Category Archives: SharePoint Server

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So much to understand about your Cloud Options for Microsoft Applications …The path you take matters! The Radicati Group Perspective

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In the world of IT…. things are moving very quickly.  In my role at EMC, I have the opportunity and quite frankly privilege, to talk to many customers, partners, press and analysts and as well as EMC’s many experts on Microsoft.  Consistently I hear from all about the abundance of information out there on cloud computing and virtualization… and how confusing it can be to cut through all of the noise and truly educate yourself.   

There are a number of EMC resources and  sponsored opportunities for IT professionals to do just that –  educate themselves on technical considerations for deploying Microsoft Applications such as Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server database and Windows Server in a cloud environment.  

EMC recently worked with industry leading analysts and thought leaders  to discuss what customers should begin to think about as they evaluate which path to take regarding their Microsoft applications and cloud computing.  I am going to be posting a weekly blog on our efforts to help our customers, partners and  the broader  Microsoft community on the role that infrastructure can have in helping your transform your Microsoft environments to the Cloud.

As always – key place to start your education process is here on this blog and also on our Everything Microsoft Community on ECN.

Radicati Group Whitepaper- Benefits of Consolidating and Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint in a Private Cloud Environment – Understanding the Role of Infrastructure to Ensure Success

EMC experts partnered with Sara Radicati and her team at the Radicati Group to create a whitepaper and webcast to discuss the benefits of consolidating and virtualizing Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint in a Private Cloud Environment and how infrastructure such as that offered by EMC and our channel partners.   In this paper, Sara and her team discuss the benefits of consolidating and virtualizing  Microsoft

http://www.emc.com/collateral/white-papers/radicati-emc-wp.pdf

Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint Consolidation and Virtualization in a Private Cloud Environment Webcast Replay – A Customer perspective.

EMC also had the opportunity to continue our work with Sara and her team and also Phillip Reynolds , Associate Director of Technology, Williams & Fudge an EMC customer.  The web conference was moderated by Sara Radicati and brings together guest speakers from EMC and one of its customers, financial firm Williams & Fudge, to discuss how customers can best leverage virtualization technologies and other key infrastructure components that are critical to the deployment of a successful private cloud environment.  This web conference looked at the benefits of virtual private cloud deployment, and how EMC’s private cloud virtualization technologies and solutions can support the implementation of secure private cloud deployments of Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SharePoint. 

See the webcast on replay – http://www.radicati.com/files/webconferences/2013/2-Mar-Virtualization/Microsoft_Exchange_and_SharePoint_Consolidation_and_Virtualization_in_a_Private_Cloud_Environment_3-28-13.wmv 

And the Premiere Opportunity to Learn More about Cloud –  EMCWORLD 2013

 EMCWorld – so many session and demos in so little time

Adrian’s Virtual Winfrastructure blog – Painting a Picture of Microsoft Solutions at EMCworld does a great job of providing an overview on all of the EMC Solutions and demos focused on Microsoft environments.. 

His blog is here – http://windowtotheprivatecloud.com/author/virtual-winfrastructure/

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Hear the Customer Perspective on Why EMC VNX is a Great Option for Microsoft Environments

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Customers of all sizes – across all industries – are seeing tangible benefits of using VNX as their storage platform of choice for Microsoft environments.   VNX provides a multitude of benefits for Microsoft environments by providing automated and economical unified storage with pace-setting performance, optimized for virtual applications.  It’s easy for EMC to promote the benefits of our technology…we work with it all the time.  But its even more interesting to hear from actual customers who have deployed VNX and our management solutions on how EMC has helped them to achieve their IT and business objectives.  

Watch European and American companies discuss the increased performance and management simplicity of running their Microsoft applications on EMC VNX unified storage.

http://www.emc.com/collateral/demos/microsites/mediaplayer-video/emc-customers-microsoft-applications-emc-vnx.htm

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Introduction to EMC´s ESIPSTOOLKIT, the hidden Weapon for your Private Cloud Deployment – By Karsten Bott, EMC Germany

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Introduction to EMC´s ESIPSTOOLKIT, the hidden Weapon for your Private Cloud Deployment

 

By Karsten Bott, EMC Germany

 

 

One of a more hidden secret to many of our Users / Customers is the Power of EMC´s ESI PowerShell Toolkit.

 

For those of you who do not know ESI, here is a Brief Overview of ESI:

 

ESI for Windows provides capabilities for viewing and provisioning storage. ESI helps IT Administrators by Simplifying Storage Provisioning by

 

-          Displaying Storage Mapping of Windows disk resources.

 

-          simplifying the various steps involved in creating and preparing a LUN, including the steps of partitioning, formatting, and creating a drive letter

 

-          creating a file share and mount that file share as a network-attached drive in a Windows environment

 

-          Create Virtual Disks ( VHD´s, VMDK´s )

 

-          Map raw Devices into VM´s

 

You can find an ESI Overview Video on YouTube

 

 

But ESI comes with much more Power.
ESI includes a set of PowerShell cmdlets known as ESIPSToolKit to provision storage from the command line. The cmdlets are written for the PowerShell 2.0 Platform.  They are implemented on according Microsoft´s verb/noun Convention and always start with EMC in the noun. So you will find all cmdlets form various Modules by simply typing Get-Command -Noun EMC*.
Important to mention, we work Agentless, utilizing Windows Standards like WMI and PowerShell Remoting

 

The PowerShell toolkit provides cmdlets to manage:

 

-          Connections to host and storage systems and to provision Block storage.

 

-          Disk devices in hypervisor environments, such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer.

 

-          Block device snapshots for EMC Symmetrix VMAX® storage family, EMC VNX® Series, EMC VNXe® series, and EMC CLARiiON®CX4 series of storage systems.

 

These cmdlets are Helping Customers in their Windows Management Automation on the Way to the Private Cloud.

 

The Toolkit has a Broad List of Commands and is still growing from Version to Version

 

 

 

 

A Basic Provisioning Process might look like

 

Provisioning Task Traditional Step ESIPSToolKit Example
Identify   Storage System Use   Element Manager / Storage CLI Tool $MyStorage = Get-EmcStorageSystem VNXe
Identify   Pool Use   Element Manager / Storage CLI Tool $MyPool = Get-EmcStoragePool performance -StorageSystem   $MyStorage -PoolType Block
Identify   Cluster System Cluster.Exe   / MMC $MyClus =   Get-EmcClusterSystem W2K*
Create Lun   in Pool Use   Element Manager / Storage CLI Tool ( Multiple Steps ) $MyLun = New-EmcLun -Pool $MyPool -Name mylun_test_1   -Capacity 10GB -Silent –Thin
Unmask   Luns to Cluster Hosts Use   Element Manager / Storage CLI Tool ( Multiple Steps ) Set-EmcLunAccess   -Lun $MyLun -ClusterSystem $MyClus -Available
Find Drive   on Host Diskpart,   Array Commandline Tools, INQ Command $MyDrive =   Find-EmcHostDisk -ClusterSystem $MyClus -Lun $MyLun
Initialize   Drive Diskpart,   Diskmgmt or other Host Tool Initialize-EmcHostDisk -HostDisk $MyDrive -ClusterSystem   $MyClus -PartitionStyle gpt
Create and   Format Volume Diskpart,   Diskmgmt or other Host Tool New-EmcVolume -ClusterSystem  $MyClus -HostDisk   $MyDrive -Label CluDis1
Add   Volume to Cluster Group Cluster.exe,   Cluster MMC $MyCluDisk = Add-EmcHostDiskToCluster -ClusterSystem $MyClus -HostDisk $MyDrive -ClusterGroupName AvailableStorage

 

 

 

 

You Might want to use our Toolkit in your Orchestrating Tools (aka SCO, VMO) to Automate most of your Provisioning Tasks in your Private Cloud Deployment

 

You will find some Examples of what you can do with ESIPSToolKit on ECN.
If you find that helpful, you may want to follow me on https://twitter.com/ESIPSToolKit  for frequent updates

 

You also can Contact me on ECN   https://community.emc.com/people/bottkars .

 

 

 

Thanks to Giri, Sanjay, Ataa and everyone in the ESI Team !

 

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Heading to Vegas…..EMC is a Gold Sponsor of SharePoint Conference 2012!

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We are heading to Vegas this weekend.  EMC is a gold sponsor of the SharePoint conference.  The SharePoint Conference is Microsoft’s largest show focused on all things related to SharePoint.  EMC will be front and center at the show and will have many opportunities for you to talk with our Microsoft experts.   You will see how virtualization and cloud technologies can help you transform your SharePoint environments.

Our Presence at the Show:

  • EMC will have 20 x 20 booth staffed by EMC experts in both Microsoft and EMC technologies and will be highlighting how EMC Solutions for Microsoft SharePoint can:
    • Transform existing SharePoint infrastructure with latest technologies for virtualization, tiering and data protection etc…
    • Lower cost and significantly transform  performance, availability and efficiency
    • Protect and recover SharePoint environments
    • Transform  management of SharePoint environments
    • Maximize the value of existing SharePoint and Microsoft associated software, people and processes
    • Confidently architect, design and accelerate upgrades to SharePoint 2013

 

The future is so bright for SharePoint in the Private Cloud – We encourage you to stop by our booth and get your EMC sun glasses!

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Attend the Webcast: Building the Right Infrastructure for SharePoint

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Date / Time:

Wednesday, October 10, 2012
11:00am ET / 8:00am PT

 

Abstract:

Are you getting the most from your investment in Microsoft SharePoint? Most companies are underutilizing this valuable technology asset. Discover how you can connect people to needed information and maximize your SharePoint investment with solutions from EMC and Metalogix. Plus, hear from a solutions architect about an actual customer deployment.

 

Registration Link:

https://emcinformation.com/90402/REG/.ashx?reg_src=EX_USD