Coolest Hyper-V Demo You've Never Seen

Recently, I attended the HP StorageWorks Tech Day in Houston. The event was a way for bloggers to see HP's storage products, from big to small. HP also showcased new products and the corresponding features that go into deciding on storage products for virtualized and non-virtualized infrastructures.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned how I've been playing with many different products and one of the products I have seen was the coolest Hyper-V demo.

During the StorageWorks Tech Day events, we were shown a demo of an 8-node Hyper-V R2 cluster that provided remote mirroring and high-availability technology across two sites. The demo was of the HP EVA 4400 storage series. The storage was also using the HP StorageWorks Cluster Extension for EVA software. There was a simulated latency of less than 400 kilometers (see Fig. 1)

Figure 1. This 8-node Hyper-V cluster extension provided protection between two sites. (Click image to view larger version.)

What became pretty clear was that HP has a unique advantage in that they are positioned well across many partner ecosystem channels. In this example, where the servers and storage can both be HP solutions, and leveraging the strong Microsoft relationship the cluster extension, HP can deliver this functionality through System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). With the storage system, it is important to note that clustered shared volumes (CSV) are currently not supported but are being worked on aggressively.

Finding robust Hyper-V solutions are rare, but I will admit seeing this demo was impressive and the largest Hyper-V cluster I've ever seen. It also is a reminder that the greater virtualization landscape is alive and well in the Hyper-V space.

Posted by Rick Vanover on 04/20/2010 at 12:47 PM