Specifications

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013

unanticipated errors and shorten service delivery time by automating the common tasks

associated with enterprise tools and products.

 End-to-end orchestration: Orchestration is the collective name for the automated arrangement,

coordination, and management of systems, software, and practices. It enables the management of

complex cross-domain processes. Orchestrator provides the tools for orchestration to combine

software, hardware, and manual processes into a seamless system. These tools let you connect

and automate workflows.

Just as manufacturing companies have automated common and repeatable tasks from their

production processes, you can adopt this same efficiency in the IT environment by using

Orchestrator to seamlessly perform and monitor your IT processes. Orchestrator can handle

routine tasks, ensure process enforcement, and reliably meet the demands of the largest

enterprises. Orchestrator interoperates with other System Center products to integrate IT

administrative tasks from start to finish.

 Extensible structure: If you have a custom in-house solution, Orchestrator provides extensible

integration to any system through the Orchestrator Integration Toolkit. You can create custom

integrations that allow Orchestrator to connect to any environment. Orchestrator uses a

Representational State Transfer (REST)-based web service that can perform processes like start

and stop runbook jobs and get reporting information in Open Data protocol (OData) format. The

web service lets you develop applications that can use live data from Orchestrator.

Cloud Services Process Pack

 Infrastructure as a service: IaaS is a service-centric model for requesting and provisioning data

center resources. The System Center Cloud Services Process Pack is the Microsoft IaaS solution

built on the System Center platform. With the Cloud Services Process Pack, your organization can

realize the benefits of IaaS while simultaneously using your existing investments in

Service Manager, Orchestrator, VMM, and Operations Manager.

Corporate data centers are in transition. The recent shift from physical to virtual environments is

now being replaced by an interest in moving to the cloud—specifically both private and public

cloud infrastructures. Private cloud management assets are being delivered with Service Manager,

and a key part of this solution is the self-service experience. This experience is now significantly

enhanced by the Cloud Services Process Pack.

Moreover, IT organizations considering IaaS need to examine and adapt their existing tools,

processes, workflows, and automation to meet the requirements of an effective cloud services

implementation. While it is critical that the underlying features (such as the Self-Service Portal,

ticketing infrastructure, notifications, workflows, and automation) integrate well with each other

and account for industry-wide best practices, the work involved to ensure an effective cloud

services implementation can be daunting and time-consuming. The Cloud Services Process Pack

addresses these concerns by enabling IaaS while incorporating domain expertise and best

practices from organizations that have successfully deployed IaaS.

Implications for Exchange Server

The Service Manager, Orchestrator, and Cloud Services Process Pack components work together to form a

powerful IaaS solution. With this solution, designated users like Exchange administrators can request