The island of Bora Bora. The finish line at a marathon. A software defined datacenter. What do they have in common? Being there is easy getting there is the hard part. However in the latter case, at least, you can let someone else do the hard part for you.
Theres so much efficiency, simplicity, and cost-savings to be gained by moving to a software-defined infrastructure, but many IT organizations lack the resources to design and implement it themselves. If that sounds like your organization, check out the solutions provided by the partners in our Windows Server Software-Defined (WSSD) program, including DataON, Fujitsu, HPE, Lenovo, QCT, and Supermicro. This growing lineup of partners offers an array of validated WSSD solutions that work with Windows Server 2016 to deliver the benefits of software-defined infrastructure.
With WSSD validated solutions, you can tap into similar technologies used to run hyper-scale datacenters such as Microsoft Azure. Azure runs on Windows Server, and the Datacenter edition of Windows Server 2016 includes many of the same technologies that Microsoft uses to support Azure. These new capabilities are built into the OS, so you wont need to buy any additional software. In addition, youll realize significant price/performance results by taking advantage of cutting-edge devices such as NVMe drives, RDMA NICs, and NVDIMMs at price points that are much better than traditional external storage devices.
To earn certification by the Windows Server Software-Defined program, partners must meet Microsoft standards for quality, accelerated time to value, out-of-the-box optimization, and expedited problem resolution. Our validation and certification is one of the most rigorous in the industry. Each component is certified and the end-to-end solution is validated using Microsofts test harness. Deployments use prescriptive, automated tooling that cuts deployment time from days or weeks to mere hours. Youll be up and running by the time the WSSD partner leaves your site, with a single point of contact for support.
Partners offer three kinds of WSSD solutions:
- Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) Standard: Highly virtualized compute and storage are combined in the same server-node cluster, making them easier to deploy, manage, and scale.
- Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) Premium: Comprehensive software-defined datacenter in a box adds software-defined networking and Security Assurance features to HCI Standard. This makes it easy to scale compute, storage, and networking up and down to meet demand just like public cloud services.
- Software-Defined Storage (SDS): Built on server-node clusters, this enterprise-grade, shared-storage solution replaces traditional external storage device at a much lower cost while support for all-flash NVMe drives delivers unrivaled performance. You can quickly add storage capacity as your needs grow over time.
Take the next step find your WSSD partner today.
And a few words from our partners
DataON is very proud to be a Microsoft partner, exclusively focused on Microsoft server-based storage solutions, said Howard Lo, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, DataON. We combine our hyper-converged platform and exclusive MUST visibility and management tool for Windows Server SDS to deliver a WSSD-validated solution to give our customers the greatest confidence in their choice to deploy a Windows Server software-defined infrastructure.
“We are excited to share QCTs Windows Server 2016 certified servers and our QxStack Microsoft Cloud Ready Solutions, with the worlds leading businesses and institutions so they can enhance their software-defined compute, storage, networking, virtualization, flexibility, and infrastructure scalability, said Mike Yang, President of QCT. The complementing solutions allow us to fulfill the continuing needs of our mutual customers by delivering faster-time-to-value, flexible and innovative cloud-ready solutions, and to do so in a low-risk and cost effective manner.
Supermicro has partnered with Microsoft to bring to market a Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) premium solution based on our industry leading NVMe systems, said Henry Kung, VP of server integration, Supermicro. We worked closely with the Windows Server team to certify Windows Server Storage Spaces Direct using our highest performing 1U all-NVMe platform. This HCI premium solution is a cost-effective software defined data center (SDDC) in a 4-node solution with all the benefits of Microsoft software-defined storage and networking. This HCI premium solution is certified and ready to be deployed in large volume in enterprise and cloud-scale datacenters.