Aid for Virtualized Data Centers

New and updated “Hyper-V Cloud” programs and guides will help customers and partners build data centers that run and manage virtual machines with Hyper-V hardware virtualization, System Center management products, and other Microsoft technology. Virtualized data centers can simplify management, improve availability, and use hardware more efficiently. The programs can help customers and partners implement virtualized data centers for private use, and they can also help partners deliver managed hosting or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to customers.

Private and Partner Clouds on Hyper-V

The new Hyper-V Cloud label covers some of the same ground as the Dynamic Data Center brand, which Microsoft has used for technology and programs supporting its virtualization and management technologies, including the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises and the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters. The Hyper-V Cloud programs include the following:

Fast Track certifies integrated server, networking, and storage reference configurations that work with Microsoft’s virtualization and management software. This is important because some Hyper-V high-availability and management features (such as Live Migration, which moves virtual machines among servers) rely on specialized hardware, and virtualization in general can tax hardware resources. Participants in the program currently include Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, and NEC.