Q&A with Yung Chou: Windows Server 2012 -- Microsoft's Private Cloud Platform
The release of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 is the company's most ambitious effort yet to help organizations build and manage private clouds. Windows Server 2012 is designed with cloud computing in mind and with many new and enhanced features to facilitate the integration and management of cloud computing resources.
Few can dig deeper into the private cloud features of the new OS than Microsoft Senior IT Evangelist Yung Chou. And Chou, who has been penned as an upcoming sessions speaker at this year's Live!360, takes some time to answer some of my questions.
Q: Describe five ways Windows Server 2012 supports private clouds.
A: Hyper-V scalability takes advantage of cutting-edge hardware capabilities to ensure meeting SLAs [service-level agreements] while also maximizing efficiency and scalability. Hyper-V Replica is an affordable storage-agnostic and workload-agnostic business continuity and disaster recovery solution for virtualized workload without employing third-party technology. SMB [Server Message Block] 3.0 offers an option for storing VM files and snapshots in file shares from both standalone file share servers and clustered file servers with much affordability and flexibility. Shared-nothing migration requires neither a clustered environment nor shared storage, and offers an alternative to consolidate resources with affordable networked storage for cost reduction and resource consolidation. And there are reduced requirements and a simplified process to set up DirectAccess, which is strategic for providing a user experience with seamless and secure access to the private cloud.
Q: Can you talk about how Microsoft supports each of these in a private cloud setting?
A: Now, an authorized self-service user can initiate and later manage a service deployment to a private cloud with a few mouse clicks once a service deployment package -- including content, configurations, procedures and service template -- is validated against private cloud resource pools integrated and managed by System Center 2012.
The ability to manage a set of associated VMs as one entity provides an opportunity for System Center 2012 to deploy servers, configure a target runtime environment, install an intended LOB application, and start and manage an instance throughout its lifecycle. In essence, a service deployment can now be delivered as IaaS [Infrastructure as a Service], PaaS [Platform as a Service] or SaaS [Software as a Service], based on requirements. Ultimately, enterprise IT is transitioning into a cloud-computing platform with a realization of ITaaS [IT as a Service].
If heading out to Orlando for this year's Live! 360 event in December, make sure to catch Yung's workshop, "7 Must-Know Private Cloud Features in Windows Server 2012."
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/19/2012 at 1:19 PM