HP Virtualization with Microsoft

The new HP ProLiant G6 servers let you squeeze maximum productivity and efficiency from your virtual environment. With expanded server support for Microsoft Hyper-V, more memory, processing, and I/O means more virtual machines per server than ever before.

Find out more about the new ProLiant G6 servers at www.hp.com/go/proliant  

To keep current with the latest information on HP virtualization and products, visit the Virtualization room in the HP Virtual IT Center.

• Windows® Server 2008 Hyper-V
  
  Windows Server 2008 is the next-generation Windows Server operating system. Included with Windows Server 2008 is Hyper-V, a hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a key feature of Windows Server 2008. Hyper-V helps customers consolidate server hardware, improve server utilization, increase server automation, and enhance system portability. Additionally, Hyper-V reduces hardware costs and power consumption.
  
  Administrators want flexibility in allocating computing resources for specific tasks. Virtualization technologies provide this flexibility by decoupling the hardware from the workload being performed. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V offers a robust, scalable hypervisor-based virtualization platform allowing enterprises to provision and manage virtual server workloads.

• Production Server Consolidation: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V can be beneficial for organizations wanting to consolidate servers to better utilize hardware resources or reduce power and space constraints in their data centers
• Business Continuity Management: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V can minimize the impact of unscheduled downtime for an efficient and flexible disaster recovery solution
• Software Test and Development: Administrators can allocate a child partition to development resources to reduce the amount of server hardware required in the data center
• Dynamc Data Center: Administrators will have the capability to dynamically add resources to virtual machines and move them across physical machines without affecting users

• The new HP Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center (HP ICE-SC) is the first extensive solution that provides seamless integration of the unique ProLiant and BladeSystem manageability features into Microsoft System Center. HP ICE-SC allows you to quickly and reliably configure, deploy and update ProLiant servers, proactively monitor the health of physical and virtual servers and intelligently respond to hardware events, remotely control HP servers in any location using HP iLO Advanced, and safely cap power usage to fit more servers within existing power envelopes.
• The new BladeSystem Matrix is a cloud infrastructure in a box that brings the economics, scalability and response times of the cloud to diverse applications across your data center. Uniquely, it combines disaster recovery, capacity planning, and automated provisioning with a self-service portal into one command center to unite your physical and virtual worlds. With Matrix, you get a wire-once infrastructure that converges network, storage and compute to help you accelerate complex IT projects, simplify daily tasks and continuously lower costs across your data center. The most fully integrated, adaptive infrastructure environment that HP has ever created, Matrix brings together the best of HP and our partner data center know-how into one environment.
• HP ProLiant BL495c and ProLiant BL490c virtualization blades are the world’s first server blades designed specifically to host virtual machines. They are the ideal platform for virtualized environments that require significant memory, data storage and network connections to optimize server performance. www.hp.com/go/blades
• HP Insight Dynamics – VSE, along with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM), provides a comprehensive physical-virtual systems management environment enabling the advanced management of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V running on HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers. To find out more about managing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V with HP Insight Software, download the HP Solution Brief.
• HP Insight Software delivers an integrated and easy-to-use toolset to control server and storage infrastructure across an entire Windows Server 2008 environment. www.hp.com/go/ice
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server is a standalone server virtualization product that is supported on a wide range of HP ProLiant servers, providing a cost effective solution for consolidating existing workloads.
• Customers can purchase Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V directly from HP when they buy a new server, and it can even be pre-installed in the HP factory so that you are ready to go as soon as you receive the server. For more information, please visit www.hp.com/go/ws2008.

HP ProLiant servers are management-enabled for Microsoft Systems Center and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. In addition, HP StorageWorks products will provide broad support for Microsoft virtualization technologies.  To find out more about building an Adaptive Infrastructure with HP Management Tools for Microsoft Hyper-V Environments, download the HP Brochure.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V uses an advanced feature of processors known as hardware-assisted virtualization. On Intel-based ProLiant servers, this feature, referred to as Intel® Virtualization Technology, or VT-x. For AMD-based ProLiant servers, this feature is called AMD-Virtualization, or AMD-V. Due to the hardware requirements for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, not every ProLiant server platform will support Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. To see the list of supported ProLiant servers, please see the ProLiant and Hyper-V Support Matrix. For additional configuration and installation requirements, please refer to the “Implementing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V on HP ProLiant Servers” integration note, which can be found here.

Product Information Windows Server 2008 from HP HP Virtualization Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta Support for HP ProLiant servers

Technical Resources ProLiant and Hyper-V Support Matrix Hyper-V Support on ProLiant White Paper StorageWorks and Hyper-V Support Matrix HP NIC Teaming with Hyper-V White Paper

Virtualization Management HP Insight Dynamics HP Insight Control suite

Support & Services Data Center Transformation Services HP Virtualization Services Infrastructure Services Software Support

	HP & Microsoft News & Information

• Find out how HP customers are realizing the benefits of virtualization on HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers. Read the case studies for Continental Airlines, Jackson Energy Authority, Microsoft Financial Reporting Department and MLS Property Information Network.
• Microsoft has recently released a public beta for the next update for Windows Server 2008, called Windows Server 2008 R2. The Hyper-V functionality in R2 has been enhanced with new features such as Live Migration, Cluster Shared Volumes, increased hardware support for improved performance, and improved virtual networking support. Get more information on Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta and Hyper-V enhancements here.
• HP has a support white paper for Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta that shows which HP platforms and options are supported, as well as configuration information and installation procedures. Get more information on HP support for Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta here. 
• HP ActiveAnswers is the online solutions authority where HP shares its experience and best practices for planning, deployment and operation of Enterprise Solutions. It includes up-to-date technical information, the system configurator, server sizers and storage and performance tools. ActiveAnswers for Hyper-V provides a wealth of information on Hyper-V solutions, such as Architecture, Best Practices, Installation, and Performance.
• The Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool (MAP) is an inventory, assessment, and reporting tool that can securely run in small or large IT environments without requiring the installation of agent software on any computers or devices. It can show which servers can be consolidated and virtualized.
• The Microsoft Virtualization ROI Tool was developed to educate and empower your customers to make informed strategic decisions regarding their infrastructure and long term virtualization investments. This tool will support a compelling, credible business case to monetarily quantifying the value of Integrated Virtualization Optimization and the cost-benefit of Microsoft and Partner solutions. The ROI tool empowers the customer and partners to accelerate their virtualization projects by providing a clear analysis of current improvement opportunities and calculates potential benefits.
• The Windows Server Virtualization Calculators provide two ways to estimate the number and cost of Windows Server Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition and Datacenter Edition licenses needed for your virtualization scenarios to help you determine the most cost-effective edition of Windows Server. Note that although this calculator is for Windows Server 2003, it can also be used for Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V.
• Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (VMM) is a comprehensive management solution for the virtualized data center. Designed to scale up for the largest organizations, VMM provides comprehensive support for consolidating physical servers onto virtual infrastructure, and rapid provisioning and deployment of new virtual machines. To help IT administrators keep organized, VMM features a complete library to centrally manage the building blocks of the virtual data center.
• View the Microsoft TechNet Webcast on "Using Virtual Machine Manager and Windows PowerShell to Deploy HP Windows Server 2008 Academy Labs".
• View the Microsoft TechNet Webcast on "Managing Hyper-V Virtual Machines with WMI and Windows PowerShell"