Joe Sullivan

Microsoft Technical Solutions Engineer - APS

 With the HP BladeSystem Matrix, you can radically change the way applications are deployed in your datacenter.  Matrix provides an integrated platform of infrastructure (server, storage, and network) resource pools which can be dynamically allocated as application services are provisioned.  This allows you to quickly adapt to the changing demands of your business and addresses the efficiency and agility challenges facing many datacenters today.

At the center of this new datacenter paradigm are the Matrix application service templates. These templates define the minimum resource requirements for an application deployment.  Matrix templates can also include embedded workflow components which allow you to automate post-OS installation tasks such as the installation and configuration of the application.  This allows you to rapidly deploy and automate  the end-to-end process of provisioning your line of business applications. 

With Matrix templates, you can significantly reduce application deployment times, from weeks and months down to hours and days.  Application templates also allow you to free up administrator time from the tedious, repetitive tasks of installing and configuring software to more innovative, revenue generating projects.  For example, deploying an Exchange 2010 template from the self-service portal requires 5 minutes of an administrator's time as compared to the 8-16 hours that deploying and configuring Exchange manually would take an administrator.  And not only do Matrix templates allow you to reduce the time to roll-out application services, they also provide a consistent, reliable, and repeatable process for application deployment. 

To assist you in designing and developing templates for your applications, HP has developed and published a number of Matrix templates supporting key Microsoft applications like Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL.  These templates provide a baseline for designing your own Matrix templates and capture recommended best practices for Microsoft application deployments.  Several of these templates also include examples of embedded workflows for automating the installation and configuration of Exchange.  These workflows provide a framework that can significantly cut down on the design and development time when building your own customized workflows.   

Beyond these reference templates, integration into the free HP sizing tools can help you quickly generate Matrix templates based on your specific resource requirements.  This can reduce the time to design and develop a service template for your Microsoft applications (like Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010) to less than 1 hour.   

Check out the Microsoft application template and workflow packages available today by going to the HP BladeSystem Matrix Template Community site at  www.hp.com/go/matrixtemplates.  And keep checking back in the future as new Matrix templates are always being added.