Guest Post by Alex Jauch (Technical Architect, NetApp)

This week at Microsoft TechEd, NetApp and Cisco announced our joint Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track submission.  The submission was the result of a great working partnership between NetApp and Cisco.  We’re very pleased with the solutions and technical expertise that the Cisco team brought to the project.  Because of our strong partnership, Cisco and NetApp have been able to produce a great Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track solution.

Here’s an example, because both NetApp and Cisco have both been investing in our Microsoft management integration platforms and we have been able to integrate these features into our submission to Fast Track.  Both Cisco and NetApp have been working closely with the Microsoft Opalis Integration Server team and we were able to combine our solutions into a single solution that enables rapid provisioning from a bare metal blade to a full running Windows Cluster and then VM provisioning against that cluster. You can see a demonstration of this solution here:

NetApp Hyper-V Cloud With Cisco Rapid Provisioning

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Tags: Cisco, Cisco UCS, cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, MSTechEd, netapp, TechEd, UCS, virtualization

Guest Post from Rex Backman

More good news on the momentum of our Cisco UCS server platform came our way today as we were notified that our B250-M2 blade server series is a Finalist for Best of Show at Microsoft Tech Ed 2011 in the Hardware category.

Annually, the Best of Tech Ed awards recognize companies who offer innovative products for the industry. This year the judges reviewed 334 products and services submitted for the award and chose 47 finalists to be interviewed at the Microsoft Tech Ed North America 2011 conference in Atlanta, Georgia on May 16, 2011.  Winners will be announced at an invite only evening reception at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, May 18. 

“We received a record number of nominations this year—more than 300—and determining an array of finalists from that large, diverse field was difficult,” said Jason Bovberg, Senior Editor at Windows IT Pro^®. “The mix of products and services from year to year is ever-changing and exciting, and we feel that our 49 finalists represent highly distinguished products and services in their categories. We look forward to our show-floor interviews, which will lead to the determination of winners. For all categories, as always, our judging process involves three criteria: strategic importance to the market, competitive advantage, and value to customers. Our winners will be particularly strong in those areas.”

This is a great confirmation of our Cisco UCS server family and shows Cisco’s continued growth in support of the Microsoft ecosystem and the importance of Exchange, Hyper-V, SQL Server, SharePoint, System Center, and Windows Server 2008 R2 environments. We encourage Microsoft Tech Ed attendees to stop by our Cisco booth #1614 at the show and see the B250 in action!

Tags: B250-M2, Cisco UCS, Hyper-V, Microsoft, System Center, TechEd