Partners

Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft Virtualization

The HP and Microsoft Frontline Partnership is one of the oldest of its kind in the industry with more than 20 years of combined marketplace leadership. Focusing on innovation and synchronization, technical expertise and track record, and stability-driven approach enable Microsoft and HP to deliver proven Frontline innovation for the way customers run their businesses.

HP and Microsoft have collaborated on best industry practices to help business and IT respond and adapt to change. Microsoft and HP provide integrated hardware and software virtualization and management technology products built to help your business become an agile, adaptive enterprise.

A virtualization solution from Microsoft and HP offers multiple complementary virtualization technologies that address all aspects of your virtualized environment. The inherent compatibility of solutions from Microsoft and HP enables customers to deploy virtualization technologies from the desktop to the data center quickly, easily, and with a high degree of confidence. Together, Microsoft and HP provide the complete infrastructure of operating system and management software, HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers, and HP StorageWorks storage to help you address the key issues associated with your virtualization initiative for a dynamic IT environment.

• Integrated Virtualization, Management Solution: Complementary hardware/software for any virtualization scenario; compatible tools unify management of virtual machines and energy-efficient ProLiant and BladeSystem servers; functionality from deployment, monitoring, and control of hardware infrastructure, through to operating system and application management.
• Business Benefits Realized Quickly: Virtualization solutions plug into existing infrastructure; integrated server assessment, solution accelerator tools reduce time to solution; virtualization technologies within familiar server roles shorten learning curve.
• Amplified Benefits Through Trusted Partnership: HP and Microsoft jointly test and optimize their virtualization technologies; more than 3,600 Microsoft-certified experts and 22,000 HP professionals are trained on Microsoft technologies.

Customer Scenario

Organizations consolidate servers to reduce hardware costs, decrease electrical consumption and server administration expenses, and increase efficiency in the development environment. Conversely, creating more and more virtual machines introduces new challenges associated with managing an increasingly abstract environment. This situation is exacerbated as organizations progress with presentation and application virtualization implementations intended to drive agility and business continuity across the enterprise. Creating virtualization solutions from the data center to the desktop multiplies the business benefits of virtualization, but it is crucial to curtail the sprawl of virtual machines—or run the risk of diluting the value of virtualization investments. Virtualization brings new challenges, and customers need to be able to quickly and reliably configure, deploy, and update their servers, while proactively monitoring server health and controlling power usage, as well as remotely control their servers in any location. Customers increasingly need to simplify their data center deployments and combine disaster recovery, capacity planning, and automated provisioning to unite their physical and virtual worlds.

HP + Microsoft Solution

Virtualization is a key element of every company’s IT infrastructure. Taking an IT-centric approach to virtualization – addressing only discrete projects and business services -- can limit benefits. HP helps companies take a comprehensive approach to virtualization to deliver applications and business services more quickly, put unused data center capacity to work on business priorities, and enhance availability, continuity, and security.

HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem servers and StorageWorks storage – part of the industry’s most complete platform designed for virtualization – broadly support Microsoft virtualization technologies, including Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

Managing physical and virtual environments had forced customers to compromise – too many tools and not enough deep integration between them. HP Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center (ICE-SC) is the first extensive solution that provides seamless integration of the unique ProLiant and BladeSystem manageability features into the Microsoft System Center consoles. Backed by HP service and support, ICE-SC delivers a powerful hardware management experience for customers who have standardized on a Microsoft System Center management platform.

• Maximize server uptime & significantly reduce time to resolution when problems arise
• Proactively manage virtual machine workloads based on pre-failure conditions in underlying host systems
• Optimize administrator time spent on common maintenance tasks
• Automate deployment and updating of ProLiant and BladeSystem servers

ICE for System Center allows you to:

• Quickly and reliably configure, deploy and update ProLiant servers through Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager.
• Proactively monitor the health of physical and virtual servers and intelligently respond to hardware events using System Center Operations Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
• Remotely control HP servers in any location directly from the System Center Operations Manager console using HP iLO Advanced.
• Safely cap power usage to fit more servers within existing power envelopes – up to triple the capacity – without putting electrical infrastructure at risk with HP Dynamic Power Capping.

HP provides innovative and useful technology to speed the return on your virtualization investment. The 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.

BladeSystem Matrix is all about enhancement and integration with what you have today; your networks, your SANs, plus it’s transparent to your preferred applications, OSes and hypervisors (including Hyper-V). It also supports your processes and teams’ roles, so Matrix works the same way your team prefers to get work done, only faster. Our goal is to help you use more of the resources you already have, accelerate your toughest projects, and make your team more productive so they can focus on what they do best.

Microsoft and HP provide complementary software and hardware with integrated management tools that optimize the value of virtualization investments and let you squeeze maximum productivity and efficiency from your virtual environment.

The new ProLiant G6 servers are designed for virtualization. More memory, processing and I/O means more Virtual Machines (VM) per server than ever before, resulting in lower acquisition costs per VM and optimum resource utilization in your data center.

• HP Insight software, including Insight Control suite and Insight Dynamics – VSE, deliver comprehensive system health, remote control, vulnerability scanning, and patch management, as well as flexible deployment, virtual machine management, and power management in one, easy-to-install package.
• HP virtualization technology and expertise help optimize resources from the desktop to the data center.
• New ProLiant G6 servers are designed for virtualization. More memory, processing and I/O means more Virtual Machines (VM) per server than ever before, resulting in lower acquisition costs per VM and optimum resource utilization in your data center.
• HP BladeSystem c-Class provides an energy-efficient and space-saving design, along with innovative management tools and Virtual Connect technology, making it the perfect virtualization platform.

Solution Briefs

• Managing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V with HP Insight Software
  HP Insight software enables IT administrators to manage physical servers and virtual servers that are based on heterogeneous virtualization technologies from a single console.
• Building an Adaptive Infrastructure with HP Management Tools for Microsoft Hyper-V Environments
  Use HP management tools to improve the way you manage your Hyper-V environments.

White Papers

• How to install Microsoft Hyper-V on HP ProLiant c-Class server blades
  This paper describes how to install Hyper-V on HP ProLiant server blades and troubleshoot common problems during the installation process.
• HP Sizing and Configuration Tool for Microsoft Hyper-V
  The HP Sizing and Configuration Tool for Microsoft Hyper-V is a downloadable, automated tool that provides a quick and consistent methodology to determine a “best-fit” server configuration for your virtualized Hyper-V environment.
• Sizing guide for Microsoft Hyper-V on HP server and storage technologies
  This paper discusses a sizing methodology for using processor utilization, memory usage, and network throughput requirements to determine the number of Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines that can run on a physical host HP ProLiant server.
• Quick sizing guide for Microsoft Hyper-V running on HP ProLiant servers and StorageWorks storage systems
  A quick sizing guide for Microsoft Hyper-V on HP ProLiant and StorageWorks products. The paper introduces tools, products, and considerations, which can be used to size/build a configuration for your application.
• Implementing Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V on HP ProLiant servers
  This paper provides detailed information on HP support of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, including supported servers and options, as well as installation instructions.
• How to configure Failover Clustering for Hyper-V hosts on HP ProLiant c-Class server blades with All-in-One SB600c storage blade
  This document describes how to use Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering feature using HP BladeSystem c-Class ProLiant server blades and HP StorageWorks All-in-One SB600c.
• HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming
  This whitepaper provides a high- and low-level discussion of the technology behind HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming for HP ProLiant servers running Microsoft Windows. HP ProLiant Network Adapter Teaming is software-based technology used by server administrators and network administrators to increase a server’s network availability and performance.
• Using HP ProLiant Network Teaming Software with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
  HP ProLiant Network Teaming Software allows ProLiant systems running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to take advantage of network controller teaming technology. This paper describes, for system administrators and technicians, the method of software installation for implementing network controller teaming and it identifies known issues with teaming and Hyper-V software.

Best Practice Guides

• Best practices for a Microsoft Hyper-V Dynamic Data Center in an HP BladeSystem environment
  Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V dynamic data center scenario in an HP BladeSystem environment using F5 Networks and HP products and tools.
• Best practices for deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with Hyper-V on HP ProLiant servers
  HP engineers offer a compiled list of Hyper-V "best practices" when deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 on HP ProLiant servers and HP BladeSystem servers.

Reference Architectures

• HP ProLiant BL495c server blade reference architecture for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
  This paper is a reference architecture guide for Microsoft Hyper-V on HP BladeSystem and ProLiant BL495c blades. It discusses various Hyper-V scenarios and includes utilization of HP LeftHand Networks SAN, HP StorageWorks EVA and HP management tools.
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V clustering with HP BladeSystem and HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array
  This document presents a general-purpose architecture designed for the high-availability deployment of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V on an HP BladeSystem infrastructure with HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array storage.
• HP BladeSystem reference architecture for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
  This is a reference architecture for the deployment of Hyper-V, on an HP BladeSystem infrastructure. A bill of materials for the reference architecture is included.
• HP recommended configurations for running a Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 website on HP ProLiant server technology
  Configuration recommendations for HP ProLiant servers for websites running Microsoft IIS 7.0 either in a physical server environment or on Hyper-V Virtual Machines.
• Performance analysis and power savings of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 consolidation on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
  This paper describes how a virtualized Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 environment using Hyper-V provides significant power savings while maintaining high levels of performance.
• Considerations Guide for using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit in an HP ProLiant Environment
  General reference architectures for the MAP Toolkit when using Hyper-V in an HP ProLiant infrastructure.

Scalability Briefs

• Using the HP ProLiant DL580 G5 and DL380 G5 servers to virtualize a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm
  This paper documents the testing results achieved when using HP ProLiant DL580 G5 and DL380 G5 servers to deploy Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 using Hyper-V virtualization technology.
• Performance characterization of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V on HP ProLiant servers and MSA2000 storage
  This document focuses on performance characterization testing of disk sub-systems for Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines, using several HP ProLiant servers with either local storage or an HP StorageWorks 2212fc Modular Smart Array.
• Utilizing the HP ProLiant DL585 G5 Server and Hyper-V to virtualize a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment
  Deployment of HP ProLiant DL585 G5 server (AMD) using Hyper-V, to virtualize an Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm. Presents performance results of a virtualization solution.
• Utilizing the HP ProLiant DL580 G5 Server and Hyper-V to virtualize a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment
  Deployment of HP ProLiant DL580 G5 server (Intel) using Hyper-V, to virtualize an Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm. Presents performance results of a virtualization solution.

Webcasts

• TechNet Webcast: Managing Hyper-V Virtual Machines with WMI and Windows PowerShell
  The HP Windows Server 2008 Academy team shares their experience automating the deployment of 600 virtual machines using WMI and Windows PowerShell.
• Dynamic Resource Management with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
  This session covers "out of the box" features such as PRO's ability to monitor Hyper-V and VMware host performance as well as its extensibility model allowing partners such as Emulex and HP to build custom solutions for our mutual customers.

Videos

• HP & Microsoft Solutions: HP EVA6400/8400 and Microsoft Hyper-V
  Dave Roberson, SVP & GM, HP StorageWorks Division, Jim Schwartz and Jeff Woolsey of Microsoft discuss how the HP EVA6400/8400 storage solution delivers best-in-class performance when customers use Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technology.
• HP virtualization with Microsoft Hyper-V
  HPs federal comprehensive solution showcase highlights Server Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Presentation and Application Virtualization.

Press releases

• HP Delivers Industry-first Management Capabilities for Microsoft System Center
• HP Introduces Industry’s First Business-ready Infrastructure for Automated Service Delivery in Data Centers
• HP Bolsters Adaptive Infrastructure Portfolio, Helps Customers Succeed in a Challenging Economy
• New HP Products and Services Enhance Microsoft Virtualization from Desktop to Data Center

Testimonials

• MLS Property Information Network, Inc.
  “In the long term, the HP solution will reduce our annual total cost of ownership for our two data centers by 30 percent easily. That puts our payback at well under two years. We’ve taken a lot of the limits off of traditional IT. We can build and destroy virtual servers at will. And when you consider the easier learning curve and the benefits of having a single point of contact and a uniform way of getting support with HP, it’s pretty compelling.”

Case studies

• Jackson Energy Authority turns to HP LeftHand SANs and Microsoft Hyper-V to run virtually everything
  Jackson Energy Authority selected HP LeftHand SANs as the ideal storage solution to complement its virtual infrastructure. HP LeftHand SANs deliver best-in-class features that keep storage networks operating at peak performance.
• Microsoft builds new financial reporting Web portal using SQL Server 2008 and HP ProLiant Intel Xeon processor-based server in a virtualized environment
  Microsoft uses SQL Server 2008 and HP ProLiant Intel Xeon processor-based server for their new financial reporting system.
• Defining the adaptive infrastructure with HP servers and Microsoft® Hyper-V
  HP helps MLS Property Information Network implement a scalable, cost-effective server infrastructure, maximizing CPU utilization & reducing physical servers, with ProLiant servers and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Data Center Edition with Hyper-V.
• Continental flies higher by saving millions with Microsoft Hyper-V on HP BladeSystem
  Continental Airlines standardizes on HP BladeSystem and Microsoft Windows® Server 2008 with Hyper-V to maximize CPU utilization and reduce the number of physical servers required, allowing them to stay in their current data center and avoid millions of dollars in capital investments.

Professional Services

• HP Data Center Transformation Services
  HP Data Center Transformation services can assist with virtualization strategy, design, transition, acceleration, infrastructure services, virtual desktop infrastructure, and support and education.
• HP Software Technology Services for Hyper-V
  HP delivers a portfolio of expert services to streamline deployment and installation of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V software and provides help on how to manage it.

KB Articles

• HP Support Matrix for ProLiant Servers
  Support matrix showing which HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers are supported with Hyper-V.
• HP Support Matrix for StorageWorks Storage
  Support matrix showing which HP StorageWorks storage systems are supported with Hyper-V.