… NetApp …

Trends toward greater virtualization of IT infrastructure, increased levels of content digitization, faster levels of IT service deployment, and continued service-level availability expectations are driving increased interest in cloud computing. This period of transformation from physical to virtual infrastructures, and then to secure private, public, and hybrid clouds, offers opportunities for IT professionals to deliver agile, on-demand services built on a flexible pool of shared compute, network, and storage resources.

In close collaboration with technology leaders such as NetApp, Inc., Microsoft is unveiling a new Windows Server release to help accelerate this transition. NetApp announced support for Windows Server 2012 with storage solutions for server and desktop virtualization, storage and availability, Web and application platform development, and private cloud deployment. For organizations of any size and in any industry, this close collaboration simplifies and accelerates how storage is pooled, provisioned, accessed, and managed in Windows environments.

In June, NetApp was named Microsoft Private Cloud Partner of the Year for 2012 in recognition of its commitment to helping organizations move to private cloud solutions. For more than 10 years, NetApp and Microsoft have teamed to develop and provide storage and data management solutions for Microsoft technologies. More than 25,000 enterprise customers worldwide store, protect, and manage their Microsoft application data with NetApp storage solutions.

"Windows Server 2012 is the category benchmark for organizations looking to migrate rapidly to cloud-ready infrastructures for application and service delivery," said Phil Brotherton, VP, Enterprise Software Ecosystem, NetApp. "To help organizations realize the full value of their Microsoft technology investments, we continue to align our solution delivery roadmaps to address the critical challenges our mutual customers are facing, from increasing storage efficiency to maintaining high availability of servers, applications, and services."

"Windows Server 2012 is built from the ground up to be cloud ready and delivers important storage enhancements to help organizations reduce costs and achieve a whole new level of business agility," said Thomas Pfenning, GM, File Server Foundation, Microsoft. "We’ve worked closely with NetApp with a focus on giving our mutual customers an efficient, flexible, and reliable IT foundation for delivering business-critical services."

NetApp offers the following support
for key capabilities of Windows Server 2012:

Storage
NetApp FAS and V-Series storage systems have been tested, and are supported with Windows Server 2012, which means compatibility and confident deployment of applications. NetApp is committed to providing support for SMB 3.0 and Windows ODX – file storage and data transfer technologies used in Windows Server 2012 storage environments – and is launching a public beta program for this support in October 2012. It is committed to making data storage and data movement easier by providing storage protocol choices (including support for FCP, FCoE, and iSCSI) that can make server consolidation and virtualization easier, enabling additional cost savings, storage efficiency, increased utilization, and simpler HA and DR solutions. NetApp is also a partner member of the Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track program and is developing prevalidated solutions for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V on the NetApp and Cisco FlexPod architecture managed with Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1.

Server and desktop virtualization
NetApp Snapshot-based backup and recovery with Snapmanager for Hyper-V 1.2 and SnapDrive for Windows 6.5 have achieved Windows Server 2012 logo certification and provide integrated data protection in Windows Server 2012 environments, speeding backup, restore, and DR operations in Microsoft Private Cloud and Hyper-V environments. NetApp’s support for the updated Clustered Shared Volumes in Windows Server 2012 and the new VHDx specification reduce consumption of server and storage system resources, enabling large-scale virtualization and private cloud deployments. For desktop virtualization, NetApp storage systems offer a set of features for efficient, reliable, and scalable VDI deployments, including de-duplication, zero-space cloning, flash cache, and automation.

Reduced infrastructure for cloud
With delivery expected later this year, a NetApp reference architecture built with Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1 will integrate with NetApp FAS data storage systems and V-Series open storage systems running NetApp Data ONTAP. This validated architecture is structured to reduce application deployment times; increase utilization of virtual and physical resource pools; and provide end-to-end interoperability of compute, storage, and network resources in conjunction with the release of Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1.

Management and automation
For private cloud implementations, NetApp OnCommand Plug-in for Microsoft 3.2 is designed to provide integration with System Center 2012 SP1 for dynamic scalability, automated workflow, on-demand self-service, and infrastructure orchestration in conjunction with the release of the updated management suite for Windows Server 2012 by Microsoft.

Web and application platform
NetApp provides support for application platforms on Windows Server 2012, including support of SQL Server 2012 data protection with Snapmanager 6.0 for SQL Server.