Microsoft announced several improvements and innovations today to help customers manage their hybrid clouds. Previously at their Ignite event, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Operations Management Suite. This hybrid management solution extended the value of System Center and helped manage corporate workloads. Back-up and migration functionality in Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery were also introduced at Ignite. Now Microsoft is adding a new OMS add-on for System Center, support for physical and VMware virtual machines in Azure Site Recovery, new capabilities in Azure Backup, and enhanced support for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager.
Microsoft announced several improvements and innovations today to help customers manage their hybrid clouds. Previously at their Ignite event, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Operations Management Suite. This hybrid management solution extended the value of System Center and helped manage corporate workloads. Back-up and migration functionality in Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery were also introduced at Ignite. Now Microsoft is adding a new OMS add-on for System Center, support for physical and VMware virtual machines in Azure Site Recovery, new capabilities in Azure Backup, and enhanced support for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager.
The System Center OMS add-on gives the System Center customers access to the full suite of OMS solutions. OMS offers several benefits including: extending the datacenter, quickly enable hybrid cloud scenarios, and take advantage of cloud bursting, migration and dev/test scenarios. Adding to those benefits, customers with System Center Standard or Datacenter licenses with Software Assurance can purchase a corresponding Microsoft Operations Management Suite add-on for access to allocated solutions. From now until December 31, 2015, Microsoft is offering an introductory offer at 40% off that also includes site recovery to Azure.
Microsoft has added enhancements into its Azure Site Recovery. Datacenters simply need to be connected to Azure with Azure Site Recovery and its Azure with Azure Site Recovery.
Other features and benefits include:
- Reduce complexity: Eliminate the need to build and maintain a secondary DR site and retire tape backup, housing long-term backup data in Azure.
- Harness the power of Azure: Easily burst into the cloud and run on-premises workloads in Azure. With just a few quick clicks, OMS customers can migrate running Hyper-V, Physical and VMware workloads into Azure to leverage the economics and elasticity of the cloud.
- Enhance development scenarios: Easily create multi-tier development environments – even replicate live production data to your dev/test environment to keep it in near real-time sync.
Microsoft is striving to make Azure Backup the premier go-to backup solution for SMB and enterprises alike. It continues to support of key Microsoft workloads such as SQL, Exchange, and SharePoint and File Servers. It now offers new services to OSM customers.
New services include:
- New data protection technology for Azure Backup: A new downloadable backup agent based on DPM technology for Azure Backup offers customers of all sizes advanced functionality to enable fast and efficient hybrid backup services as part of their Azure Backup investment.
- Azure Backup for IaaS VMs: OMS customers will also be able access the IaaS VM backup feature with support for premium storage, multi-disk storage, and PowerShell automation that makes it the best in class backup for VMs running in Azure. With the long-term retention capabilities and pricing model changes announced earlier in the year, customers across all segments can leverage Azure as a tape replacement target, increasing TCO savings.
- Azure-based management console: Azure Backup now also features a new console with rich management capabilities that complement OMS.
And finally System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager will now provide greater heterogeneous support with new host level, agentless backup of VMware VMs. Once a VMware VM is configured for protection, all workflows and backup targets (disk, cloud and tape) are supported at the same fidelity as Hyper-V VMs.
Availability and pricing
The Azure backup functionality is expected to be available later this year. All other enchantments for hybrid cloud management are available now. The System Center OMS add-on starts at $430 per year.
Microsoft Operations Management Suite
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