For enterprises in a broad range of fields, virtualization has become a popular IT strategy for increasing hardware utilization, enhancing flexibility, and decreasing costs. But while virtualization can offer these and other benefits, running multiple applications on each physical server can place application availability at risk: if a physical server fails, virtualized applications running on that server could become unavailable.
The Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 Release 2 (R2) Hyper-VTM virtualization platform introduces capabilities designed to increase application availability, avoid downtime, and enhance user experience and performance in virtualized environments. The live migration feature enables administrators to move running VMs from one physical host to another without disruption or downtime, and serves as a complement to the existing quick migration feature. The hot-add storage capability enables administrators to add or remove virtual hard disk (VHD) files and pass-through disks without requiring downtime. And key features such as Quick Connect, support for jumbo frames and VM queues (VMQs), storage resource monitoring, and the Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) capability help ease administration and enhance performance.
Designed as high-availability virtualized storage solutions, Dell™ EqualLogic™ PS Series iSCSI storage area network (SAN) arrays can be an excellent fit for data centers virtualized with Hyper-V technology. The Dell EqualLogic Multipath I/O device-specific module, for example, works with Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) to provide automated management and enhanced end-to-end load balancing for EqualLogic SAN volumes. EqualLogic Auto-Snapshot Manager/Microsoft Edition also helps simplify management and deliver high availability for key applications. EqualLogic PS Series iSCSI SAN arrays offer a highly automated shared-storage foundation for virtualized data centers that enables organizations to take full advantage of the high-availability features incorporated into Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.
By Stanley L. Stevens, Darren W. Miller, and Jim Schwartz Download PDF  |
