Data Center Research Library

This whitepaper examines strategies for moving an organization toward more dynamic IT using datacenter virtualization technologies. Datacenters evolve from manual and reactionary to automated and proactive, and from cost centers to strategic assets, through a series of stages. This paper will show how virtualization is a key technology to help datacenters move through those stages, reduce cost, increase security and availability, and enable more agile business.

This paper provides concrete scenarios showing how virtualization can enable server consolidation and business continuity. This paper also examines the technologies that underlie those solutions, which include Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, and System Center.

Finally, this paper explains the partnerships that Microsoft has formed with organizations such as XenSource/Citrix to ensure that Microsoft supports heterogeneous environments including Linux workloads, and the engineering investments that Microsoft has made to support non-Microsoft technologies such as Xen and ESX Server.