New EMC Proven Solutions and Consulting Services

EMC Corporation announced technology support, new EMC Proven Solutions and Consulting Services for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 to help customers deploy SQL Server for mission critical data center applications.

By leveraging EMC technology and services with the latest SQL Server functionality, customers can increase performance and maximize data availability at a lower cost. New services provide customers a defined path for seamless migration and adoption of SQL Server 2012 and help customers take advantage of SQL Server 2012’s insights functionality to turn data into business intelligence and competitive advantage.

In October 2011, an IDC survey of Enterprise end-users named EMC the #1 storage choice for Exchange, SharePoint, and other mission critical environments. The survey ranks storage vendors on how end-users are deploying their technology with enterprise applications, and it shows that more customers choose EMC storage than any other storage for their Microsoft environments.

By leveraging EMC technologies to address
SQL Server 2012 requirements customers can:

• Achieve 80% faster SQL Server provisioning with VNX Unified Storage;
• Automate the allocation of SQL 2012 Server storage and eliminate 95% of the typical manual storage calculation times with Symmetrix VMAXe 100% Virtual Provisioning;   
• Experience 4X more performance of SQL Server 2012 server and storage resources at a lower cost using EMC FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) software, and EMC VFCache server flash caching solution;
• Complete more backups in less time with up to 30X less storage with EMC backup and recovery solutions.
  

EMC announced two new EMC Proven Solutions
to help customers leverage
the newest features in SQL Server 2012:

EMC SQL Server 2012 Readiness – Performance with VMAXe FAST VP and SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Local Availability Groups – This solution documents technology considerations for utilizing the new SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups with EMC FAST VP and EMC VMAXe. The focus of this solution is to create availability groups on a FAST VP enabled VMAXe to support business requirements for read-only secondary database replicas. This approach allows for the dedication of the primary replica for mission critical OLTP workloads while isolating OLAP/BI demands.

EMC SQL Server 2012 Multi-Site Disaster Recovery – Enabled by SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups, EMC VNX and FAST Suite – This solution documents technology considerations for utilizing the new SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups, with FAST Suite and VNX unified storage. The focus of this solution is to utilize the new SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn transaction-level replication technology to maximize the availability of a set of user databases between two distant sites while enabling the database storage efficiency and performance to be optimized by using FAST Suite on VNX 5700.

New EMC Consulting services designed for Microsoft SQL Server 2012
help business and IT stakeholders to maximize their investment in SQL
Server. The services also enable the customer’s environment to support
mission critical application quality of service requirements and enable
pervasive business intelligence for competitive advantage.

• The new Upgrade/Migration Service for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 helps customers efficiently plan, manage, and execute their transition to the SQL Server 2012 platform.
• The new EMC Consulting Self-Service Business Intelligence (BI)
  service helps customers empower their business users to quickly develop
  reports, dashboards, and scorecards without direct support from IT
  resources. During this service, EMC Consulting creates an interface to
  existing BI systems using SQL Server tools and exposes the data in a
  Microsoft SharePoint-based user interface.

A Diamond Sponsor of the SQL Server 2012 launch, as well as a Microsoft Certified Partner with 19 gold and silver competencies and a 21-time Microsoft Partner of the Year, EMC offers customers information infrastructure, solutions and services optimized for their Microsoft environments. EMC Consulting, a business unit within EMC Global Services, works with Microsoft to develop and deliver services and solutions that help customers streamline deployment, migration and management of their Microsoft technology platforms. EMC Consulting accelerates its customers’ journey to the private cloud through efficient use of information infrastructures to provide an opportunity to federate information resources across cloud architectures.

Eduardo Rosini, Corporate Vice President, SQL Server Marketing, Microsoft Corp., said: "SQL Server 2012 and EMC Solutions and Application services help our customers address mission critical performance, availability and data protection requirements. EMC’s announcement of new consulting services that leverage Microsoft BI tools will enable our customers to use their data more competitively – providing breakthrough insights."

Andy Fuss, Manager of Technology and Engineering, CharterCARE Health Partners, said: "With the formation of CharterCARE Health Partners and the convergence of multiple IT infrastructures we were faced with enormous data growth. It became clear that our traditional tape-based backup approach had reached its end and we needed to make a transformational shift in our strategy. Data Domain deduplication storage systems and EMC NetWorker were a natural fit, and have dramatically improved the performance, efficiency and reliability of our SQL Server related  backup process. With EMC storage solutions we’ve been able to focus on what’s most important: protecting our core business, protecting our patients, and offering them the highest quality of healthcare that they need."

Brian Carpenter, Vice President of Information Technology, Heritage Auctions, Inc., said: "SQL Server is the lifeblood of Heritage Auctions (HA.com). We use it to provide our customers with a massive amount of data, a meaningful experience on our website, and historical information to help them make educated buying and selling decisions. Consolidating our mission-critical Microsoft SQL Server infrastructure on EMC Symmetrix VMAXe has opened the door for us to go full throttle with our most strategic initiatives, from the latest Microsoft releases to virtualization to big data. We have the utmost confidence that when we roll out SQL Server 2012, VMAXe is going to be ready to perform and handle the increases in workload and changes in processing."

Daniel Mettling, Information Technology Manager, Park Industries, Inc., said: "As our business evolves, we’re constantly seeking more opportunities to improve our responsiveness and streamline data processes to save time. The level of integration provided by EMC VNXe unified storage streamlines management of our SQL Server environment while the flexibility of centralized access provides us with a broad snapshot across our systems at a moment’s notice. VNXe gives us the tools to make snap decisions about storage management and report to employees without interrupting our day-to-day business, meaning we save time, and ultimately, thousands of dollars."

Prasad Rampalli, SVP, EMC Solutions Group, said: "EMC is committed to helping our customers make a seamless and effortless transition to SQL Server 2012 without compromising on performance, efficiency, simplicity or affordability. We’ve customized our engineering best practices, optimized our storage solutions to support SQL Server 2012, and have tailored our consulting services so that customers of all sizes are equipped with what they need to enable them to maximize information across their organization."

Dave Cox, VP, EMC Consulting, said: "Our new EMC Consulting services are right on target with EMC’s strategy to support organizations’ move to ITaaS so that they can better manage the massive amounts of data they are generating. EMC has the proven industry knowledge and technology expertise required to help SQL Server customers efficiently accelerate upgrades and realize the maximum value of their information."