Frequently Asked Questions about Virtualization and the Microsoft®/AMD Solution

How can my company benefit from virtualization?With virtualization, businesses can increase IT capacity at a low cost, reduce physical server deployments, and have a computing platform that can easily scale as their needs evolve. Businesses can achieve the following benefits through virtualization:

▪ Consolidation – Reduce physical server space in data centers using virtualization to run multiple virtual machines on a single physical server.

▪ Business Agility − Virtualization helps companies execute a quick and efficient deployment and scaling of IT systems to quickly respond to changes in business conditions.

▪ Business Continuity – With virtualization, virtual machines can automatically redirect traffic in real time to reduce system downtime and interruptions.

▪ VDI – With VDI, businesses get centralized control over desktop environments to help lower desktop management costs, increased data security for compliance purposes, get anywhere access to desktop applications, and lower client device costs.

Why Microsoft? Single Management Platform – Microsoft offers a single management platform with centralized and integrated management of virtual and physical servers. With Microsoft virtualization solutions, businesses have the ability to carry out provisioning, configuration, monitoring and alerting tasks from a single console.

Interoperability – Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V™ is designed to interoperate seamlessly with the existing Microsoft infrastructure—allowing businesses to apply existing Microsoft tools, staff skills, processes, and application architectures to successfully transition from physical to virtual infrastructure.

Significant Savings – With Microsoft, virtualization and management solutions features like live migration and clustering are included at no cost. With competing solutions, users may have to move to the higher versions to get live migration and clustering and may therefore have to pay a significant price premium for these features. And since Microsoft solutions can more seamlessly interoperate with existing Microsoft infrastructure, businesses can save time, money, and resources normally associated with complex server deployments.

Why AMD? Virtualization is an important component in the execu-tion of an agile business strategy. The AMD Opteron™ 6200 Series processor, the world’s first x86 processor with up to 16 cores, as well as AMD Opteron™ 4200 Series processor, which offers up to 8 cores, are both optimized for virtualization, delivering the performance needed to handle real-world workloads.

With AMD, you get:

▪ Superior server scalability – AMD Opteron™ 6200 Series processors enable the ability to scale within or across 2P and 4P memory servers, with 33% more cores than our previous generation1—provid-ing greater memory and processing throughput to quickly meet the growing demands of business.

▪ Greater virtualization density – AMD multi-core processors with exceptional CPU compute density means that more VMs can run on fewer physical machines without compromising performance.

▪ Unprecedented performance – AMD Opteron™ 6200 Series processors provide the performance, high core density, and increased memory address-ability needed to support a large number of concur-rent, memory-intensive VMs.

AMD PID 51653A1 Comparison of 12-core AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors and 16-core AMD Opteron 6200 Series processors. SVR-52 Based on internal AMD engineering projections of AMD Opteron™ 6200 Series processors with up to 500MHz in P1 boost state and up to 1.4GHz in P0 boost state over base P2 clock

frequency when thermal headroom is available.3 SPEC and SPECint are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. The results stated above reflect results published on http://www.spec.org/

cpu2006/results/ of 11/15/11. The comparison presented above is based on the best performing four-socket servers using AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6282 SE (1ku $1019) and Intel Xeon processor Model E7-4830 (1ku $2059), operating at each processor’s default frequency. For the latest SPECint®_rate2006 results, visit http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/. Pricing reflects 1kU tray pricing on www.amd.com and www.intel.com as of 11/15/11 and is subject to change. SPECint®_rate2006 score of 1040 using 4 x AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6282 SE: http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2011q4/cpu2006-20111020-18712.html. SPECint®_rate2006 score of 795 using 4 x Intel Xeon E7-4830: http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2011q3/cpu2006-20110718-17495.html. SVR-70

4 Based on testing in AMD Performance Labs as of August, 2011, an AMD Opteron™ processor model 6174 (12-core 2.2GHz) consumes 11.7W in the active idle C1E power state while an AMD Opteron™ processor model 6276 (16-core 2.3GHz) consumes only 6.4W in the active idle C1E power state with new C6 power gating employed. System configuration: “Drachma” reference design kit, 32GB (8 x 4GB DDR3-1333) memory, 500GB SATA disk drive, Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 x64 Enterprise Edition R2. SVR-60

© 2012 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners. Microsoft, Windows, and Windows Server, and Hyper-V are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other jurisdiction.

▪ Improved power efficiency – The AMD Opteron™ processor is designed to provide high performance while helping conserve power. Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V fully supports AMD’s power management tool—enhanced AMD PowerNow!™ technology and the AMD-P power-saving features—which helps reduce power consumption at idle by up to 46% over the previous generation.4

▪ Improved business continuity and disaster recovery – System downtime can be reduced with core-dense virtualization, where virtual machines can automatically redirect traffic in real time.

▪ Memory support – AMD Opteron™ processors include an integrated memory controller that provides Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V with the fast and secure memory access needed to drive virtualized environments.

▪ Hardware-enabled virtualization – AMD Opteron™ processors provide AMD-V™ Extended Migration, hardware-assisted virtualization technology that consists of hardware extensions to the x86 system architecture. Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V utilizes AMD-V to help eliminate much of the processor overhead normally associated with software-only virtualization solutions.

What do I need to do to virtualize my IT infrastructure?The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit can help plan for physical to virtual migration by determining which physical servers are underutilized and, therefore, good candidates for server virtualization. MAP quickly provides the answers needed for implementation. MAP takes inventory of the current server environment, determines which servers are underutilized, and then generates server placements and virtualization candidate assessments for implementation.

▪ High clock speeds – AMD Turbo CORE technology allows processors to independently boost their clock speeds, scaling frequency up 500MHz-1GHz automatically to respond to the need for more application performance.2

▪ One consistent server platform – One processor platform supports multiple server computing needs, ensuring greater compatibility and consistency not found in competitive solutions. Different processors based on different underlying architectures can adversely impact virtualization performance.

▪ Socket compatible and plug upgradeable – 8, 12 and 16-core processor options provided by AMD can be used to upgrade existing quad and six-core servers, now or in the future, helping extend the life and value of investments in server infrastructure.

▪ Superior value at every price point – Affordable choices help businesses meet their needs with less expensive configurations and component memory costs.

Why should businesses consider the AMD and Microsoft solution? AMD and Microsoft work closely together and make broad investments in the areas of the platform, IT management, applications, interoperability, and licensing to deliver the benefits of virtualization while reducing the costs associated with implementing virtualized environments.

With AMD and Microsoft, customers get optimized processors and virtualization technologies that create a powerful virtualized infrastructure with the right combination of performance, efficiency, and price. While competitive products may scale raw performance at a high cost, AMD Opteron™ processors running Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V can deliver:

▪ Lower Total Cost of Ownership – AMD Opteron 6200 Series processors are designed to deliver the same real world-class performance with up to 31% better performance at half the CPU cost in 4P configurations.3 Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V is an enterprise-ready, cost-effective server virtualization technology that allows you to make full use of your server hardware investments.