Microsoft has invested heavily in developing System Center as a core component of its business strategy. When Bill Gates and Co. invest so much time, energy and money into a product there must be a real reason why they are backing this strategy which centers upon Dynamic IT
Dynamic IT uses advances in technology and techniques to deliver core business benefits. One example is virtualization and the impact this has had on server farms and data storage. Virtualization is just one facet of Dynamic IT, which together with Service Oriented Access (SOA) and blended resource access provides faster deployment of IT solutions, greatly reduced costs, simplified management and support, increased availability of mission critical applications and the general network and a host of other benefits.
Microsoft Systems Center is the product developed to provide manage a Dynamic IT based network infrastructure. The solution allows companies to optimize datacenter assets, achieve IT agility and make the most effective use of network infrastructure and expertise.
Datacenter resources are optimized with the following features:
•Multi-vendor Virtualization Platform Support Emultiple virtual machine platforms are supported including those operating on Windows Server 2008 using Hyper-V, MS Virtual Server and VMware ESX. There is also a tool which delivers integrated multi-hypervisor management;
•Consolidation Tools Ea key issue when establishing a virtual machine platform is to identify which network assets are redundant or duplicated. It is also essential to properly identify what workload will be required for various network processes when running on the virtual network. MS System Center provides the tool to perform these tasks with Virtual Machine Manager (VMM);
•P2V Conversion EP2V (physical-to-virtual) conversion can be slow and time-consuming resulting in significant costs and network downtime with a large margin for error. VMM operates in tandem with the Volume Shadow Service (VSS) included with Windows Server 2003 and handles the P2V conversion process;
•Virtual Host Identification ESystem Center includes “Intelligent PlacementE that is a tool which provides for optimal use of physical network assets by identifying the most appropriate virtual machine hosts for running applications and network processes; and
•Centralized Resource Optimization – VMM also allows managers to optimize resources using one tool Etypically, IT managers will need to tune resources settings, experiment with a mix of different virtual machines and hosts or a combination of the two. VMM Administrator simplifies this time consuming process and allows for migrating different virtual machines and also between different hosts.
IT agility is achieved using System Center tools which let IT staff deploy new hardware and machines using a set of standard templates from a central registry. The process is further simplified by the use of an interactive management user-interface and intelligent Wizards. Performance of virtual machines and their attendant hosts can be assessed and measured using the suite of Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) tools which links Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 with VMM.
Finally, VMM also provides management tools for supporting fail-over clusters and improving the high-availability status of network assets responsible for mission-critical applications, such as email. In addition, VMM provides the ability to simply and easily move virtual images over the network using the SAN auto-detection and data transfer facility within VMM.
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