Customers are increasingly looking to transform their IT environments and take advantage of the benefits of both private and public cloud architectures. This hybrid approach to IT looks to leverage the security, control and performance of on-premises solutions while enabling the flexibility and cost advantages of large scale clouds. With concerns around compliance, security and data protection, enabling a hybrid IT cloud approach using Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers and Equinix Cloud Exchange Advanced Interconnection to meet these requirements within budget is practical and affordable. Applications can run in Microsoft Azure while the data stays on the EMC storage that companies have long trusted.
EMC, Microsoft and Equinix are pleased to be collaborating on next generation hybrid cloud solutions that offer more reliability, faster speeds and higher security than conventional internet-based public cloud connectivity. These solutions combine EMC storage running in traditional datacenters and Equinix co-located datacenters with applications running in Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute provides a private connection between traditional or co-located datacenters into Microsoft Azure to give customers the business benefits of both on-premises and public cloud architectures for their high performance applications.
Announced in February and generally available in May, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute enables customers to establish dedicated, high performance connections between Microsoft Azure datacenters and on-premises infrastructure or co-location environments such as those provided by Equinix. Equinix is certified for ExpressRoute and provides co-located datacenters that enable customers to extend their critical workloads to Microsoft Azure. Available today, Equinix will now offer EMC customers the ability to host EMC storage solutions in their worldwide datacenters and connect to Microsoft Azure safely, reliably and securely. Microsoft Azure is the only public cloud supported by both EMC and Equinix today. The solution offers partners the opportunity to bundle their managed services when building hybrid clouds for their enterprise customers.
Setting up the connection is very straightforward. Customers need a Microsoft Azure subscription and can download the latest Windows PowerShell commands from Microsoft to build an ExpressRoute connection. A circuit can then be requested to connect the datacenter to Equinix. This connection will extend the existing VPN so data to and from Microsoft Azure flows over a secure, reliable connection via Equinix. Functional tests with Isilon, the leading scale out NAS solution, demonstrated improved throughput and performance. See the EMC White Paper for more details.
According to a new InformationWeek study of IT professionals, hybrid cloud is becoming the standard datacenter architecture and Microsoft Azure is preferred by nearly half of the survey respondents using or developing hybrid clouds. EMC is focused on enabling customer transition to the hybrid cloud and providing choice for their deployments. We are excited to be collaborating with Microsoft and Equinix to help customers simplify their IT infrastructure as they move to the cloud. We look forward to continued work around Microsoft Azure as we bring joint solutions to market that help customers transform their datacenters and take full advantage of the hybrid approach to IT.
More Information
For more information about ExpressRoute, click here.
For more information about Equinix and ExpressRoute, click here.
For more information on EMC VMAX, VNX and Isilon, please visit the linked product pages.