“Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises” – The best of both, cloud and on-premise, worlds? [Coming later this year, free]

Virtually Connected - through Microsoft UC & Virtualization - Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises

“Recently in one of the partner events, I was asked a question around DDTK for enterprises. What will it do, when it will be available etc.

The Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises will be a free, partner-extensible toolkit that will enable data centers to dynamically pool, allocate, and manage resources to enable IT as a service. Whether you’re an enterprise customer, a systems integrator, or an independent software vendor, the toolkit will help you create agile, virtualized IT infrastructures. You’ll get:

• An architectural roadmap, deployment guidance, and best practices.
• Familiar tools that are compatible with existing applications.
• Interoperability with hosted and public clouds.

Availability scheduled in the first half of 2010, and free of charge!

…”

From the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises datasheet;

“…

Components

The Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises comprises of four operational components or phases.

· On-boarding: Allows IT admins to capture the service requirements from the IT service manager (customer). Some of the features that it might include are: Capture of IT service requirement, Establishment of VM options, Creation of user groups, and Selection of patch options.

· Self Service/ Admin Portal: Allows IT service manager to interact with his/her service from deployment to decommissioning. Service managers also have the option to access VM and charge-back reports.  Some of the features it might include are:  Start/stop VMs, Decommission VMs, and Access reporting functions.

· Provisioning: These are foundational to the enablement of the IT service. Batch creation of the VMs enables the simultaneous or sequenced deployment of multiple VMs into a service environment. Bare Metal provisioning of Windows® Hyper-V™ host is enabled through Microsoft® Deployment Toolkit (MDT).

· Operate: The Dynamic Data Center Toolkit  for Enterprises will utilize the Microsoft System Center family of products (e.g. SCVMM, SCOM, etc) to provide management capabilities such as: Monitoring VM uptimes and host capacity

Archival and decommissioning of VMs, Patching and Software Updates, Backup/restore (no mention of SC Data Protection Manager) etc.

…”

With my work hat on, I like the idea of brining the best of the cloud concepts into my data center. This helps me solve many of my problems without adding new ones (like privacy, data security/location, political battles, etc, etc).

I glad the the TLA isn’t “DDT for Enterprises” :D