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vStart 1000m for Enterprise Virtualization using Hyper-V – Reference Architecture
Dell Inc. 4
Table 1 below describes the key solution components and the roles served.
Table 1: Component Logical Groups
Component
Description
Role
Hyper-V Cluster
PowerEdge M620 blade servers
running Windows Server 2008 R2
Datacenter Edition with SP1 and
Hyper-V role enabled
Host virtual machines (VMs)
Management Cluster
PowerEdge R620 servers running
Microsoft® Windows Server®
2008 R2 Datacenter Edition with
SP1
Host optional System Center
VMM 2012, and Compellent
Enterprise Manager, and Dell
OpenManage Essentials
Storage
Dell Compellent Series 40
controllers with 24 bay 2.5‖ SAS
enclosures or 12 Bay 3.5‖ SAS
enclosures
Provide shared storage for the
Hyper-V cluster to host the VMs
LAN Traffic Switches
Two Force10 S4810 and Dell
10GBE Pass-Through modules for
the chassis
Support VM, Live Migration,
Management, iSCSI and Cluster
traffic
OOB management Switch
One Force10 S55
Provide Management OOB
management connectivity
SAN Traffic Switches
Two Brocade 5100
Support Fibre Channel data
3.1 Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1
Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 with SP1 is Microsoft’s flagship server operating system which
provides the Hyper-V® virtualization platform. Hyper-V provides a virtualization platform that can
consolidate Windows® and Linux workloads enabling IT managers the ability to more fully utilize their
available hardware resources.
Dynamic Memory: A feature of SP1, Dynamic Memory allows Virtual Machines (VM) to dynamically use
physically available memory. Allowing systems to boot with minimal memory, then expand and
contract memory on demand, Dynamic Memory further increases the optimization of physical resources
and the density of VM workloads.
Live Migration: Integrated as part of Windows Server 2008 R2’s Failover Clustering, Live Migration
provides customers with the ability to move VMs from one host within a cluster to another with near
zero down time.
3.2 Microsoft System Center 2012
System Center 2012 is Microsoft’s systems management platform. System Center 2012 includes
products to monitor, manage, deploy, backup, and more. This solution utilizes customer provided or a
trial version of System Center 2012 and focuses on Virtual Machine Manager 2012. Further information
on all Microsoft System Center components can be found at www.microsoft.com/systemcenter.