Windows Server

You'll learn about the best storage configurations for Hyper-V, NetApp's virtualization "sweet spot," and Avanade's firsthand experience with two much-anticipated R2 features: Cluster Shared Volumes and Live Migration.

This whitepaper explores the reasons for consolidating Windows environments and the benefits of doing so with a joint NetApp-VMware solution.

This paper discusses how consolidating your Microsoft� SQL Server�, Exchange, and SharePoint� Server data along with your Windows� files using NetApp� storage for Windows environments reduces the cost of physical storage as well as ongoing management costs in Windows environments.

This report documents the results of ESG Lab hands-on testing of a NetApp Unified Storage Architecture deployed in a VMware virtual server environment with a goal of simplifying, protecting, and consolidating physical servers hosting Microsoft applications.

Enhance business productivity with streamlined communications and collaboration.

The City of Miami's Fire Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system, which was state-of-the-art when it was installed more than 20 years ago, has been strained by the demands of an increasing population and was no longer able to integrate smoothly with new systems and functionality.

As a major wholesale retailer and distributor, Elektroskandia is highly dependent on its Central Warehouse Management System. But this critical application was running on an aging mainframe and, with the discontinuation of its operating environment, the system's support and maintenance costs had grown to unacceptable levels.

Free Trial - AppAssure's Replay 4 was named Bronze Backup and Disaster Recovery Software of the Year by Storage Magazine. Replay 4 completely eliminates backup windows by taking continuous snapshots of your Windows application servers, with just a 1-2% hit on server performance. Recover from any server outage in 15 minutes or less and use 80% less storage space for backups with Replay's built-in deduplication. Recover any object from a file level to an entire bare metal restore in minutes. Available with built-in replication and virtualization as well as AppAssure's turnkey Cloud Recovery Service for offsite disaster recovery. Supports Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, Hyper-V, VMWare and Windows file servers. Replay is also available with AppAssure's optional Cloud Recovery Service for offsite backup and disaster recovery.

Many businesses struggle to guarantee application and data availability for Windows applications. They may protect the application from one type of outage (like a disk failure) while ignoring other risks. Or they can end up deploying multiple point solutions to handle different aspects of availability, increasing overall cost and complexity.

There are many expensive, complex technologies that promise high availability for SQL. Fortunately there are also simple, automated ways to get the highest levels of protection. The following five secrets to affordable SQL availability will help you to implement a SQL environment with little or no downtime, zero data loss, and no added IT complexity.

Real uses prove that Red Hat Enterprise Linux has lower costs than Microsoft Windows Server 2008, improving as you scale up. It offers more efficient management costs and better flexibility and is the most tested, secure OS backed by global support.

This white paper describes a set of best practices to deploy a 1,500-user virtualized Exchange 2007 environment using VMware� ESXT 3.5. Specifically, this project demonstrates how to configure and deploy the Exchange 2007 Mailbox, Hub Transport, and Client Access server roles onto individual VMware virtual machines (VMs), which in turn are deployed onto a single VMware ESX Server. The environment includes HP ProLiant c-Class Blade servers connected to an HP StorageWorks 4400 Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA4400) Disk Array.

For entry-level to mid-sized SAP customers who are already comfortable with an iSCSI-based, Microsoft Windows and SQL Server landscape, the HP LeftHand P4000 SAN family offers a total storage solution for virtualized or non-virtualized HP servers.

Learn the basics about security benchmarks, and specifically how the security benchmarks developed by the Center for Internet Security (CIS) can help you with your compliance initiatives.

Email, calendaring, collaboration, and mobility solutions are moving from corporate data centers to service provider networks. Service providers can realize far greater economies of scale than most businesses and deliver higher levels of service to more users at a lower cost; in fact, the fewer the users, the higher cost for each. Concentric Hosted Exchange is a fast, reliable and affordable solution for email, calendaring, collaboration, and mobility based on Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Microsoft Outlook® 2007. Concentric Hosted Exchange provides all of the benefits of Microsoft Exchange and Outlook 2007 without the up-front infrastructure costs or ongoing overhead.

This whitepaper discusses the Business case, vision, and the approach for migrating from Lotus Notes to Microsoft SharePoint, along with some key best practices that needs to be considered for a successful migration process and graceful acceptance of the new platform within your organization.

F5 has worked with Microsoft during the beta cycle and beyond to ensure a high level of interoperability and optimization with the entire Windows Server 2008 platform. F5’s Application Ready Network for Windows Server 2008 not only helps optimize end-to-end performance, availability, and scalability for Windows Server 2008 deployments, but reduces the costs associated with deployment, management, and operation.

This white paper is focused on the design and architecture of an OCS 2007 environment in an HP BladeSystem infrastructure. The document outlines a building block approach to deploying OCS on the HP BladeSystem and focuses on how the design decisions around levels of availability, scalability, and the OCS 2007 feature set impact the hardware that is deployed and the version of OCS that is used. The white paper also covers a brief overview of the Microsoft Unified Communications framework including Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 and an overview of the HP BladeSystem architecture and how the HP BladeSystem can help lower the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Microsoft Windows Deployment Services (WDS) provides an accessible, flexible way to perform mass deployments of current and legacy Windows operating systems. Using customized answer files and taking advantage scripting and other tools with WDS can help dramatically reduce the time to perform highly configured mass deployments with minimal infrastructure impact.

HotSchedules needed an agile and scalable IT environment that could respond quickly to growth opportunities. The company deployed the Windows Server 2008 operating system with Hyper-V virtualization technology to consolidate its server environment, reduce costs, and maximize network performance. By hosting up to 19 virtual machines on each physical server, HotSchedules increased its growth capacity while cutting power costs 77 percent and enhancing the company’s competitive position.

The Maxol markets a comprehensive range of oil and petroleum products to all sectors of the Irish market. Maxol used the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise operating system featuring Hyper-V virtualization technology to consolidate 22 servers to 6 servers, an 80 percent reduction.

NetBenefit is a leading provider of managed hosting services in the United Kingdom. Faced with ever more expensive London data center costs, the company decided to implement the Windows Server 2008 operating system featuring Hyper-V virtualization technology to give it the ability to create competitively priced entry-level virtual machines to complement its existing managed hosting services.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft’s next generation hypervisor technology, adds an exciting new dimension to the server virtualization market. With Hyper-V and Microsoft’s integrated Server Management suite, you can take advantage of a powerful set of tools to help simplify infrastructure management and better utilize your hardware investments.

This Dell Virtualization Reference Architecture (RA) white paper describes Dell validated architectures for Windows Server 2008® Hyper‐V. The Virtualization RA is intended to provide customers with example virtualization solution configurations that can be used to consider, evaluate, and select the Dell virtualization solution components that best fit their requirements.

Migrating data associated with Microsoft operating systems, applications, and other software can be a challenge administrators overlook when planning system upgrades. Del™ PowerVault™ and Dell EqualLogic™ storage and CommVault® Simpana® data management software enable flexible data migration and transparent, release-specific data object recovery and backup to help simplify upgrades in enterprise environments.