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Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions Update

There are 2 new Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions. Brief DescriptionIn the Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions white papers, Microsoft provides examples of well-designed, cost-effective Exchange 2010 solutions deployed on hardware offered by some of our server, storage, and network partners. Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 15000 Mailboxes in Two Sites Running Hyper-V on Unisys ES7000 Servers and Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2000 Family – This document provides an example of how to design, test, and validate an Exchange Server 2010 solution for a customer environment with 15,000 mailboxes deployed on Unisys servers and Hitachi Data Systems storage solutions. The step-by-step methodology in this document walks through the important design decision points that help address key challenges while ensuring that the customer's core business requirements are met. Exchange 2010 Tested Solutions: 20000 Mailboxes in Two Sites Running Hyper-V on Dell R910 Servers, EMC CLARiiON Storage, and Brocade Network Solutions – This document provides an example of how to design, test, and validate an Exchange Server 2010 solution for a customer environment with 20,000 mailboxes deployed on Dell servers, EMC storage, and Brocade network solutions. The step-by-step methodology in this document walks through the important design decision points that help address key challenges while ensuring that the customer's core business requirements are met.

A Look at Xiotech Storage

At Westminster College, I'm back on the hunt for storage. Our EMC AX4 has been a reliable, dependable partner for quite some time, but we're in need of space. Rather than simply adding another shelf of disks to this now end-of-life platform, we're weighing the option of moving forward with a new storage platform on which we can build as time goes on and eventually supplant the AX4. To this end, we've also been looking at EMC's pretty compelling new VNX/VNXe lines, and two Dell options: the enterprise grade EqualLogic line – which I have previous experience with – as well as Dell's rebranded LSI box, which carries the Dell moniker MD3220i. Obviously, all of the choices have pros and cons. As we navigate our journey, I'll be keeping you apprised in this space about our status and, eventually, our eventual decision.
The problem: We're moving to a fully virtual environment. We're about 75% or so (probably more) virtual right now with a goal of getting as close to 100% as reasonable. We fully understand the benefits of virtualization, hence our desire to get everything virtual.
Last week, I had the opportunity to spend most of a day at a Xiotech office in Kansas City where I spent some time with Xiotech engineers and folks from some of the local K-12 schools. We reviewed Xiotech's distinctive features and use cases and I walked away pretty impressed. I've looked at Xiotech in the past, but this was the first time I was able to get up close and personal in looking at the solution.
What I like:
High IOPS. Xiotech has engineered their solution to maximize storage performa

Business Continuity for Microsoft Exchange 2010

Business Continuity for Microsoft Exchange 2010 Enabled by EMC Unified Storage, Cisco Unified Computing System, and Microsoft Hyper-V is a technical whitepaper with reference architectures, best practices and technology offerings based upon EMC information infrastructure and Microsoft virtualization environments –  including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center – that provide customers with measureable steps to reduce costs and increase efficiency. EMC also released Zero Data Loss Disaster Recovery for Microsoft Exchange 2010: Enabled by EMC Unified Storage, EMC Replication Manager for Exchange 2010, Brocade End-to-End Network, Dell Servers, and Microsoft Hyper-V. “EMC solutions for Microsoft Hyper-V environments help customers meet their requirements to extract the highest value from their investments through optimized deployment, scalability, consolidation and protection within virtualized environments. Increased Scalability and Accelerated Deployment: Customers look to their virtualized environments to reach new heights in efficiency. To help bring this forth, EMC E-Lab™ architected a virtualized infrastructure that included EMC® Symmetrix® VMAX™ , Windows Server R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V which proved to scale to support 1,024 virtual machines. In addition, EMC TimeFinder® local storage replication was used to accelerate the deployment of virtual machines by up to 27 times faster than a scenario employing traditional network based methods. This solution was validated through in-depth testing and analysis by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) Lab. Advanced

Microsoft and the Hyper-V Cloud

Although I'm not a big fan of the word "cloud", I doubt that it's going to go away anytime soon. So, for now, let's look at some so-called cloud services with a bit of skepticism and see what's behind the curtain before jumping in the deep end.
One area of the IT world that's growing is pre-validated hardware and software architectures that are guaranteed to run certain workloads. I've previously discussed the VCE coalition's Vblock, as has David Davis. In simple terms, a Vblock is a unit of data center infrastructure that consists of:
Processing power and RAM via Cisco server.
Storage provided by EMC.
Storage networking hardware provided by Cisco.
Virtualization software from VMware.
Not one to be left out, Microsoft is getting into the game a bit through their Hyper-V Cloud initiative. Microsoft has created a Hyper-V Cloud reference architecture that's being used by six vendors to create "fast track" compliant architectures. The vendors include:
Dell
Fujitsu
Hitachi
HP
IBM
NEC
However, you can also go it alone using the Build Your Own reference materials available from Microsoft. It will be interesting to see how this initiative stacks up against competing options from other vendors.
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SharePoint 2010 done virtually – A pilot

In 2007, Westminster College bought into SharePoint 2007, moving the entire institutional web presence from an older content management system into SharePoint. Since that time, we've expanded our use of SharePoint through the use of internal portals and new web sites, such as the one that we built for our National Churchill Museum entity.

When we originally implemented our current SharePoint system, we did so in a very simplistic way using just two physical servers – one for SharePoint and the other as a dedicated database server for SharePoint.

With the release of SharePoint 2010, we're starting from scratch and rethinking everything… And going virtual (for the most part). This time around, we're moving into SharePoint with much more intentionality and are building out a six server environment.

Of these six systems, five are brand new virtual machines and the sixth is an existing physical server that houses our campus databases. We're also planning an implementation of a second SQL server to create a cluster, but these are the only physical machines that will be used by SharePoint 2010.

The other five systems – virtual machines – break down into three groups. The first group is two virtual machines that will be load balanced to support external audiences. The second is another set of two VMs that will be load balanced to support internal audiences. The last virtual machine holds other supporting SharePoint services.

All five of the virtual machines are running Windows Server 2008 R2 and have 4GB of RAM assigned and have been provided with two virtual CPUs. We'

VMware ESXi Hypervisor Now Free

VMware, Inc., (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced its stand-alone ESXi hypervisor will be available at no cost to help companies of all sizes experience the benefits of virtualization. Since 2001, VMware has provided the industry's most popular and reliable hypervisor, which is now used by more than 120,000 customers. In December 2007, VMware announced significant improvements with ESXi – its third-generation stand-alone hypervisor. With the industry's smallest footprint and OS-independence, ESXi sets a new bar for security and reliability. ESXi 3.5 update 2, available today, meets the criteria for mass distribution: (1) ease of use and (2) maturity and stability now having been 'battle tested' for six months with customers. The leading server manufacturers have all embedded VMware ESXi, including Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, Hitachi, HP, IBM, and NEC. ESXi can be downloaded now from www.vmware.com/products/esxi/
According to Gartner Vice President Distinguished Analyst Tom Bittman, "Virtualization is one of the most impactful trends in computing. The availability of free hypervisors will undoubtedly grow the market and provide a compelling reason for companies that have not virtualized their environment to begin doing so. This is especially true for small to medium business customers and customers in emerging markets. The hypervisor itself is really just a foundation. The business model and real value in virtualization is evolving toward a virtualized infrastructure and the management and automation tools leveraging the hypervisor."
"VMware has always believed that virtualization needs to be ubiquitous. We want to accelerate the day that x86 servers and desktops are fully virtualized," said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions, VMware. "With the explosive growth of multi-core capacity, improvements in virtualization-aware hardware, and performance improvements in our virtual

Microsoft Expands Datacenter Management Offerings With Advanced Heterogeneous and Virtualization Capabilities

LAS VEGAS — April 29, 2008 — Today, before an audience of more than 4,000 IT professionals and partners at the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2008, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft Corp., outlined the next phase in the company's strategy to enable dynamic IT organizations. As part of this strategy, Muglia announced technology innovations that are designed to expand Microsoft's virtualization capabilities and introduced its use of open source technologies and industry standards to broaden its ability to deliver automated management of heterogeneous IT environments.
"At Microsoft we are helping redefine what it means to do IT management in the enterprise with the new capabilities we are announcing today," Muglia said. "By taking our knowledge of the Windows environment and expanding it to address heterogeneous management needs across platforms, applications, hardware and virtualization, we are opening up a new level of opportunity for companies to drive greater efficiency, responsiveness and value for their business."
As IT environments grow more diverse and complex across desktops, datacenters, physical and virtual deployments, and heterogeneous infrastructures spanning Windows and non-Windows environments, Microsoft has worked closely with customers to deliver a comprehensive enterprise strategy for an integrated management solution. The announcements today build on the strong, existing Microsoft System Center presence in the datacenter with key additions in the areas of cross-platform, expanded interoperability and multivendor virtualization management solutions, which are further extended by the contributions of a strong and growing partner ecosystem.
Extending Cross-Platform Management for the Datacenter
Microsoft today announced the availability of a public beta for System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions, which build on the existing Operations Manager 2007 technology and capabilities

Why an Infrastructure Check is Important Before Choosing a Hosting Provider

In the previous post I discussed why information checks are important. Here is a comment worth mentioning here from Maurene about my information check posting. She says,

"Under "What is your core business," you say "… who are solely operating and managing Microsoft Exchange and related technologies… " Many providers may host Exchange along with their own messaging service (USA.net comes to mind). IBMGS provides outsourcing for both Exchange and Domino. It's the word "solely" that I'd question — the decision should be made as a reflection on the quality of the provider's Microsoft expertise — independent of what else it may be hosting."

Thanks to Maurene for correcting, but I was kind of Microsoft biased when I wrote this post. 🙂 Let's continue with the Infrastructure side. Below are some of the key questions in my mind and I will continue to write a couple of more posts on the same topic soon.

1. What kind of complimentary services do you provide – for example, mobility, VoIP, security, archiving?

I believe some of the services should be complimentary such as mobility, faxing via email, etc… You can ask about more like VoIP, archiving, etc.

Mobility – every organization needs it. Wireless email gives your staff always-synchronized, anytime-access to email and other data such as calendar, contacts, docs, SharePoint etc. Ensure the hoster has better device coverage by supporting all popular Smartphone and PDAs. The hoster should be able to deploy and maintain the entire service from their data center which includes all necessary updates and patches. Blackberry, Win

Top questions to ask before choosing your Microsoft Exchange Hosting Provider

Explosive growth in the Hosted exchange industry shows the strong demand and trend among customers (including enterprise and large corporations) for Hosted Exchange services. The challenge here for the organization is in choosing the right partner for their Hosted Exchange Service needs. Sometimes it’s confusing as there are many web hosting companies, data center firms and sometimes telecom vendors beginning to offer Microsoft hosted exchange services. I am in the initial stage of preparing a guide to help you get clarity in this field. These are the basic issues you must take into account when choosing your service provider in Hosted exchange. I will keep working on this topic to come up with a complete guide.

Let’s start with company Information check:

What is your core business?

This can be one of the first questions in the list to your potential hosting service providers, since this gives more clarity during your initial phase of short listing the Hosting Vendors. My suggestion is to look for companies who are solely operating and managing Microsoft Exchange and related technologies – I mean “A core Hosted Exchange Provider”, here is the list of Microsoft listed Hosted Exchange providers.

How many years of experience do you have in Hosted Exchange services?

If they say "10 years or so in the business", then your very next question can be "Was it specifically in 'Exchange Hosted environments'?". Keep asking this until you get clear answer. The reason for emphasizing this question is due to many factors, such as that Microsoft Exchange server is a sophisticated &

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