Dell™ vStart is a complete virtualization infrastructure solution for up to 50 virtual machines in a Microsoft® Hyper-V® environment. vStart solutions for Hyper-V contain a Hyper-V enabled Dell PowerEdge™ server, Dell EqualLogic™ PS Series storage, and Dell PowerConnect™ switches.
Integration with Hyper-V begins with the PowerEdge server running Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition R2 with the Hyper-V role enabled. This server provides the software infrastructure and basic management tools for creating and managing virtual machines.
EqualLogic PS Series storage consists of a virtualized iSCSI SAN that provides shared storage for the virtual machines. EqualLogic Data volumes are automatically provisioned from a single, scalable storage pool. Resources are adjusted and reapplied as the number of virtual servers and their workloads change.
Four Dell PowerConnect 6248 switches reside at the heart of the solution’s network configuration to provide the enterprise-class level of performance required for virtualization; two for LAN and two for SAN. The LAN switches use a stacked configuration that enables connection redundancy and added bandwidth. The SAN switches support iSCSI data and manage traffic across the network.
IT administrators use EqualLogic SAN HQ for centralized access to detailed performance and event data, reporting, and intelligent alerts from the EqualLogic SAN. With just a glance, IT administrators can see information on all of the monitored SAN as well as any alerts. If action is required, the EqualLogic Group Manager can be launched directly from SAN HQ giving IT administrators the ability to tune storage systems quickly to meet business needs.
Dell EqualLogic Host Integration Tools for Microsoft (HIT/Microsoft) is a no-charge feature of the Dell EqualLogic PS series arrays that offer automation tools that enhance the protection and performance of Hyper-V virtual environments. These tools include Auto-Snapshot Manager for Microsoft and Multipath I/O (MPIO) integration.
Auto-Snapshot Manager for Microsoft (ASM/Microsoft) allows administrators to create hypervisor-consistent, application aware, point-in-time snapshots, clones, and replicas of Microsoft operating system and application data. ASM/Microsoft uses Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to offer enhanced data protection for Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, and other applications in Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization environments. Administrators can access ASM/Microsoft through a graphical or command line interface.
Multipath I/O (MPIO) is integrated into the Windows server operating system to provide a redundant, high-performance network framework designed to dynamically balance iSCSI SAN traffic over multiple network paths.
Key Benefits
- All the infrastructure you need to host up to 50 virtual machines in one pre-sized, pre-wired, pre-configured, pre-integrated and pre-tested rack that arrives on site, ready-to-run
- Initial setup and deployment into your environment is included with every vStart
- Automation tools that enhance the protection and performance of Hyper-V are included at no additional charge.
- Snapshot integration with Hyper-V provides hypervisor-consistent, application aware, point-in-time snapshots, clones, and replicas of Microsoft operating system and application data.
- iSCSI SAN traffic is dynamically balanced over multiple network paths to provide a redundant, high-performance network.
