The Challenge

Solutions requiring higher levels of availability have traditionally been very costly, hard to implement, and difficult to manage. Downtime, whether planned or unplanned, is extremely costly, until now. EMC® VPLEX® and Windows Server Failover Clustering with CSV and Hyper-V now offer a total solution to reduce downtime concerns.

EMC VPLEX Overview

EMC VPLEX family delivers data mobility and availability across arrays and sites. VPLEX is a unique virtual storage technology that enables mission critical applications to remain up and running – during any of a variety of planned and unplanned downtime scenarios. VPLEX permits painless, non-disruptive data movement, taking technologies like Windows Failover Clustering and other clusters that were built assuming a single storage instance and enabling them to function across arrays and across distance.

EMC VPLEX Metro

EMC VPLEX Metro provides non-disruptive data mobility and high availability within a data center. It also allows you to manage multiple heterogeneous arrays from a single interface.

Microsoft Windows Failover Clustering with CSV

A failover cluster is a group of independent computers that work together to increase the availability and scalability of clustered roles. The clustered servers (called nodes) are connected by physical cables and by software. If one or more of the cluster nodes fail, other nodes begin to provide service (known as failover). The clustered roles are proactively monitored to verify that they are working properly. If they are not working, they are restarted or moved to another node. Failover clusters also provide Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) functionality that provides a consistent, distributed namespace that clustered roles can use to access VPLEX shared storage from all nodes. With the Failover Clustering feature, users experience a minimum of disruptions in service. Applications include Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, and SharePoint, all which run on physical servers powered by Hyper.

Microsoft Hyper-V

The Hyper-V role enables you to create and manage a virtualized computing environment by using virtualization technology built into Windows Server 2012 R2. Installing the Hyper-V role installs the required components and optionally installs management tools.

• Hyper-V provides infrastructure so you can virtualize applications and workloads to support a variety of business goals aimed at improving efficiency and reducing costs, such as: Establish or expand a private cloud environment. Hyper-V can help you move to or expand use of shared resources and adjust utilization as demand changes, to provide more flexible, on-demand IT services.

• Improve business continuity. Hyper-V can help you minimize the impact of both

scheduled and unscheduled downtime of your workloads.

EMC VPLEX AND MICROSOFT WINDOWS SERVER FAILOVER CLUSTERING OFFER A TOTAL SOLUTION TO REDUCE DOWNTIME

ESSENTIALS

The EMC VPLEX and Windows Server Failover Clustering/Hyper-V solution:

• Requires minimal setup

• Reduces complexity

• Reduces hardware cost and setup

• Reduces downtime risks

EMC VPLEX and Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) with Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) and Hyper-V protects application availability and offers several advantages over traditional failover solutions

SOLUTION OVERVIEW

EMC PowerPath with Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 – Required for Stretched or Cross-Connected Windows Failover Clusters with VPLEX

EMC PowerPath® is host-based software for automated data path management, failover, and recovery, and optimized load balancing. PowerPath automates, standardizes, and optimizes data paths in VPLEX deployments to deliver high availability and performance. • Automates failover and recovery — PowerPath automates data path failover and

recovery to ensure applications are always available and remain operational. • Optimizes load balancing — Adjust I/O paths constantly to leverage all available data

paths and to monitor and rebalance the dynamic environment for the best application performance.

High Availability and Resiliency with Microsoft Windows 2012 R2

Virtualization can promote the high availability of mission-critical workloads in new and effective ways and in Windows Server 2012 R2, there are a number of new enhancements that ensure key workloads are resilient, and protected.

• Virtual Machine network health detection — Enables a Hyper-V host to automatically live migrate virtual machines if a network disconnection occurs on a protected virtual network.

• Quorum improvements — Force quorum resiliency - Enables automatic recovery in the case of a partitioned failover cluster.

Three Levels of Availability

With Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V and Failover Clustering work together to bring higher availability to workloads that do not support clustering. It does this by providing a light-weight, simple solution to monitor applications running in the VMs and integrating with the host. By monitoring services and event logs inside the virtual machine, Hyper-V and Failover Clustering can detect whether the key services that a virtual machine provides are healthy and provide automatic corrective action, such as restarting the virtual machine or restarting a service within the VM.

• Virtual Machine failover prioritization — Virtual machine priorities can now be configured to control the order in which specific virtual machines failover or start. This ensures higher priority virtual machines are given the resources they need and lower priority virtual machines are given resources as they are available.

• Affinity (and anti-affinity) Virtual Machine rules — Administrators can now configure partnered virtual machines so that at failover, the partnered machines are migrated simultaneously.

• Cluster-aware updating — An in-box end-to-end solution for updating Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V Failover Clusters, helping customers to preview, apply, and report on updates, all with zero downtime to the virtual machines.

Proven Results

In combination with Windows Server Failover Clustering with CSV and Hyper-V, VPLEX with distributed volumes provides a unique capability that enables organizations to transparently move and relocate virtual machines and its corresponding applications and data over distance. Customers benefit from simpler management of resources within and across data centers, enabling a lower-cost solution along with entirely new ways to solve IT problems.

©2015 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Published in the USA. 12/15 Solutions Overview, H12006.2

CONTACT US

To learn more about how EMC products, services, and solutions can help solve your business and IT challenges, contact your local representative or authorized reseller, or visit us at www.EMC.com.

EMC Corporation Hopkinton, Massachusetts 01748-9103 508-435-1000; In North America 1-866-464-7381 www.EMC.com

WINDOWS SERVER 2012 R2 ENHANCEMENTS

• New - VM network health detection

• New – force quorum resiliency

THREE LEVELS OF AVAILABILITY:

• Virtual Machine failover prioritization

• Affinity (and anti-affinity) Virtual Machine rules

• Cluster-aware updating

EMC POWERPATH WITH WINDOWS 2012 R2

• Automates data path management, failover, and recovery

• Optimizes Load Balancing