The value of data center virtualization continues to grow. VMware vSphere™ 5.0 running on the Intel® Xeon® processor E7 family delivers world-record virtualization performance,1 while providing break- through scalability and high-availability for mission-critical enterprise computing on four-socket, eight-socket, and larger servers.
As customers move toward their goal of 100% virtualized data centers, they increasingly look for ways to bring the benefits of VMware virtualization to their mission-critical Microsoft applications. Customers planning a new deployment, performing an upgrade, or planning to 100% virtualize their data centers have an ideal opportunity to transition to a VMware vSphere virtual infrastructure built on NetApp unified storage.
Within any business, there are a number of applications that are critical to its success. As a result, these applications and the systems they run on require a higher level of availability. One of the most common methods used to increase the availability of a business-critical application in a physical environment is to deploy a traditional high-availability clustering solution such as Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) or Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS). These solutions protect against an unplanned failure of a component by providing the ability to restart an application or set of applications on additional servers in the cluster. While typically associated with protection against unplanned server failures, these solutions can also be utilized to decrease the effects of a planned outage by shifting applications to redundant servers, allowing for maintenance of the original server.
