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by Justin Braun, Microsoft Product Specialist — February 27, 2008 |
This morning, the launch kicked off with retired NBC Nightly News anchor, Tom Brokaw addressing attendees about the role technology plays in our lives and the dependency on IT in most things we do. Brokaw then introduced Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.
Ballmer discussed the concept of "Dynamic IT" where you enable and provide agility through new technology. Dynamic IT is seen as an overall strategic business asset versus just a cost center. Microsoft continues to focus on industry trends like software and services, developing for openness, the rich user experience, and virtualization. Microsoft sees virtualization as still being in its early stages in the industry and according to Ballmer, less than 10% of the world’s servers are virtualized.
Windows® Server 2008 has been a long time coming, but now that it's here, let's talk about some examples of the interoperability between Windows® Server 2008 and the Compellent Storage Center SAN:
Certified for Windows® Server 2008
The Compellent Storage Center 4.0 carries the "Certified for Windows® Server 2008" qualification on both the 32-bit and 64-bit platform. You can find us in the Windows® Server Catalog.
No Server Agents
We don't require any special drivers to use our storage in a Microsoft environment. Connect your server via your Fibre Channel or iSCSI infrastructure to the Compellent Storage Center and within a few minutes you're ready to go.
Thin Provisioning
With the thin provisioning capabilities of Dynamic Capacity technology we don't need to pre-allocate space for volumes or Replays (snapshots). With Windows® Server 2008, the standard installation will consume around 6GB of disk space. The recommended volume size for a boot volume is now 40GB for Windows Server 2008. You shouldn't have to consume all that space before the data is written. You can extend those capabilities by creating a "gold" image of your Windows build, take a Replay then use the Replay for the boot volumes in your environment.
Remember, on the Compellent Storage Center Replays only consume space for the deltas—that is, the changes between the snapshot and any new data that is written. With Dynamic Capacity and Data Progression (automated tiered storage), you can cut your disk space utilization and costs drastically in your Windows environment.