Product Highlight: Virtualization Microsoft Business Critical Applications

Do you work for a company that relies heavily on virtualization of Microsoft’s enterprise applications on vSphere to drive down costs? Have you been wanting to learn the fundamentals of delivering mission-critical applications and services to a variety of devices? Look no further than Virtualizing Microsoft Business Critical Applications on VMware vSphere. This course covers the best practices and knowledge needed to implement Microsoft business critical applications on the vSphere platform. You can drive down costs for your company by virtualizing Microsoft’s enterprise applications on vSphere and migrate towards a more flexible and low-cost private cloud architecture.

This guidebook bridges the gap between Microsoft and VMware. It covers topics such as Microsoft CAL licensing for VMware environments, running a VMware exchange server and administering other business-critical applications in the VMware platform. In addition, it also covers topics including:

• Evaluating the benefits, risks, and challenges of virtualizing Microsoft business critical applications
• Identifying strategies for success associated with people, processes and technology
• Reviewing VMware vSphere features most important to virtualizing business-critical applications
• Planning, designing, and developing virtualized SharePoint Server 2013 environments
• Designing and configuring vSphere High Availability clusters to run Windows enterprise applications
• And much more

The course is presented by Libowitz and Fontana, who are experts in this field. Furthermore, it covers all parts of virtualizing Windows Server 2012 AD domain controllers and failover clusters, Exchange Server 2013, SQL Server 2012, and SharePoint Server 2013. You will also find up-to-date guidance on licensing and other issues related to ensuring full support from both Microsoft and VMware.

What are you waiting for? Get the guidebook now, and delve into the fundamentals of the Microsoft and VMware worlds!

How is Virtualization Different than Cloud Computing?

For the majority of us who aren’t experts in the world of IT, there’s a lot of confusion about cloud computing and virtualization. A common misconception is that these two strategies are interchangeable and synonymous with one another. While it’s true that they are related in several ways, it’s very important to understand the fundamental differences between cloud computing and virtualization - especially when making important decisions for company or organization.

A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. Everyone is familiar with this geometric principle, and as it turns out, it is a great analogy for the differences between cloud computing and virtualization. Keeping that in mind, these definitions should help better your understanding:

• Cloud computing: the delivery of shared computing resources, software or data as a service via the Internet
• Virtualization: refers to the act of creating a virtual version of a computer hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device or computer network services

In this situation, the square-rectangle comparison is relevant because virtualization can be used as a tool to provide cloud computing, but cloud computing itself is not the same thing as virtualization. Virtualization is a specific element of cloud computing. In other words, virtualization is a square, and cloud computing is a rectangle. Let’s break it down even further:

Virtualization

The director of product marketing at VMware, Mike Adams, described virtualization as the “software [that] makes it possible to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same server at the same time.” This means that virtualization software allows users to overcome physical hardware incompatibilities. In other words, virtualization software provides the physical infrastructure that allows cloud computing to be executed.

See the diagram (Source: VirtualCommand.com) to the right: the virtualization software, called a hypervisor or a virtual machine manager (VMM), runs on the physical hardware of your computer and manipulates it to allow you to run virtual machines (VMs) that would otherwise be incompatible with your computer or operating system.

Cloud Computing

The ability to access and operate virtual machines through virtualization software is one form of cloud computing. For example, it is not possible to run certain Microsoft applications on the Mac OSX. One way to overcome this obstacle would be to install a form of virtualization software, which would allow you to virtually run the Microsoft Windows operating system on a Mac computer. The service (having the ability to run MS applications on your Mac) is what we call cloud computing. More basic forms of cloud computing include internet storage services, like Dropbox, and webmail services, like Gmail. These services allow you to access stored data and information (in the “cloud”) from a remote location via the internet.

Adopting a cloud computing strategy at the enterprise level is much more complex and integrated than basic webmail, which is why virtualization software is usually a great option for businesses. You can learn more about the fundamentals of virtualization with this DVD training program from VMware, or read more about how virtualization can save you money, here, on the VMware Certification Marketplace blog.