CLOUD

3PAR utility storage certified with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to deliver agility and cost-efficiency for utility computing environments: 3PAR announced today support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft’s newest server operating system with built-in, hypervisor-based virtualization. 3PAR Utility Storage and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V work together to give IT organizations the ability to deliver software and hardware as a service through server and storage virtualization as part of a complete utility computing environment. 3PAR Utility Storage and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V are designed to deliver a more agile and resilient infrastructure with significantly enhanced capacity utilization and cost efficiency. Server virtualization technologies were developed to deliver improved utilization and simplified management as well as providing datacenters with a more flexible infrastructure. However, in order for the entire virtualized environment to be provisioned quickly and efficiently, both servers and storage must be agile. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V enables rapid and efficient server consolidation by allowing customers to quickly provision multiple virtual machines that run simultaneously and independently on a single physical server. To complement these efficiencies, customers need to consider a storage infrastructure that offers similar benefits. Unlike traditional storage solutions, 3PAR Utility Storage is a highly virtualized storage platform built from the ground up to support the unique requirements of virtualized server environments and utility computing. Together, 3PAR Utility Storage and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V combine server and storage virtualization to help reduce infrastructure costs and management overhead while improving agility and the ability to rapidly provision resources. "More and more organizations are uncovering the potential of delivering enterprise IT as a utility service,” said David Scott, president and CEO of 3PAR. “This is evident in the rise of next-generation datacenters and the accelerating adoption of cloud computing delivery models among content service providers,” said Scott. “Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and 3PAR Utility Storage work together to provide an ideal utility computing platform for resilient and cost-efficient services delivery.” “Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V enables IT organizations to adopt virtualization more cost-effectively, improve utilization, optimize infrastructure, and rapidly provision new servers,” said David Greschler, director of integrated virtualization strategy, Microsoft Corp. “Working with leading storage vendors such as 3PAR provides our joint customers with even more business advantages as a result of deploying both server and storage virtualization.” Unique features built into the 3PAR Utility Storage platform enhance the value of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V in the following ways: • Advanced internal virtualization. The 3PAR InServ® Storage Server automatically stripes volumes widely across all disks within this massively scalable, tiered-storage array. Due to this highly load-balanced design, as the system scales to accommodate multiple virtual machines created with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the InServ continues to deliver high and predictable levels of service and performance for all workload types. This makes 3PAR Utility Storage an ideal storage consolidation platform for virtualized environments using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. • Inherent efficiency. 3PAR Utility Storage is designed to reduce capital expenditures and increase storage utilization by enabling customers to initiate a larger number of projects and deploy more virtual machines using fewer resources. With 3PAR Thin Provisioning and thin copy technologies, 3PAR customers have dramatically reduced capacity and related costs while substantially alleviating storage system administration. With the use of 3PAR Thin Provisioning software, organizations are able to provision virtual capacity to a virtual machine application only once and then purchase physical capacity only as virtual machine applications truly require it for written data. Capacity for all virtual applications is drawn automatically and as needed from the InServ’s shared storage pool to eliminate allocated but unused capacity and simplify storage administration. "3PAR Utility Storage and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V deliver complementary benefits that are optimized through highly virtualized storage and server technologies," said Benjamin S. Woo, vice president, Enterprise Storage Systems, IDC. “Customers looking to maximize the efficiency gains of deploying virtualization in their datacenters should consider this combination." As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, 3PAR works with Microsoft to ensure that 3PAR Utility Storage products are tested and approved for use with Microsoft products. In addition, 3PAR has access to new Microsoft product releases, development tools, technical resources, and marketing programs. These resources allow 3PAR to more quickly integrate, test, and support new Microsoft product releases and better serve mutual customers.