Nutanix, the web-scale converged infrastructure company, today announced validation of its private cloud reference architecture using Microsoft Windows Azure Pack, Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V and System Center. Customers can use any model of the Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform to create their own Microsoft Private Cloud. The configuration was validated by Microsoft for their Private Cloud Fast Track program and includes Windows Azure Pack, which enables organizations to deploy a turnkey, on-premises private cloud and true IT as a Service (ITaaS) environment. The Nutanix and Microsoft reference architecture provides faster deployments, reduced risk and lower cost of ownership using web-scale converged infrastructure.

With the rise of virtualization comes the need for IT infrastructure that is aligned with both virtualization and the cloud. Microsoft has developed the Private Cloud Fast Track program to create reference architectures for building flexible and highly scalable private clouds. This program combines Microsoft software, consolidated expert guidance and validated configurations with computing, network and storage architecture partners. The Private Cloud Fast Track program utilizes the core capabilities of the Windows Server 2012 operating system, plus Hyper-V technology and System Center to deliver the building blocks of private cloud infrastructure.

The Nutanix web-scale converged architecture allows organizations to start small and minimize upfront investments, and scale infrastructure on demand while delivering excellent performance for workloads such as Microsoft Exchange™ and SQL Server®, Citrix XenDesktop® and XenApp® and Oracle® databases. In addition, the Nutanix Prism management framework, in conjunction with System Center, intuitively organizes and presents compute and storage infrastructure and VM information at-a-glance for Nutanix clusters in single or multiple locations.

The Nutanix validated reference architecture also incorporates the Windows Azure Pack into its design. This brings the power of Microsoft Azure technologies into the private cloud and facilitates a rich, self-service, multi-tenant hybrid cloud with Microsoft Azure-consistent experiences and services.

Highlights

• Nutanix web-scale converged infrastructure has been validated in a Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track and Windows Azure Pack reference architecture, speeding up deployments and enabling on-premise multi-tenant, self-service cloud capability
• Start small with 3-node configurations and linearly scale to 100+ systems per cluster; add additional Nutanix nodes without the need to tune for more performance and capacity
• Eliminate need for a separate storage system along with the associated complexity and performance bottlenecks
• Deploy infrastructure for private clouds in just hours and eliminate as much as 50 percent management overhead versus traditional datacenter infrastructure
• Ability to continuously operate, even if an entire node goes offline, using tunable redundancy for data, VMCaliber snapshots and replication plus a design free of any single points of failure

Microsoft Architecture

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V
  • Hyper-V for the Hypervisor
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 for guest server VMs
• Microsoft System Center 2012 R2
  • System Center Orchestrator
  • System Center Virtual Machine Manager
  • System Center Operations Manager
• Windows Azure Pack

Nutanix Architecture

• Nutanix NX-3000 Series and NX-6000 Series Virtual Computing Platform running Nutanix OS 4.0.1 or later
  • Start with minimum of 3 nodes and add additional as necessary
  • Built-in dial 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports for VM connectivity

“We are excited to work with Nutanix on the validated Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track reference architecture,” said Claude Lorenson, senior product manager, cloud and enterprise marketing, Microsoft. “The Nutanix web-scale infrastructure is an ideal complement to the Microsoft Cloud OS built on Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2. Together with Windows Azure Pack, this architecture provides our joint customers with an efficient, high performance, and agile solution for running all their virtual server and desktop workloads in an hybrid cloud.”