Understanding virtualization technology and moving towards cloud computing

With the continuous innovation of IT technology and concept, people's application habits of IT industry and Enterprise's IT architecture also change. At the same time, when the business is increasingly inseparable from it, it is not difficult to find it architecture changes and the development of enterprises inseparable. In such a process, Microsoft- as the industry leader , has been providing users with a full range of solutions and services, together with users to build it architecture, to the enterprise IT architecture changes in the future.

At present, more and more enterprises gradually found that the traditional data center has some limitations, and can not be very good for the enterprise to bring better benefits, and thus began to move to a higher level of the structure and concept, "towards cloud computing" is undoubtedly the ultimate aspiration of many customers, but how to move towards cloud computing, how to take a good first step, How to really swim in the clouds, and how to finally methodically let "cloud" landing, this is the need for us to carefully consider. Microsoft is the only company that has the ability to build and operate a public cloud, and at the same time help customers build a private cloud with advanced solutions and rich experience.

Server and Datacenter virtualization: Just the beginning, not the end of the architecture change

There is no doubt that virtualization is the most popular word in the current server and Data center field, and that, unlike in previous years, more and more wait-and-see and assessment levels, now more and more enterprises have to use virtualization for actual deployment, virtualization is in full swing. Server virtualization brings a number of benefits to data center construction, for example, by building multiple virtual machines on a single server, you can guarantee a more adequate utilization of physical resources, which allows administrators to consolidate applications from multiple servers to a single server, thus reducing the physical server, Reduce the role of energy consumption. On the other hand, just as storage virtualization makes multiple storage devices virtual as a single storage unit, server virtualization also blends server resources in the datacenter, like a large "process resource pool."

Microsoft is the world's largest x86 server operating system provider, its latest Windows Server 2008 R2 is currently the best x86 server operating system, widely praised by the industry, and its free with the Hyper-V R2 provides powerful virtualization capabilities and performance, this unique combination of , coupled with Microsoft's own powerful comprehensive server and virtualization management Tools System Center, has brought great convenience to users. However, in Microsoft's view, virtualization is not the end of enterprise IT architecture changes, on the contrary, it is just a new starting point, the so-called server consolidation/reduction, processing resources aggregation, more flexible resource scheduling is only a foundation, a step towards a higher level of the foundation, that is, cloud computing.

Cloud Computing Center: Future Data Center

Cloud computing is actually a service model, and if virtualization helps the data center achieve an ordered, on-demand deployment of computing power, then cloud computing is an on-demand delivery and provisioning model for applications. Because computing power is the application service, it's not hard to understand the relationship between virtualization and cloud computing. Simply put, the cloud is a centralized supply center for some kind of application, such as storage cloud, office cloud, database Cloud and so on. While traditional data centers are more of data centralization and more of a physical architecture, the advent of cloud computing gives the datacenter an intelligence that provides applications to customers, not just data services.

However, cloud computing is divided into private cloud and public cloud. Many people know this analogy: cloud computing is like running water, each family does not have its own reservoir, all through the water pipe to obtain the appropriate water, water is an application here, and the waterworks is equivalent to your water application cloud provider. Now we're going to expand this metaphor, and when households have other needs for water applications, they will spend money on bottled water, Coca-Cola, and so on, and then they need another provider. If we compare the water supply in the family to the private cloud, the bottled water and the Coca-Cola is a kind of public cloud that can be purchased by paying, which is a complementary relationship, and the customer is able to customize it flexibly according to their needs.

Microsoft believes that virtualization is an important foundation for data centers to implement cloud computing, but virtualization is not a cloud in itself, but one way to cloud computing. So virtualization does not represent the entire cloud computing Center's shape, it makes the data center's computing power more scalable, the supply is more flexible, so that it can better service for cloud computing, but at the current level of technology, virtualization is not omnipotent, and therefore, Microsoft provides users with a more comprehensive and complete solution and management tool spanning virtual and non virtual platforms to provide users with a more reasonable infrastructure for cloud computing centers.

As the largest software provider, Microsoft is now the only data center that builds and operates a public cloud, and a vendor that builds private cloud solutions. Microsoft's Cloud Computing Center runs on the Windows Server platform and is under the control of Microsoft System Center. It carries Microsoft's key business from enterprise users to consumers. At present, Microsoft's cloud computing center, costing 500 million of billions of dollars, is the equivalent of 60 football pitches, and the number of servers is increasing by 10,000 units a month, hosting 2.8 billion searches per month, 60 billion corporate mail processing, 240 billion instant messaging, and services for 2 million enterprise end users.

With such a public and private cloud computing platform to build experience, Microsoft is undoubtedly the best corporate customer cloud computing partner, whether the enterprise needs a private cloud, or the need for public cloud, or mixed cloud, Microsoft has a full and mature solution. And, not just the cloud computing center itself, Microsoft is ready for you to use cloud Computing's application delivery tools-desktop and Application virtualization.

Microsoft Greater China Market General manager Sun Jiandong

Desktop and Application Virtualization-let win 7 deploy faster and allow private cloud to truly fall

The ultimate goal of cloud computing is to provide end users with a better user experience, more flexible and powerful IT service support. Microsoft has been advocating the "cloud" + "end-to-end" strategy, on the one hand through the cloud to bring more powerful and flexible back-end support and centralized control of IT systems. On the other hand, the powerful "cloud" needs a new generation of "end" to support, the combination of cloud and end makes the end user more convenient access to various information and systems. Currently, Microsoft is the only vendor that can provide solutions from the cloud to the end. If the server and data center virtualization emphasizes the computing power in the back-end of the centralized and flexible supply, cloud computing emphasizes the application in the back-end of the centralized and flexible supply, then desktop and application virtualization is in the front-end, computing power and application of flexible reception. It will maximize the transparency of the devices on the receiving end, and let users focus on getting the applications they need anytime, anywhere.

Virtual Desktop Architecture (VDI), let a traditional computer installed a set of operating system and application of the mode of history, the required operating systems and applications are deployed in the data center, the front-end device is more than just a command input and display output role, all the application processing and application generated data are in the background. Users can also retain the existing computer and operating system, and have local desktop, just accept the background of the application services, this is the application of virtualization. Both are essentially a way to accept a remote application delivery service, except that virtual desktops are virtual.

This unified delivery and acceptance model will enable the enterprise's IT management has been greatly simplified, management efficiency and security level has been greatly improved, enterprises can quickly upgrade the desktop and application for each employee version, through the desktop and application virtualization, enterprises can in a few 10 minutes, A unified upgrade of the office environment for tens of thousands of employees to Windows 7 or office 2010 was unthinkable before. Users can even use Apple's products to receive Windows desktops and apps (or just apps), which undoubtedly greatly improves the flexibility and efficiency of day-to-day office work. Moreover, even if the user's terminal is lost, there is no need to worry about the disclosure of enterprise data, because all application data is above the cloud, not on the local terminal.

By contrast, virtual desktop does not require a strong and full-featured local terminal equipment, more suitable for the need to highly centralized control, or want to a large number of IT users unified management of enterprises, such as finance, telecommunications, research and development, and only to do the application of virtualization to the terminal left a greater flexibility, For those who need more flexible local processing capabilities, but want to ensure the application of data security, such as the company's senior and mobile workers, SME users. This type of user's computer itself can also completely receive the virtual desktop (that is, desktop virtualization must include the application of virtualization, but the application of virtualization does not require the desktop is virtual), thus for the enterprise IT executives to build for different users of the application and management model to provide greater convenience.

In this area, Microsoft's App-V provides a powerful application virtualization capability and works with Citrix to provide users with more flexible and efficient Desktop virtualization Architecture (VDI) solutions, and with Microsoft's Hyper-V, System Center in the data center virtualization and all-round management approach to achieve a perfect integration. Whether in the desktop operating system market or in the Enterprise Office application market, Microsoft occupies an absolute market share, this all-in-one, from the back-end, from the operating system and application to virtualization, and then to the global management of the integration program only Microsoft can provide.

To sum up, whether it is in the Enterprise data center of the primary it optimization, server consolidation phase, or in the data center to various types of cloud computing models in the process of implementation, deployment and landing, Microsoft can provide a full range of solutions and, Microsoft is the only manufacturer of cloud data center solutions that has experience building a cloud computing platform. All this stems from Microsoft's own strong technical strength, but also with the industry's broad support, including Citrix, Intel, HP, Dell, NETAPP, HDS and other leadership vendors are Microsoft's close partners, their own outstanding products and Microsoft complement each other, will continue to provide users with a more excellent from the front end to the back end, simple and efficient all-round solutions.