Tune in to the Microsoft Private Cloud Community Evaluation Program!

Interested in Microsoft System Center 2012 and have an open spot in your schedule on Tuesday afternoons? Then, why not join the Microsoft Private Cloud Community Evaluation Program (CEP) at https://connect.microsoft.com/site799/program7383!

Since November 1, 2011, Microsoft has hosted weekly online meetings (every Tuesday from 1:00 to 2:30 pm, Pacific time) with the objective of disseminating prime technical information on System Center 2012 and the Microsoft Private Cloud solution. In the eight sessions that have taken place so far, discussion has spanned topics such as describing the overall Microsoft Private Cloud solution, Service Delivery and Automation, Application Self-Service, and Service Deployments. Microsoft presenters include System Center product managers like Kenon Owens, Sean Christensen,and Adam Hall, During the sessions, you can interact with the presenters through chat, provide your feedback, and get live answers to your burning System Center and cloud questions! Since all of the sessions are recorded and available for replay, you can catch-up on past sessions and still participate in the upcoming 12 sessions. The program wraps up around April 10, so there is still a lot of great content coming up to jumpstart or update your System Center and Microsoft Private Cloud knowledge.

And if you want even more System Center content, go register for the February 21 and 22, 2012, online, virtual training course, “Creating and Managing a Private cloud with System Center 2012 Jumpstart”, offered FOR FREE by Microsoft. Instructors include Symon Perriman, Chris Van Wesep, Kenon Owens, Adam Hall, Sean Christensen, and Prabu Rambadran from the Microsft System Center Cloud and Datacenter product team.

Microsoft Private Cloud Event & Jan. 17 Announcements

Yesterday, Microsoft announced some important news for enterprises that are looking to deploy private cloud environments built on Hyper-V and System Center.

You can watch the on-demand event at http://t.co/5yXbk7y7. Highlights include Microsoft licensing based on a per processor basis to provide high scalability independent of the number of running VMs, and two software suites (Standard and Datacenter) to select from based on what best suits your environment.

Microsoft and Multi-Tenant Clouds

At the Microsoft Build conference held September 13 – 16, 2011 in Anaheim, Microsoft provided a first look at Windows Server 8 features, including Hyper-V, which will enable organizations to support Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) deployments using public, private and hybrid, multi-tenant cloud architectures.

A multi-tenant cloud is a cloud infrastructure that is capable of hosting services (workloads) for multiple, distinct organizations (i.e., distinct departments within a single company in a private cloud, or distinct companies in a public cloud) while maintaining secure workload isolation amongst the various tenants. In addition, a multi-tenant cloud infrastructure is capable of dynamically placing and redistributing tenant workloads on any available host in the cloud without compromising the secure workload isolation. Finally, the multi-tenant cloud infrastructure must be able to provide and guarantee distinct Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that are based on organizational requirements, and provide resource metering that allows proper chargeback for the use of cloud resources to each organization. In order to enable multi-tenant cloud infrastructures, Windows Server 8 includes a slew of new features that span Hyper-V, storage, network, high-availability, disaster recovery, and manageability.