Integrating for customer success: Dell and Windows Server 2012

MANILA, Philippines - With today’s release of Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Dell customers have the power to do even more with their PowerEdge 12th generation servers and the applications they use to drive their businesses. As Forrest Norrod shared earlier, Dell partnered closely with Microsoft on this innovative release.

Dell OpenManage systems management is tightly integrated. In order to respond quickly and effectively to end-user problems and business requests, you often need to use multiple tools from multiple vendors, making each task cumbersome and time-consuming. Dell has worked extensively with Microsoft to seamlessly integrate our systems management tools with Microsoft System Center 2012 to help you accelerate the benefits of Windows Server 2012 features and enhancements. This allows you to reduce IT management complexity, save time, and control costs, all while empowering productivity.

Agent-free management: Lifecycle Controller and Microsoft System Center

A unique feature that Dell brings to hosting and managing Windows Server 2012 environments is the integration of Dell PowerEdge server embedded management, Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) with Lifecycle Controller, and System Center.

Dell Lifecycle Controller Integration (DLCI) with System Center enables our customers to take advantage of truly agent-free management operations when deploying, updating, monitoring and maintaining PowerEdge servers running Windows Server 2012.

Agent-free, automated BIOS and firmware updates can be performed through the System Center Configuration Manager console, even within multi-vendor hypervisor environments, and bare-metal auto-discovery of PowerEdge servers is a one-step process — even without powering on the servers.

Managing large virtual environments

Agent-free monitoring with System Center Operations Manager and Dell’s new Server Management Pack Suite 5.0.1 performs discovery, inventory and monitoring of PowerEdge servers independent of the operating system or hypervisor, simplifying server management in physical and virtual environments.

This is even more advantageous now with the new levels of scalability permitted with Windows Server 2012 — VMs now support 32 virtual processors and 1TB of memory, and server clusters can expand to 64 nodes and 4,000 VMs.

PowerEdge 12th generation servers were designed and built with these levels of scalability in mind. With powerful Intel Xeon processors, large memory footprints, and big I/O pipes, our PowerEdge servers make virtualization easier to deploy, easier to scale, and easier to manage.

Beyond virtualization with vSTART 50

A unique feature that Dell brings to hosting and managing Windows Server 2012 environments is the integration of Dell PowerEdge server embedded management, Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) with Lifecycle Controller, and System Center.

Dell Lifecycle Controller Integration (DLCI) with System Center enables our customers to take advantage of truly agent-free management operations when deploying, updating, monitoring and maintaining PowerEdge servers running Windows Server 2012.

Agent-free, automated BIOS and firmware updates can be performed through the System Center Configuration Manager console, even within multi-vendor hypervisor environments, and bare-metal auto-discovery of PowerEdge servers is a one-step process — even without powering on the servers.

Dell will be shipping servers as well as the vStart 50 installed with Microsoft Server 2012 later this fall. OpenManage Integration Suite for Microsoft System Center software download tools are available at dell.com/systemcenter. Now is the time to begin planning your migration to Windows Server 2012.

***

To know more about the system, log on to www.dell.com.