NetApp integration with Dynamic Data Center Toolkit, which provides sample code and guidance for building cloud services powered by Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and the Microsoft System Center Suite, can offer cost-conscious businesses enhanced data protection, the company said.
Data storage and data management specialist NetApp announced
enhanced integration with Microsoft to deliver data protection
solutions to cloud service providers by leveraging the Microsoft
Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Hosters. Additionally, NetApp announced
the availability of professional service offerings and additional
resources and guidance for service providers to build a variety of
enterprise-class cloud services.
The Dynamic Data Center Toolkit provides sample code and guidance for
building cloud services powered by Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V
and the Microsoft System Center Suite. John Zanni, general manager of
worldwide hosting for the communications sector at Microsoft, said
small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) are demanding enterprise-class
disaster recovery solutions, and hosting service providers are in a
tremendous position to fill that demand as more SMBs move toward hosted
IT services.
"We're pleased to be working with NetApp as part of the Dynamic Data
Center Alliance to enable hosting service providers to offer these
disaster recovery solutions, and to take another step to move beyond
commoditized hosting services to become full-service IT providers to
their customers," he said.
nGenX Corporation, a regional infrastructure-as-a-service provider and
joint NetApp and Microsoft customer, leveraged the Dynamic Data Center
Toolkit to deliver its Guardian GeoCloud service to its customers. The
company's executive vice president, Robert Bye, said using NetApp
storage efficiency technologies such as thin provisioning and
deduplication in Microsoft Hyper-V environments helps them maximize
infrastructure utilization and lower costs for the end user. "As a
result, we use 50 percent-60 percent less storage than we would
otherwise need to support cloud services for our customers," he said.
"We are really exploding some myths about the affordability of
enterprise-class disaster recovery for our customers."
NetApp also unveiled consulting offerings and design guidance
documentation for Microsoft environments, along with new capabilities
to help service providers improve their SLAs. NetApp noted these
professional services are specifically designed for Microsoft
environments. The new offerings assist service providers across all
phases of a shared infrastructure deployment, including assessment,
planning, architectural design, and best-practices-based implementation.
NetApp also published new design guidance documentation to give service
providers best practices around deploying as-a-service offerings for
their customers. The guidance is designed to help service providers
design and deploy the following cost-effective enterprise-class
services: Exchange as a service, SharePoint as a service,
Infrastructure as a service, Storage as a service and Desktop as a
service.
Finally, to provide further assistance to service providers deploying
NetApp data protection as a service (DPAAS), NetApp has partnered with
InControl software to help service providers monitor and meet their
customers' SLAs. InControl software can be deployed in a NetApp DPaaS
environment to provide real-time SLA and key performance indicator
monitoring. This data informs administrators of upcoming SLA issues as
they happen, the company noted.
Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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