 Okay everybody, we're back, this is Dave Vellante at Wikibon.org, and this is the Cube, Silicon Angles flagship product, we extract the signal from the noise, we bring you the tech athletes, the smartest people that we can find to help you, our audience, IT practitioners, and business technology leaders, try to figure out, okay, how can I best spend my massive investment in IT, and how can I bring a business capability to my organization that's going to drive ROI? That's what we try to do here at theCUBE, I'm here with my co-host for this segment, David Floyer, David Floyer is the CTO of Wikibon.org, and we're going to drill into an opportunity within Microsoft, Adrian Sames is here, he's with EMC, and he's the Microsoft Global Application Tech Enablement Lead, he's based up in Seattle, Adrian, welcome to theCUBE. Great, thanks Dave. So, let's start, we're going to talk about Windows Server 2012, we're going to dig into that, a lot of the practitioners in the Wikibon community are very excited about that, they're looking at that, there's some great components of that announcement, obviously a lot of people excited about the Hyper-V aspects of it, but let's start with the relationship between EMC and Microsoft, it's been an interesting one over the years, it's evolved over the years, and certainly the VMware prominence and ascendancy has changed that relationship somewhat, but you guys still do a lot of business in the Microsoft phase, talk about that a little bit. Yeah, we do, so as you said, it is a unique relationship, but it's a very healthy relationship, and so we've been partners, strategic partners, and global partners for over a decade, and while we do have areas that we do compete, I think you're going to find that with any really large technology companies, right? And so what we've done is really work together to figure out how can we set that aside and continue to innovate in five ways we can partner together, and there's a lot of value that EMC brings into a Microsoft environment, whether it's with the operating systems, with Hyper-V, with their private cloud story, as well as with all the applications, and continue to do integrated support and being able to create solutions that we can deliver out to our customers and partners around these Microsoft technologies. Yeah, so let's talk about Windows Server 2012. I mean, a big chunk of enterprise infrastructure running on Microsoft Windows. You know, Windows 8 takes a lot of heat, but Windows Server 2012 has gotten a lot of really good press, a lot of interesting action in the community, certainly the Wikibon community and other IT practitioner communities. Tell us what do practitioners need to know? What do customers need to know about Windows Server 2012? So, Windows 2012, it's a great operating system. So Microsoft has done incredible work over the last year of really refreshing across the board all of their technologies, if you look at it, starting with SQL Server and all their applications over the last course of the year, System Center and then the desktop and now Windows Server 2012. And so what Windows Server 2012 does is it really extends, I think, some of the enterprise type functionality and brings in new technologies such as support for offline data transfers, support for extended support for SMB, as well as the enhancements around Hyper-V itself. They've really devoted a lot of energy and resources to help make Windows Server 2012 more of an enterprise platform to be able to deliver that to the end customers for an enterprise workload. So Hyper-V is version three now, right? And as we all know, when Microsoft comes out finally with the version three, they usually get it right. So let's play a little buzzword bingo. So let's talk about some of the good, the bad and the ugly. So we've got things like ODX, Hyper-V version three, trim, unmap, these are some of the features and functions. You know, what are those things? Let's start with ODX. Okay, so ODX, offloaded data transfer. And what this is, this is really a great technology. It's the ability to take activities that traditionally are being handled at the server level and being able to offload it to a storage array. So when you have a storage array connected to a Windows Server 2012 environment, you can actually leverage the power of the storage array to do operations such as say file copy operations. And so for instance, last year Microsoft demonstrated this at Microsoft TechEd 2012 on an EMC being an X array. And what they did is they took a 10 gig file and they were able to copy it using the storage array in 10 seconds. So one gig a second operations versus being able to do that from a server to server level, it would take a lot longer. And even worse is that it actually uses a lot of CPU processing on the server itself. That's an expensive operation from a server. So if you can offload that onto the storage array and let the storage array handle that, then you can do some significant cost savings at the server level. Okay, and then, so as I said, I was sort of joking before but I was sort of serious before too. I mean Hyper-V is really now, I think in many respects got some street cred finally. And so it's the real deal. Talk about Hyper-3 a little bit. Yeah, so Hyper-V 3. Hyper-V 3, sorry. Yeah, no, and Hyper-V 3 is, we're seeing a lot of interest amongst our customers, a lot of activity. What we're starting to see is customers actually operating in a multi-hypervisor because of that power of Hyper-V 3. So Hyper-V 3 essentially is what you're finding is on par from a feature functionality with VMware as far as how many virtual processors and virtual machines as well as highly possible workloads. They really are to the point that there's no application that you couldn't virtualize at Hyper-V level or with VMware at that point. And also introducing things like virtual networking and other technologies that have made it really enterprise ready. And then you got things like trim and unmap. These are efficiency measures, right? So reclamation, space, talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so essentially it's when you were to, if you were to create a volume, say you store some data on it, once you've removed data off that volume, well those blocks are still allocated and they're never released. Well what trim and unmap essentially allows you to go in and unrelease those blocks so that space can be reused again by a new process. So I want to bring David Florian to the discussion. David, you did a piece of work, you put it up in the Wiki, it's called Microsoft Windows Server 2012, it's great. But select carefully from the menu. So I know you went out, you talked to a bunch of practitioners trying to give some advice to the Microsoft members within the Wikibon community. What did your research find? So my research found that there was a tremendous number of good initiatives which Adrian has talked about. What we also found is that the management of those initially is not there yet. So systems, the systems management of those functions is not quite there, not there at all yet. So that's an area which it needs to be filled in by Microsoft at the moment it could be filled in by the channel partners as well. But in general, very small organizations may find some of these things that they can do themselves if they have a very, very good systems guy on staff. Otherwise, initially it's probably better to stick with not probably it is better to stick with the traditional storage arrays especially in the storage areas, stick with the storage areas and as the environment gets bigger so that difference between using the storage arrays as opposed to using the Microsoft 2012 in-serve capabilities becomes bigger and bigger. So you kind of got this tug of war going on, you got the storage array guys and you got Microsoft and Microsoft putting more function into the operating system. Obviously there's some advantages in certain cases of having function inside the storage. David, you mentioned some cautions looking at the piece now, storage spaces. De-duplication, resilient file system, even SMB, you were saying those are maybe based on the feedback and the research that you did with customers maybe more long-term considerations. They're long-term things. Why is that? Well, take one like de-duplication. You need a whole management around that de-duplication and it's not an in-line de-duplication, it's a process de-duplication, it's a backend type de-duplication. That's going to take a lot of resources on the server itself. That's something that's clearly, in my view, better to be left to the storage substance. So you're recommending the client's offload. So let's bring up, guys, can we bring up that chart? Kenny or Mick, can we bring up that chart? So David, you did an economic analysis. You're very good at doing these economic analyses. You go out, you talk to customers, you gather all this data. That's sort of TCO on steroids. I know you like this concept of return on assets more so than ROI. But so you did this analysis, it's called Small Systems Infrastructure, Three Year Cost Comparison of DIY, that's do-it-yourself infrastructure versus storage array infrastructure. So do-it-yourself meaning go full software stack versus the balanced approach that you were talking about. Okay, so take us through sort of what we're looking at here. So the key findings here is that from a straightforward cost of equipment point of view, it's about equal. You spend a little bit more in some and a little bit less than others, but it's approximately equal the costs of that. What is the big difference is that in order to manage it, you would need more people. So the people cost of management increases if you use the Microsoft do-it-yourself approach. So you have to make up for the storage functionality that you find in the arrays. You have to make up for the lack of the storage function management capabilities within the stack. Okay, so you're saying in this model here, spend a little bit more on storage. So you spend more capex on infrastructure. You know, a few thousand dollars more, but overall you're going to reduce your staff cost by whatever, $50,000 over a three year period. It's a very labor-intensive IT economy that we live in. There's clearly a battle within, not battle. There's clearly a requirement within Microsoft to support your own software. So if they're saying with exchange, for example, they're saying use the Microsoft internal software stack as part of the support for exchange. Our view is that that's something Microsoft should not be saying. Well, maybe it's just small customers. They're very small customers, maybe, yes. But in general, it isn't there yet. Okay, so Adrian, tell us what you're recommending to EMC customers. When you go in and see an EMC customer, where are they at with regard to 2012? Talk about what the mindset is and what you guys are advising them. Yep, so, and I completely agree with what David's saying here. And so what we're finding is, is that a lot of, I think a lot of those advanced feature sets that we're talking about, and looking at like storage spaces and de-dupe and so forth, is ideal for our smaller customers. And those are the ones that probably have the most interest in that. As you get to a larger customer, it becomes more of a challenge trying to manage all of those feature sets. But what we're finding is, talking to our customers, EMC has been first to market in supporting Windows Server 2012 features. And so we do have a lot of customers coming and asking us about how to use it in their environment. And we're telling them to tread lightly. So essentially, find the features that we're talking about such as ODX that you can leverage today and get immediate, yep, and get immediate return on, right? But beware of some of those kind of new features such as storage spaces that we're finding is almost more management complex to implement and manage when we can provide that and even more advanced features natively through the array. I want to come back to, and David, I wonder if you could chime in as well, as well as Adrian's comments. Where are customers around? Where's their mindset? A lot of times customers will say, well, we're just going to let this thing bake a little bit and see how it goes. Sometimes they'll skip a generation. How would you characterize the Microsoft customer base with regard to Windows Server 2012? So I'll tell you, so you said, Microsoft always gets it right with version three. Well, the other rule of Microsoft is customers typically don't implement it until there's a service pack one, right? And so Windows Server 2012 is out and what I find is a lot of customers are asking about it. They're interested in it. They're maybe kicking the tires, but they're not necessarily implementing it in a full production environment. They're kind of waiting for other people to take that risk. And so I'm finding interest out there, but not necessarily a, I'd say, rapid deployment out in the industry per se. And that's my tip. Yeah, and that's what I found. I found more than interest. I found excitement there. I think they said that this is a really good release. They were really pleased with the Hyper-V version three. They were really pleased with ODX and those features. And they were pleased in general with a whole range of solutions that they provided out there. So I thought they were excited. There is expectation in the market that they will go to Windows 2012. And that's not all, there wasn't there before. They went there reluctantly, but they want to get to 2012. But as you said, they're taking their time, they're testing it, they're going step by step. But I believe that a lot of organizations are looking quite closely at multi-hypervisor environments. And they will be wanting to support that and put a little pressure on the M-Wave. So, okay, so is this more of a 2014 story or Q4 2013? Q4 2013 for the advanced ones, 2014 for the majority. But there's a lot of work going on in the moment. So there is an expectation and people have said get ready to move to 2012. And I think David's right too. It's also, it's a rolling adoption and not just from a customer adoption, but from a feature set. So you probably are going to see a lot more of customers deploying Windows over 2012 and then incorporating more of the features available within it, right? And starting to learn how to adopt that. A couple of the customers that I was talking to, they were all new servers, we're going to go to 2012. That's the roll out. As new servers come in, they'll move to 2012. Not many people these days want to retrofit 2012 to 2012. That's right. All right, Adrian, we're going to give you the last word. Advice for practitioners, action items that they should be focused on in this area. What do you say? You know, just I think with any new technology, I think take a look at it and try to figure out what features are going to be most useful for your environment. You know, not everything is the best fit to your point around some of the feature sets that actually have more of a management cost associated with it. And you know, from my perspective, leverage the knowledge that EMC brings. We have a lot of experience. We're testing these technologies in our labs. We're creating our proven solutions that help to deliver a solution that customers can implement and know that it's already been tested and worked out all the kinks essentially, so. Excellent. Adrian, thank you very much for coming on. David, thank you for sharing your insights. Excellent session. Sanjay Merchandani is an individual who has been on theCUBE a number of times. He was EMC's CIO. He has helped to transform EMC's IT. He is now transforming himself. He's moved on to a new role. Up next, we have EMC's new CIO. So keep it right there. This is theCUBE. We'll be right back after this message.