So, timestamp’s aside, NetApp Blogs have snuck 4 more blogs into the blogosphere!
Fortunately for all of us as well, these happen to be some amazingly excellent blogs!
 |
 |
 |
 |
Check them out, and stay tuned for more!
Wow, it’s almost here! This should be cool.
NetApp Accelerate is happening February 23 – 26, 2009, at Moscone West in San Francisco, California. Participating in this educational forum will give you the tricks and techniques you can put to use immediately to address your data management concerns and challenges. Join us and learn how to make the most of your storage and data management infrastructure using the power and innovation of NetApp solutions.
The breakout sessions should be amazing!
Backup and Recovery
Compliance and Security
Data Center Infrastructure
Ethernet and Fibre Channel SAN
File Services
Storage Systems and Data ONTAP
Engineering Applications and High Performance Computing (HPC)
Enterprise Applications
Manageability
Server and Desktop Virtualization
I plan to be there if I can attend (present). :)
(edit) Oh yea – and Bare Naked Ladies will be playing at Accelerate!
So, today I read this Whitepaper published in May of this year – omg! Cool is what I say!
Discounting factors aside (And it makes for a great read) the excellent XenApp Citrix’s replacement for Presentation Server steps into the Virtualization Space on fire!
While physical does get some presentation value, the fact that the Virtual instance running on XenServer vs a Physical is able to perform with an 8% penalty is amazing.
Citrix has been a player in this space (Well, really the only player) who is able to produce clear, consistent and reliable results. And this just takes the cake to a new level.
I encourage anyone interested in Application, Presentation and OS Virtualization to this out.
Optimizing XenApp Performance with XenServer 4.1.0 Enterprise Edition
For a Whitepaper, it is a good, short and non-boring read.
This is only the beginning of a whole new Citrix and XenServer revolution, especially with their NetApp Integration, Partnership and NetApp Adapter
The heat is on – oh uh oh oh! :)
So, as seen here NetApp Expands Storage and Data Management Solutions Supporting Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Physical and Virtual Environments this can mean a lot for environments which want high resiliency, modern systems (Server 2008, Hyper-V) and helping to further consolidate Server sprawl as well as Storage sprawl.
But what does this mean for you or I?
Oh, this is where the fun gets started!
It’s one thing to have supported SnapManager products on the latest Apps:
But to also be able to support them instanced within Hyper-V, I have to add ‘coolerific’ to the equation. What this means is that even I in my lab/sandbox/testbed/Laptop ;) will be able to actually simulate any of these environments as well!
My testbed happens to be a Lenovo T61P, 4gb of ram, running Server 2008 (Enterprise), Hyper-V enabled, Also running the NetApp Data ONTAP Simulator for local-side simulated (yet real) storage!
I’ll be able to run rig with all scenarios of apps, dependencies and then replicated it back to my actual real filers, along with the older apps (while not mentioned, but not less important) such as MOSS, Exchange 2003, SQL 2005, and beyond!
Yea, I think it’s pretty damn cool that the support is there, and gives me something even *I* can take advantage of, let alone large scale enterprises!
So, this is often a debated question – Is my machine capable of doing Hyper-V?
Well, let the doubt be cast to the wayside a bit.
AMD Processor Utility to Check compatibility
Intel Checker (by GRC) to check compatibility
As seen in this screen shot as well
This alone will not dictate whether you can support Hyper-V as a lot of it falls upon your BIOS and whether the features exist there to enable. However, just to get past that initial conversation of “Is my processor supported” we have the following link and table.
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor Specification
As you can likely tell, all things being equal – All things are NOT equal!
From a validation perspective, all of the rules which apply to Microsoft’s Hyper-V should also apply to Citrix XenServer.