The Cloud on Your Terms Part 29 of 30: How Do I Get to Hyper-V?

What is “The Cloud” and how can you get there? Microsoft’s Central Region Evangelist team are working to provide some answers with their “30 Days of Cloud” blog series. Matt Hester, Brian Lewis, John Weston, and Kevin Remde are sharing their insights and experiences. They have asked me to write about ways to take advantage of one the foundations of cloud architecture, Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization platform.

Virtualization allows you to run multiple server instances on a single piece of hardware. A virtualized infrastructure can consume a fraction of the space, energy, and maintenance cost of the sprawling physical infrastructure it replaces.  It utilizes your organization’s physical computing resources more efficiently, streamlines the deployment of new applications, improves service availability, and simplifies your disaster recovery processes.

Sounds great, but how can you efficiently port the server instances running on your physical machines over to a Hyper-V host platform?

And if you have already survived a massive conversion to another vendor’s virtual infrastructure, how are you going to trim the cost of enterprise computing even further this year? How will you make the leap from virtualization to optimization?

Moving server workloads from physical or VMware platforms to Hyper-V is one way you can further reduce the cost of your infrastructure. The savings are tempting, but if you have just lived through the turmoil of a massive virtualization project without the help of a migration solution, it’s tough to imagine doing that again. Plus, how do you convince application owners that a new platform can deliver the performance they demand?

How can you smoothly and efficiently migrate server workloads to Hyper-V without downtime, without losing any data, and without giving up six months of weekends?

With Microsoft delivering a high-quality virtual infrastructure at a fraction of VMware’s cost, almost every organization that’s invested in virtualization is faced with a fresh challenge. They must find ways to leverage Hyper-V for as many server instances as possible as soon as possible, but there are obstacles. The hangover from the last virtualization project means many organizations will be at risk of falling behind in the race to realize new efficiencies and capital savings.

NetIQ can help. With PlateSpin Migrate from NetIQ, you can take advantage of Hyper-V without a massive organizational change and a lengthy project. PlateSpin Migrate moves server workloads from physical to virtual platforms, from one virtualization vendor to another, or from a virtual to physical platform. Migrations happen over the network, unattended, and require minimal downtime. You can perform dozens of migrations at once, slashing the time and cost of server moves. And reclaiming your weekends.

What if you could offer an application owner the opportunity to move their server workloads from a physical server or VMware host to Hyper-V this afternoon? Without downtime. And what if you could promise them that if performance fails to meet their expectations you can move the workload back? Without downtime. How would that affect the calculus of leveraging Hyper-V?

PlateSpin Migrate opens up the option of staged, lights-on, present-tense migrations of workloads to Hyper-V. Instead of dead-reckoning, you can use specific examples of real, successful performance as a springboard to encourage new migrations onto Hyper-V. And while those migrations free up capital from your IT budgets, having a nimble tool to perform those migrations mean you and your staff aren’t up all night getting the moves completed.

Migrations go from arduous and uncertain to clean and quick. The road to Hyper-V performance and savings gets shorter, with a smoother ride and fewer unscheduled stops.

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