Virtualization and Private Cloud- Part 2

(This post courtesy Iftekhar Hussain)

In my last blog post, I talked about the how Virtualization plays a vital role in setting up a Cloud infrastructure and enables the kind flexibility, elasticity, and automation which cloud services requires.

I also mentioned about Microsoft Hyper V Cloud offerings which we introduced in Berlin at TechEd Europe 2010.

With Microsoft, partners can participate in the full range of cloud offerings across the public and private spectrum to create new business models and generate new revenue streams. Partners will be able to expand their role as trusted advisors through broader customer engagements. They’ll also be able to deliver increasing business value to customers by offering dramatic improvements in business agility, operational efficiency, and IT maturity—with significant cost savings. And they’ll be able to win more business by closing larger deals and expanding into new markets.

Let’s look into these offerings in details and see what kind of role you as a Microsoft Partner can play and what kind of opportunities exists for you.

Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track:
For customers who need some level of customization, but also want to reduce risk and speed deployment, reference architectures can provide the perfect balance. Microsoft is collaborating with Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, and NEC to deliver a broad choice of pre-defined, validated configurations for private cloud deployments—comprising compute, storage, networking resources, virtualization, and management software. Dell, HP and IBM have reference architectures available today, and the other partner will have reference architectures shortly. More information is available at www.microsoft.com/privatecloud.

Hyper-V Cloud Service Provider Program:
More than 70 service providers around the world to offer infrastructure as a finished, fully-hosted service built on Microsoft’s technology. This option delivers the fastest, most cost-effective implementation for private clouds. Service providers include: >Korean Internet Data Center; Fasthosts (UK, US); Agarik (France); Hostway Corporation (US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Romania).

You can find the entire list of all the Service providers offering Private cloud around the world here .

Hyper-V Cloud Deployment Guides:
For customers, who want to build their own private clouds on top of existing infrastructure investments, we are offering tools and guidance based on expertise developed during hundreds of Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) customer engagements over the past few years. This element of the Hyper-V Cloud program optimizes for the highest levels of flexibility, control, and customization.

Hyper-V Cloud Deployment Guides are available for download.

• Module 1: Architecture
• Module 2: Deployment
• Module 3: Operations
• Module 4: Project Validation Workbook
• Module 5: Project Plan Template

This is also a good opportunity for partners to make use of these deployment guides and help the customers deploy Private cloud in their organization and streamline their movement to the cloud.

Hyper-V Cloud Practice Builder:
Enables systems integrators to scope, resource, plan, deliver, and operate a Hyper-V Cloud private cloud engagement. Partners will be provided with guidance on planning and managing a server virtualization engagement, and installing, configuring and operating a virtualized Private Cloud environment. They’ll also receive project plan templates, architecture and sizing guides, and a predefined set of validation test cases to be completed after any Proof of Concept, Production Deployment, or expansion of an existing system. The Hyper-V Cloud Practice Builder is available to all partners that are members of the Microsoft Partner Network.

You can download the Hyper-V Cloud Practice Builder from here:

• Engagement Management Guide
• Architecture and Sizing Guide
• Deployment Guide
• Operations Guide
• Project Plan Template
• Deployment Validation Workbook

You can find more information about Hyper V Cloud Practice Accelerator here.

Hyper-V Cloud Accelerate:
Hyper-V Cloud Accelerate is an offer to customers and partners to fund Microsoft cloud assessments, proofs of concept, and deployments. You must be nominated by your Microsoft Partner Account Manager to participate in this initiative; selection is based on attainment of the Microsoft Virtualization competency and on the level of your skills, experience, and resources to help customers plan, build, and deploy private and public cloud solutions that use Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, System Center, and related products. Contact your Partner Account Manager for more information.

Virtualization is a stepping stone to cloud computing, but private cloud computing is much more than virtualization alone. Some of the benefits commonly associated with cloud computing include elasticity, metered usage, and self-service provisioning. This is true for private clouds as well—private clouds deliver these benefits, while giving customers more control over things like physical infrastructure and security policies and you as a Microsoft Partner have a greater role to play to help your customers to realize these benefits of the cloud to help them achieve better business agility and continuity.

Please feel free to contact myself or our GPS team if you have any questions regarding Microsoft Hyper V Cloud Offerings

Cheers!