Cisco Nexus 1000V for Microsoft Hyper-V now available!

Cisco Cloud Networking and Services Platform team announced the availability of Cisco Nexus 1000V for Microsoft Hyper-V as a part of their hypervisor-agnostic cloud networking strategy. This represents a major milestone for the Nexus 1000V platform which already has more than 7000 customers. 

They are also shipping Virtual Services Gateway (VSG) and Virtual Network Management Center ( VNMC)  for Hyper-V. With this introduction, enterprise and cloud provider customers will be able to extend Nexus experience to Hyper-V virtual environments.

Industry Award    
The  Nexus 1000V is already a winner – Winner of Best of Microsoft TechEd 2013 award in the Virtualization Category.

Cisco Nexus 1000V for Microsoft Hyper-V Solution Highlights

• Advanced NX-OS features and associated partner ecosystem to Windows Server 2012
• Consistent operational model across hypervisors (vSphere & Hyper-V)
  Innovative network services architecture (via vPath) to support secure multitenant environments
• Tight integration with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) as well as support for PowerShell    

Cisco Nexus 1100 Cloud Services Platform also supports Nexus 1000V for Hyper-V to host VSM and VSG virtual appliances.

Features and Functionality

Note: Nexus 1000V feature-set will be consistent across all hypervisors

Pricing and Orderability
Nexus1000V pricing is consistent across hypervisors. Nexus 1000V for Microsoft Hyper-V is available in two editions:
•         Essential edition is available at no-cost
•         Advanced edition (includes VSG for Hyper-V) is available at $695/CPU

Resources
•       Cisco Nexus 1000V for Hyper-V external cisco.com page:
http://www.cisco.com/go/1000v/hyper-v/
•       Cisco Nexus 1000V Public Community:
https://communities.cisco.com/community/technology/datacenter/nexus1000v/
•       Cisco-Microsoft partnership page:
http://www.cisco.com/go/microsoft/

Video: How Aston Martin uses Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012

Find out how luxury car maker Aston Martin uses System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2012 to accelerate efficiency in this interesting video case study.

Click here to view case study.

Windows Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) General Availability (GA)!

Windows Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering hit general availability worldwide today.

Furthermore, to eliminate price as a discussion when comparing to the competition, namely Amazon, we made a new pledge to our valued customers. Quite simply, we will match AWS prices for commodity services such as compute, storage and bandwidth. We may charge less, but never more.

“If you had concerns that Windows Azure was more expensive, we’re putting those concerns to rest today.”

Steven Martin, Operations GM – Azure

The reason is simple. We want to remove price as part of the equation. We’d rather compete on the services we provide and the complete vision of the Microsoft Cloud OS which provides rich:

• Infrastructure services
• Platform services
• Hybrid scenarios (move VMs from your datacenter to Windows Azure and back. Use common technologies across private & public clouds (Active Directory for identity, System Center for Management, Hyper-V for virtualization, .NET for development)

Furthermore, based on customer input, we are also announcing two new higher capacity virtual machines:

1. A four virtual processor VM with 28 GB of memory
2. An eight virtual processor VM with 56 gigabytes of memory!

These configurations enable workloads with increasing compute demands.

Oh, and BTW, yes, Azure IaaS runs 100% on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

Finally, it should be noted just how fast Azure is growing. Bill Hilf is quoted as saying that Azure is growing at the rate of 1,000 customers A DAY and today supports over 200,000 active customers.

NEC unveils virtual switch on Hyper-V, OpenFlow support on Hyper-V before VMware!

This week, NEC unveiled a virtual switch for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V hypervisor which is designed to bring OpenFlow-based software-defined networking and network virtualization to those Microsoft environments.

The NEC ProgrammableFlow PF1000 provides a single control plane for integrating server and network virtualization in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V deployments. This integration is designed to enable network automation, more rapid delivery of network services, VM mobility and consistent application of business policy across the network.

The PF1000 supports 1,280 ports per switch and up to 260,000 flows. It supports OpenFlow 1.0 and can work with any OpenFlow-enabled switches from any vendor, according to NEC.

From lightreading.com:

The PF1000 runs on Hyper-V, the hypervisor Microsoft has created to compete with VMware’s. NEC also claims it’s the first virtual switch running OpenFlow. The PF1000 can support 1,280 ports (combining virtual and physical switch ports) and 260,000 data flows, NEC claims.

At the same time, NEC announced a ProgrammableFlow upgrade that includes IPv6 and OpenStack support.

Why this matters
VMware doesn’t offer OpenFlow on virtual switches, as Roy Chua of SDNCentral points out in his analysis. (It does have a workaround, as detailed on the IP Space blog.)

So, this is actually a nice announcement for Microsoft, giving Hyper-V something to brag about versus VMware’s ESXi.

CRN 2012 Awards go to Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V

It’s a tremendous pleasure to announce Microsoft has two industry awards from CRN. The awards are:

• CRN 2012 Tech Innovator Award for Virtualization: Windows Server 2012
• CRN 2012 Editor’s Choice Award Overall: Windows Server 2012

Microsoft Windows Server 2012

The final Tech Innovator award was in the virtualization category and also happened to be the CRN Test Center’s Editor’s Choice. Trailing in the virtualization market almost since there was a virtualization market, this company has worked hard for years to build a system with capabilities that are almost beyond belief. For example, imagine migrating an established LAN and its users from behind a company’s firewall to the cloud using drag-and-drop with virtually no user downtime. With its data-center abstraction layer, companies can deploy and manage virtualized applications, full desktops, servers and even orchestrated Web services using a GUI, a command prompt or natural-language scripting. And as the company’s competitors are learning, simple, core-based pricing is the method most preferred by resellers and the industry. So we congratulate this year’s Tech Innovator award winner for virtualization and the 2012 Editor’s Choice award. Both go to Microsoft and its Windows Server 2012. Accepting for Microsoft was Jeff Woolsey, principle program manager lead, Windows Server.

Microsoft Qatar announces Windows Server 2012

Just wanted to cover some of the buzz in the local press last week about Windows Server 2012, centered around our Private Cloud Enterprise Connect event in Doha.

For those of you that missed the event, I covered Windows Server 2012’s new virtualization features, while others covered VDI, the Microsoft Private Cloud story, Windows Azure and Identity Management.

Here are links to some of the local press coverage:

• Qatar Tribune
• AMEinfo
• Zawya

Speaking about the launch, Microsoft Qatar Country Manager Naim Yazbeck said, “At Microsoft, we have been hard at work delivering cloud innovation to help businesses succeed in this transformational time. What we are seeing in the industry calls for a different approach. Now, organisations can achieve a data centre without boundaries.” “The OS and apps are wherever you need them to be. We are committed to this vision and we call it the Cloud OS.

This platform should unlock further potentials for Qatari businesses and we wish to work closely with our partners in Qatar to leverage its maximum potential. I would like to congratulate Qatar Airways as the first to incorporate this platform in their ever growing business.” Yazbeck added.

“We have been using Windows Server 2012 through the rapid development programme (RDP) to experience how it can empower a dynamic data centre,” said Shibu Mathai, manager of infrastructure design at Qatar Airways.
“We have benefited from the new virtualisation enhancements in Windows Server 2012, I can envisage that cloud computing will be extremely beneficial for our business development’.

Microsoft Qatar announces Windows Server 2012

Just wanted to cover some of the buzz in the local press last week about Windows Server 2012, centered around our Private Cloud Enterprise Connect event in Doha.

For those of you that missed the event, I covered Windows Server 2012’s new virtualization features, while others covered VDI, the Microsoft Private Cloud story, Windows Azure and Identity Management.

Here are links to some of the local press coverage:

• Qatar Tribune
• AMEinfo
• Zawya

Speaking about the launch, Microsoft Qatar Country Manager Naim Yazbeck said, “At Microsoft, we have been hard at work delivering cloud innovation to help businesses succeed in this transformational time. What we are seeing in the industry calls for a different approach. Now, organisations can achieve a data centre without boundaries.” “The OS and apps are wherever you need them to be. We are committed to this vision and we call it the Cloud OS.

This platform should unlock further potentials for Qatari businesses and we wish to work closely with our partners in Qatar to leverage its maximum potential. I would like to congratulate Qatar Airways as the first to incorporate this platform in their ever growing business.” Yazbeck added.

“We have been using Windows Server 2012 through the rapid development programme (RDP) to experience how it can empower a dynamic data centre,” said Shibu Mathai, manager of infrastructure design at Qatar Airways.
“We have benefited from the new virtualisation enhancements in Windows Server 2012, I can envisage that cloud computing will be extremely beneficial for our business development’.

Red Hat includes built-in Integration Services for Hyper-V in RHEL 5.9

Microsoft have made strategic investments in interoperability that continues to reap rewards and here’s another big one TODAY with Red Hat. Today, Red Hat has announced the beta of RHEL 5.9 which includes the Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V built-in. (press release below.) The Microsoft press release is here.

This means that RHEL will include the following Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V “inbox”:

1. Driver support: Linux Integration Services supports the network controller and the IDE and SCSI storage controllers that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.

2. Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices now take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.

3. Timesync: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain accurate by synchronizing to the clock on the virtualization server via Timesync service, and with the help of the pluggable time source device.

4. Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager by using the “Shut down” command.

5. Heartbeat: This feature allows the Hyper-V to detect whether the virtual machine is running and responsive.

6. Key Value Pair (KVP) Exchange: Information about the running Linux virtual machine can be obtained by using the Key Value Pair exchange functionality on the Hyper-V host.

7. Integrated Mouse Support: Linux Integration Services provides full mouse support for Linux guest virtual machines.

From the Red Hat Press Release today:

Virtualization: Customers can easily run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 as a guest on top of Microsoft Hyper-V, providing enhanced interoperability in a Windows environment. This enhances the usability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 for guests in a heterogeneous multi-vendor virtualized environment and provides improved flexibility and interoperability for our customers.

This is just another example of our commitment to interoperability and providing the best Cloud OS.

Linux Integration Services (LIS) 3.4 release for Hyper-V: As you can imagine with our focus on the release of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, the LIS 3.4 release mirrors that focus. Specifically, the Linux Integration Services 3.4 Release for Hyper-V adds support for the following hosts:

• Windows 8 Hyper-V
• Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012

In addition, the Linux Integration Services 3.4 Release for Hyper-V adds support for the following guest operating systems:

• RHEL 5.7 (x86 and x64)
• RHEL 5.8 (x86 and x64)
• RHEL 6.3 (x86 and x64)
• CentOS 5.7 (x86 and x64)
• CentOS 5.8 (x86 and x64)
• CentOS 6.3 (x86 and x64)

Find out about Qatar Airways’ evaluation of Windows Server 2012 in the Rapid Deployment Program

Qatar Airways, awarded the World’s Best Airline in 2011 and 2012 is one of our customers in Qatar that have enrolled into the Windows Server 2012 Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) powered by our partner ICT WLL.

Join us on September 18 for the Microsoft Enterprise Connect event and hear Mr. Shibu Mathai, Manager – Infrastructure Design at Qatar Airways share Qatar Airways’ experiences on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

Also speaking at the event are Mark Chaban (MEA Director Product Marketing), Jesus Martin (Infrastructure Specialist Lead – Gulf), Mohammed Alaa Eldin (Gulf Solutions Specialist – Identity & Azure),

Attendance to this event is free, but seats are filling up fast. Please make sure you register ASAP to confirm your place.

Microsoft Enterprise Connect: Your Own Private Cloud Roadmap
Where: Qamar Room, Hilton Hotel, Doha, Qatar
When: September 18, 2012, Registration begins at 8.30am
Agenda:

08:30 – 09:00   Registrations & Welcome Refreshments       
09:00 – 09:15   Keynote: Qatar Airways
09:15 – 10:00   Private Cloud Infrastructure       
10:00 – 11:00   Private Cloud and Datacenter Management
11:00 – 11:15   Coffee Break       
11:15 – 12:00   Desktop Virtualization & VDI
12:00 – 12:30   IaaS and Storage in Windows Azure       
12:30 – 13:00   Identity and Cloud Better Together       
13:00 -             Lunch & Networking

Click here to register | Save to Calendar

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Posters!

Posters are back! Yes, I know you love them!

• Poster Companion Reference – Hyper-V and Failover Clustering [Download]
• Poster Companion Reference – Hyper-V Replica [Download]
• Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster For Printing [Download]

Now get geeked up – and go decorate the wall behind your desk!