Increasing Higher Education Efficiency with Consolidated IT Management

Most higher education institutions have adopted server virtualization to consolidate workloads onto fewer servers, helping to improve utilization rates and reduce operating costs. However, basic virtualization solutions lack sophisticated monitoring and management capabilities needed to ensure smooth operations. Institutions require a solution that provides a more robust operating environment capable of automatic load balancing and dynamic shifting of workloads.

Optimize the benefits of virtualization by tying together physical and virtual resources ― running on disparate platforms in different locations ― under one management umbrella. You can incorporate an administrative layer that supports and combines multiple vendor hardware and multiple virtualization hypervisor software into a unified cloud. Microsoft® Hyper-V™, included in Microsoft Windows Server® 2008 R2 OS, enables organizations to take advantage of Microsoft platforms already in place to help extend virtualization rapidly and set the foundation for a cost-effective private cloud infrastructure.

Dell™ Advanced Infrastructure Management (AIM) works alongside Microsoft System Center to support advanced hardware management. Microsoft System Center enables centralized automated management of the physical and virtual elements in the data center, increasing server utilization and optimizing resource allocation across multiple locations and virtualization platforms. Dell AIM, on the other hand, provides the centralized management framework that combines hardware and virtualization platforms from disparate vendors into one unified cloud. Together, Dell AIM and Microsoft System Center enable:

• Dynamic allocation of servers, network connectivity and storage
• Automatic and intelligent redeployment of workloads
• Seamless migration of data between physical servers and virtual machines