows Server® 2008 R2.

Quick Storage Migration Windows® Hyper-V R2 Quick storage migration allows the transfer a VM’s storage from one location to another while the VM remains online during most of the storage migration process.

Hot Add/Remove of Storage Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V supports hot plug-in and hot removal of storage. By supporting the addition or removal of Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) files and pass-through disks while a VM is running, Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V makes it possible to reconfigure VMs quickly to meet changing workload requirements. This feature allows the addition and removal of both VHD files and pass-through disks to existing SCSI controllers for VMs.

Processor Compatibility Mode Hyper-V R2 also includes a new processor compatibility feature. Processor compatibility allows you to move a virtual machine up and down multiple processor generations from the same vendor. When a VM is started with processor compatibility mode enabled, Hyper-V normalizes the processor feature set and only exposes guest visible processor features that are available on all Hyper-V enabled processors of the same processor architecture, i.e., AMD or Intel. This allows the VM to be migrated to any hardware platform of the same processor architecture. Processor features are "hidden" by the hypervisor by intercepting a VM's CPUID instruction and clearing the returned bits corresponding to the hidden features.

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Boot from VHD In Windows Server® 2008 R2, you can deploy virtual hard disk (.vhd) images of Windows Server® 2008 R2 to a physical (not virtual) computer using Windows® Deployment Services. In general, you deploy .vhd images in the same way that you deploy .wim images. However, using WDSUTIL at the command line is the only supported method of adding and configuring the images. In addition, the deployment must be part of an automated installation.

Improved Performance Improved Memory Management Hardware Improvements allows for up to 256 logical processors, which takes advantage of AMD and Intel Page Tables on their CPU's, allowing for much improved memory management. TCP Offload Support (VM Chimney) VM Chimney allows a VM to dump its network processing load onto the NIC of the host computer. This works the same as in a physical TCP offload scenario; Hyper-V now simply extends this functionality into the virtual world. This benefits both CPU and overall network throughput performance, and it is fully supported by Live Migration.

VM Chimney is disabled by default in Windows Server® 2008 R2, primarily for short-term hardware compatibility reasons. But combined with compatible hardware, currently including vendors like Intel, VM Chimney significantly reduces the host server’s CPU burden when dealing with VM network traffic. This translates into better host system performance and a simultaneous boost to VM network throughput.

Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) Support Network adapters that support the VMQ feature are able to create a unique network queue for each virtual network adapter and then connect that queue directly to the virtual machine’s memory. This connection routes packets directly from the hypervisor to the virtual machine, bypassing much of the processing in the virtualization stack.

Improved Networking The new Hyper-V leverages several new networking technologies contained in Windows Server® 2008 R2 to improve overall VM networking performance. Two key examples are the new VM Chimney (also called TCP Offload) and the use of Jumbo Frames.

Greater Scalability At 64 logical processor support Hyper-V in Windows Server® 2008 R2 now supports up to 64 logical processors in the host processor pool. This is a significant upgrade from previous versions and allows not only greater VM density per host, but also gives IT administrators more flexibility in assigning CPU resources to VMs.

Enhance Green IT with Core Parking Windows Server® 2008 R2 reduces processor power consumption in server computers with multicore processors by using a feature known as Core Parking. The Core Parking feature allows Windows Server® 2008 R2 to consolidate processing onto the fewest number of possible processor cores, and suspends inactive processor cores. Why Use System Center Server Management Suite Datacenter (SMSD)? SMSD provides a cost effective way to comprehensively manage highly virtualized environments. System Center SMSD is licensed per processor and provides rights to manage unlimited operating system environments per device. A minimum of two processors must be licensed for each server device covered with System Center SMSD. System Center SMSD is recommended for licensing highly virtualized environments as it provides a comprehensive end-to-end management

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solution that includes the Enterprise Server management licenses for Operations Manager 2007 R2, Configuration Manager 2007 R2, Data Protection Manager 2007, Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, the Management Server license for Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, and rights to manage an unlimited number of operating system environments. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (VMM 2008)

VMM 2008 is a comprehensive management solution for managing virtualized infrastructure running on Windows Server® 2008 with Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2, and VMware ESX through Virtual Center. VMM 2008 R2, the next version of VMM, which leverages new platform enhancements and extends the feature set of VMM 2008. Highlighted below are the most important new and significantly enhanced features in the VMM 2008 R2: Support for New Features of Windows Server® 2008 R2 Live Migration: Seen through the VMM console, Live Migration enables administrators to move a virtual machine between clustered hosts in a way that is completely transparent to users connected to the virtual machine. This allows administrators greater flexibility in responding to planned downtime and provides higher machine availability. The basic requirements for Live Migration are that all hosts must be part of a Windows Server® 2008 R2 failover cluster and host processors must be from the same manufacturer. Additionally all hosts in the cluster must have access to shared storage. No changes are required to existing virtual machines, network, or storage devices in moving from Quick Migration to Live Migration other than upgrading to Windows Server® 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2.

Hot Addition/Removal of Storage: Allows the addition and removal of storage to virtualized infrastructure without interruption. Additionally, "live” management of virtual hard disk (VHDs) or iSCSI pass through disks, allows administrators to take advantage of additional backup scenarios and readily use mission critical and storage-intensive applications.

New Optimized Networking Technologies: VMM 2008 R2 supports two new networking technologies—Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney—providing increased network performance while creating less of a CPU burden. NICs that support VMQ, create a unique virtual network queue for each virtual machine on a host that can pass network packets directly from the hypervisor to the virtual machine. This increases throughput as it bypasses much of the processing normally required by the virtualization stack. With TCP Chimney, TCP/IP traffic can be offloaded to a physical NIC on the host computer reducing CPU load and improving network performance.

Enhanced Storage and Cluster Support

Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV): Provides a single, consistent storage space that allows hosts in a cluster to concurrently access virtual machine files on a single shared logical unit number (LUN). CSV eliminates the previous one virtual machine per LUN restriction and coordinates the use of storage with much greater efficiency and higher performance. CSV enables the Live Migration of virtual machines without impacting other virtual machines sharing the same LUN. Enabling CSV on failover clusters is straightforward; many storage configuration complexities prior to CSV have now been eliminated.

SAN Migration into and out of Clustered Hosts: This allows virtual machines to migrate into and out of clusters using a SAN transfer, which saves the time required for copying the virtual machine file over the network.

Expanded Support for iSCSI SANs: Previously, only one LUN could be bound to a single iSCSI target whereas now – with support now built into VMM 2008 R2 – multiple LUNS can be mapped to a single iSCSI target. This provides broader industry support for iSCSI SANs allowing customers more flexibility in choosing storage providers and iSCSI SAN options.

Storage Migration: Quick Storage Migration enables migration of a VM’s storage both within the same host and across hosts while the VM is running with a minimum of downtime, typically less than 2 minutes. VMM 2008 R2 also supports

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VMware storage vMotion which allows the storage of a VMware VM to be transferred while the VM remains on the same host with no downtime.

Rapid Provisioning: Allows administrators to take advantage of SAN provider technologies to clone a LUN containing a VHD and present it to the host while still utilizing the VMM template so the OS customization and IC installation can be applied.

Support for Third Party CFS: For users requiring a true clustered file system, VMM 2008 R2 supports third party file systems by detecting CFS disks and allows for deploying multiple VMs per LUN.

Support for Veritas Volume Manager VMM 2008 R2 recognizes Veritas Volume Manager disks as a cluster disk resource.

Streamlined Process for Managing Host Upgrades

Maintenance Mode: Allows administrators to apply updates or perform maintenance on a host server by safely evacuating all virtual machines to other hosts on a cluster. Maintenance mode can be configured to use Live Migration to move the virtual machines or can put the workloads into a saved state to be safely reactivated when maintenance or upgrades are complete. Maintenance mode is enabled for all supported hypervisor platforms on Windows Server® 2008 R2.

Other VMM 2008 R2 Enhancements

Support of Disjoint Domains: Reduces the complexity of reconciling host servers with differing domain names in Active Directory and DNS. In these situations, VMM 2008 R2 automatically creates a custom service principal name (SPN) configured in both AD and DNS allowing for successful authentication.

Use of Defined Port Groups with VMware Virtual Center: On installation, VMM 2008 R2 will present available port groups for VMM’s use with VMware vCenter thus allowing administrators to maintain control over which port groups are used.

Queuing of Live Migrations: This feature enables users to do multiple Live Migrations without keeping track of other Live Migrations that are happening within the cluster. Detects when a Live Migration will fail due to another Live Migration already in progress and queues the request for later.

Host Compatibility Checks: VM migration requires host hardware to be compatible; this feature provides a deep check for compatibility using Hyper-V and VMware compatibility check APIs. Administrators can check if the source host is compatible with the destination host before performing a migration and finding out the VM cannot start on the new host. A related feature makes a VM compatible by turning off certain CPU features which makes the VM compatible with the hosts in the cluster

PRO Tips Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO), a feature of Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), ties specific alerts from System Center Operations Manager 2007 to remediation actions in VMM. For example, you might perform load-balancing of virtual machines between physical hosts when specific thresholds are exceeded, such as transactions per second, CPU utilization, e-mail message delivery SLA, and so on. Alternatively, you might want to migrate virtual machines when a hardware failure is detected (for example, a fan failure). VMM 2008 requires Operations Manager 2007 with Service Pack 1 (SP1). VMM 2008 R2 requires either Operations Manager 2007 SP1 or Operations Manager 2007 R2. PRO uses the management pack infrastructure of Operations Manager. When a PRO monitor in a PRO-enabled management pack identifies an opportunity for optimization, a PRO tip is generated in VMM. The PRO tip can include a

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remediation script that is to be run in VMM. A VMM administrator can manually approve and implement PRO tips, or the VMM administrator can configure PRO to automatically implement PRO tips. Use the PRO Tips window to view active PRO tips for the host groups that you administer. To ensure a consistent monitoring experience, the Operations console for Operations Manager also displays the corresponding alerts. The VMM 2008 Management Pack, included in the program files for VMM 2008, provides a basic set of PRO monitors that detect situations in which migrating virtual machines or changing a virtual machine configuration can optimize the performance of a host or a virtual machine. The management pack was updated for VMM 2008 R2; customers of VMM 2008 R2 should import the VMM 2008 R2 Management Pack, which is also downloaded with the program files.

8.3 Cloud Computing

Private Cloud With the Microsoft cloud strategy, organizations can now move towards cloud computing models with the confidence that their existing investments in their datacenter are safe, and can be leveraged in this new paradigm. Existing applications and services will be able to move to the private cloud without the need to learn unproven technologies, or introduce unnecessary complexity. At the same time Microsoft will evolve its private cloud offerings by bringing learning and technology from running Microsoft’s global datacenters and the Windows® Azure™ platform.

The Microsoft Private Cloud enables:

• Management of the datacenter fabric as a single pool of resources.

• Delivery of scalable applications and workloads.

• Focus on the management of the datacenter service and its dependencies.

The Journey to the Private Cloud Today, customers can begin their journey to the private cloud by deploying the Microsoft products and technologies they know and trust. The flexible and familiar platform and tools you use today will be the foundation for your private cloud. As we enable our customers on this path, Microsoft will deliver the technologies that allow enterprises to build private cloud within their existing datacenters based on enhancements to Windows Server® and System Center. Microsoft is enabling customers to build the foundation for a private cloud infrastructure using Windows Server® and System Center family of products with the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Enterprises (availability scheduled in the first half of 2010). The Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Enterprises is a free, partner-extensible toolkit that will enable datacenters to dynamically pool, allocate, and manage resources to enable IT as a service. Whether you are an enterprise customer, a systems integrator, or an independent software vendor, the toolkit will help you create agile, virtualized IT infrastructures. You will receive:

• Tested guidance and best practices to help configure and deploy a private cloud infrastructure

• Automated web portals and a light provisioning engine that are tightly integrated with System Center products

• Guidance to help partners easily extend their solutions/services functionality

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Public Cloud Public Cloud provided by service providers offers customers the ability to deploy and consume services. In this category, Azure™ is a highly scalable services platform providing pay–as-you-go flexibility delivered from Microsoft’s datacenters. Windows® Azure™ is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Azure™ Services Platform. Windows® Azure™ provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft datacenters. Use Windows® Azure™ to:

• Add Web service capabilities to existing packaged applications

• Build, modify, and distribute applications to the Web with minimal on-premises resources

• Perform services (large-volume storage, batch processing, intense or large-volume computations, etc.) off

premises

• Create, test, debug, and distribute Web services quickly and inexpensively

• Reduce costs of building and extending on-premises resources

• Reduce the effort and costs of IT management

Microsoft Cloud Continuum

Benefits include:

• Choice: Windows® Azure™ reduces obstacles to creating reliable and scalable web applications because it is

based on, and works with familiar Microsoft technology including ASP.NET, IIS, FastCGI, .NET Full Trust,

P/Invoke, and Visual Studio 2008—so developers can use their existing skills to efficiently create, test, deploy,

and manage web services. Windows® Azure™ supports standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, XML,

and PHP.

• Low Risk: Windows® Azure™ provides a scalable platform and a rich development environment that allows

developers to focus on the business logic of the application, without worrying about operational constraints.

• Fewer Distractions: The Fabric Controller technology in Windows® Azure™ enables you to scale applications

seamlessly, as demand rises and falls. The built-in management services give monitoring and tracing

capabilities, and allow you to stay focused on what you do best—creating and delivering services and

applications online.

Public Cloud Hosters Offering

As organizations look to take advantage of the public cloud today through utilizing the services offered by hosters, it is important that those hosters are able to deliver that value rapidly. Hosters are now able to take advantage of Microsoft’s proven technology platform, best practices, and experience to build their public cloud offerings. Utilizing this flexible and familiar platform, hosters will be able to increase the range of services they can offer to include supporting scenarios such as:

• Test and development environments without the need for capital expenditure

• Dynamic capacity addition to enable IT to rapidly respond to changes in demand

• Low cost disaster avoidance with hosted DR environments

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Microsoft enables the hosters to offer public cloud today through the existing Microsoft technologies and environments they know and trust. Capabilities such as Windows® Server 2008 with Hyper-V, proven development environments, to System Center and Forefront®, all are leveraged to deliver the public cloud, without introducing the additional complexity of unproven technologies. Dynamic Datacenter Alliance: Designed specifically for hosting providers that are creating cloud and virtualization services using the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit, the Dynamic Datacenter Alliance can help grow your business by providing the tools needed to tap into this emerging enterprise market.

Joining the alliance means you will receive:

• Interoperable, tested, and well-defined technology components that help you accelerate time to market

• Access to new technology as it is made available

• Marketing opportunities, such as referrals and web traffic from the Microsoft site and the chance to participate

in events

8.4 Integrated Management – System Center

Microsoft System Center offers management solutions for both the dynamic datacenter and dynamic desktop.

Datacenter Management:

Microsoft System Center Solutions for datacenter management enable datacenter managers to optimize resources, improve the visibility of IT assets and issues, and meet service levels, all while decreasing costs. Today’s datacenters require more processing power to meet the data and computing needs of the enterprise while at the same time facing resource constraints.

From a datacenter perspective system center offers key management capabilities in the following areas:

Configuration Management Provides centralized, automated software provisioning, updating, and management of both physical and virtual servers and can result in reduced costs through decreased power consumptions, optimized IT resources, and improved efficiency, and allow the datacenter to meet its data and computing need.

Server Compliance Assists with IT compliance on the servers in the datacenter through configuration controls, consolidated reporting, and a centralized collection of security events. It supports compliance with business policies and regulatory requirement, satisfies auditors, and improves server security.

End-to-End Monitoring Provides end-to-end visibility into the datacenter through an open and extensible platform and helps ensure that IT services, applications, and servers run smoothly and are meeting service levels for optimal uptime and responsiveness.

Data Protection and Recovery Delivers data protection and recovery, backup, and reliability capabilities of applications and services running in physical and virtual environments and helps simplify storage management, provide higher availability, and improve responsiveness.

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Client/Desktop Management:

Microsoft System Center desktop solutions enable IT to empower users by streamlining the connection of any authorized user to any application, regardless of their location or connectivity. These solutions allow users to run their applications by managing the delivery of locally installed traditional, virtualized, and streamed applications as well as remote-execution terminal services and virtual desktop infrastructures through a unified system that provides both secure access and the consistent, optimized performance users expect. From a desktop perspective system center offers key management capabilities in the following areas:

Adaptive Application Delivery Increases the ability of IT pros to respond to the evolving and varying needs of business users through flexible options for managed client application delivery.

Traditional, Virtualized, or Remote Desktop Delivery Methods: Applications can be deployed to client computers by using traditional deployment methods with the tools and processes already familiar to IT personnel. Alternatively, IT pros can deploy virtualized applications to increase the efficiency of application deployments and reduce or eliminate runtime conflicts. Finally, IT pros can incorporate remote desktop environments that allow users to run their applications and access their data from any location.

Consistent Management Process: Regardless of the delivery method, IT pros can manage all applications by using the same tools they use for managing traditional software while maintaining the unique and dynamic properties of the virtualized desktops or streamed applications. They can inventory and report on all packages and applications as well as their use. These applications can all be deployed and managed by using policies configured to meet the needs of the organization.

Run Applications Anywhere at Any Time: Users can also run their applications from anywhere at any time, whether connected directly to the organization’s intranet, remotely to the organization’s intranet, or disconnected from the organization’s intranet. IT pros can separate the users’ personalized information from the operating system so that they can run their applications from any traditional, virtual, or remote application environment. Users can cache streamed virtualized applications locally so that they can run their applications, even when not connected to the organization’s intranet.

Simplified Windows® Deployment The System Center desktop simplified Windows® client deployment solution securely automates the deployment of operating systems to desktop environments.

Streamline Deployment Processes: IT pros can streamline Windows® client deployments by assessing, evaluating, and monitoring the health of physical assets and their topology before deployment to help plan and prepare the infrastructure for large-scale data transfers. IT pros can use the delivery option that best meets the needs for that user or target group of users, supporting even the most distributed organizations and including removable media to support offline or low-bandwidth environments.

Reduce Deployment Complexity: Windows® Imaging Format (WIM) image standard allows IT pros to create fewer operating system images while reducing the core operating system image size. IT pros can further reduce the complexity of their images by separating applications, device drivers, and software updates from core operating system images at deployment time using dynamic layering of task sequence–driven installations. IT pros can further streamline the experience and bandwidth requirements by natively deploying virtualized applications.

Retain Current User Information: During the deployment of any new operating system, retaining the existing user profiles, user configuration settings, and locally stored application data is paramount. This information is encrypted and securely saved during the migration process, and then is restored to the newly deployed Windows® client operating system, minimizing users’ learning curve and helping them to be productive faster in their new desktop environment.

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Minimize Application-Compatibility Issues: IT can prepare, deploy, and manage applications through traditional packaging tools or virtualize them to avoid application-compatibility issues and reduce regression testing time. The Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) can help IT pros analyze the impact of operating system upgrades and prioritize application-compatibility testing efforts. Or, IT pros can use application virtualization to help resolve application- compatibility challenges without re-engineering existing or custom applications or undergoing extensive debugging and regression testing.

End-Point Security Management The System Center desktop end-point security management solution provides comprehensive end-point security that enables the secure access an expanding enterprise requires—regardless of the access mechanism—through enforced compliance with health policy definitions before connecting with the corporate network.

Ensure Security Configuration Compliance: IT helps protect the integrity of the enterprise network by enforcing software and hardware compliance on client computers. IT can also help ensure that systems maintain compliance with security configuration policies—like encryption of the hard disk volumes for portable computers—by assessing systems for compliance with configuration baselines.

Provide Continuous Network Protection: IT can provide continuous network protection with quarantine support for both perimeter and online systems to better ensure that whenever or however systems connect to the organization‘s network, they meet the security configuration policy definitions and spend minimal time in quarantine. IT can stay apprised of the current state of risk by automatically and systematically assessing vulnerabilities to discover the need for updates and can report on recommended actions across the distributed enterprise. This solution integrates with Microsoft Forefront® to identify the need for anti-malware and antivirus signatures as well as firewalls.

Protect Access to the Entire Intranet. IT can enable the secure access that the expanding enterprise requires, regardless of whether users are accessing the organization’s intranet by wired access, wireless access, or remote-access connections. IT can deliver updates over the Internet to help enable geographically dispersed users who rarely connect to the corporate network to securely receive software updates and other management services more frequently, keeping users productive and helping reduce the time spent in quarantine.

Configuration Compliance The System Center desktop configuration compliance solution assesses system compliance against established configuration baselines—showing IT the gap between what they want and what they have—and providing IT pros with an easy way to fix it.

Configuration Controls and Reporting: This solution creates, maintains, and reports configuration controls to help enforce client computer compliance. IT pros can use desired configuration management to discover unintended configuration changes and to ensure a desired configuration state for all components of the client computers. Included in this solution are dashboards and reports that provide visibility into the status of compliance with configuration controls to support compliance efforts. IT can use Microsoft and third-party best practice configuration knowledge to define best practices, help avoid common configuration errors, and manage systems in the context of regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, SOX, or FISMA compliance.

Centralized Audit of System Security: This solution gathers and reports security-related events to help secure Windows-based computers in the organization’s datacenters. Auditors and security offices can use the reports to assess compliance, including user access audit, account lockouts, privilege changes, asset inventory, and other regulatory compliance requirements. This helps protect the organization through strong authentication and protection from malware and viruses on Windows-based computers.

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Continuous Configuration Compliance Auditing: This solution continuously evaluates the desired desktop configuration by defining a baseline that contains the configuration items IT wants to monitor and rules that define the compliance required. Multiple baselines can be assigned to any collection of computers, which provides a high level of configuration control. Up to four levels of severity can be used to prioritize non-compliance. If a computer is non-compliant, IT can automatically bring the computer back into compliance by deploying software to or running scripts on the computer.

Client Infrastructure Monitoring The System Center desktop client infrastructure monitoring solution provides client availability, performance, and security monitoring to proactively identify problems that can affect user productivity.

Proactive End-to-End Monitoring: IT pros can monitor applications and all the dependent systems and services from the client computer to gain the actual user perspective and experience on availability and performance. IT can establish configuration baselines for client computers, and then be notified if the computer configuration deviates from the established baseline. Automated collection of application failures at the client computer allows IT pros to identify the impact, root cause, and resolution for these failures by using agentless exception monitoring.

Monitor Individual or Groups of Client Computers: This solution allows IT to monitor specific mission-critical client computers or a group of mission-critical client computers as a unit. Monitoring a group of mission-critical client computers provides a consolidated view of collective system health to help notify support teams when client issues are affecting a large number of users. This allows IT to efficiently report on the status of configuration compliance, individual and collective system health, and other business-critical metrics to proactively identify trends and correct problems.

Remote PC Diagnostic and Repair The System Center desktop remote PC diagnostic and repair solution enables zero-touch remote diagnosis and remediation of problems for online and out-of-band client systems to help pinpoint and troubleshoot issues that affect the user experience.

Expand Help Desk Capability: IT can expand the capability of the help desk to troubleshoot and improve time to resolution for problems by checking the current desktop system configuration against a desired state. This solution helps IT analyze application and system failures, and then resolve problems by automatically linking to the latest troubleshooting information and using diagnostic tools that monitor performance and stability as well as enable remediation. Additional auditing and troubleshooting information is available on Intel Advanced Management Technology (AMT)–enabled systems. If necessary, an administrator can remotely install operating systems without requiring local agents, Pre-Boot Execution Environment (PXE) servers, or local boot media. Reduce Onsite Service Calls: IT can significantly reduce onsite service calls for problem resolution through remote management capabilities, even for computers that are powered off or are unable to start up. IT pros can remotely access basic input/output system (BIOS) functions on Intel AMT-enabled systems, including BIOS configuration, interactive boot choices, and other pre-boot environment operations. This provides a secure, end-to-end method for troubleshooting computers from the beginning of the startup process through logging on to the operating system and running applications.

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The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. This white paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS DOCUMENT. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in,

or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property. © 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, place, or event is intended or should be inferred. Microsoft, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise and Data Center, Windows Server® Volume Shadow Copy Service, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 TM, Active Directory® Domain Services , Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP1, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition SP1 or SP2, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition SP1 or SP2, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager, and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.