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Friday, September 30, 2011

Integrated IT stack: Packaging the pieces of the virtualization puzzle

Some of the biggest names in the storage industry now offer integrated IT stacks for organizations looking to quickly deploy high-performance virtualized environments. EMC Corp., NetApp Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. sell predesigned architectures that include the virtual server platform, networking and computing gear, and storage infrastructure in one package.

While it’s early for the integrated storage stacks, vendors and their distribution partners expect the trend toward data center consolidation around virtualization and cloud storage to spark interest in integrated stacks.

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Thursday, September 1, 2011

Hyper-V storage management options expanding

VMware is the most popular choice for virtualizing servers by a wide margin, but it isn’t the only option. Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor is gaining users because it costs less and requires little extra training for Windows users. As a result, more Hyper-V storage management tools are becoming available.

In addition to Microsoft’s own System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), vendors have released third-party products to manage performance issues in Hyper-V virtual environments. Here’s a rundown of some of Microsoft’s inherent Hyper-V storage management resources as well as some third-party tools.

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