Today we are announcing the Tech Preview of the Pure Storage Extension for Windows Admin Center! The Pure Storage Extension for Windows Admin Center provides the ability to manage Pure Storage FlashArray’s. We will be showcasing the extension this week at Microsoft Ignite at booth #402.
Microsoft released Windows Admin Center (WAC) on September 20th. This is the next-generation graphical management for Windows Server. WAC is the replacement for Windows Server Manager and can also be hosted on Windows 10 machines. It provides Server, Failover Cluster, Computer and Hyper-Converged Management features. Full details can be read on Microsoft Windows Admin Center blog.
The features that are included in the Pure Storage Extension include:
- Connecting to multiple FlashArrays.
- View the FlashArray details, this includes IOPs, bandwidth, latency, data reduction and space management. All the same details you get from the FlashArray Management GUI.
- View configured host groups.
- View Hosts — All of the connectivity information is available including Host Names, iSCSI Qualified Name (IQNs) and World Wide Names (WWNs).
- Manage Volumes — This includes the ability to create and destroy volumes. Once a volume is destroyed it will be placed in the Destroyed items bucket and you will need to Eradicate from the main FlashArray Management GUI.
- Manage Initiators — This is one of the most interesting features as we are providing context to the individual servers being managed by the Windows Admin Center deployment. You can view the connected disks (volumes) to individual Windows Servers, check if MultiPath-IO (MPIO) is installed/configured and creating/mounting new volumes.
As the saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words, and I believe the same applies to demonstrations. This demo shows all of the different features available as part of the extension.
This is a Preview release that customers and partners can deploy in non-production environments. We will be moving towards General Availability (GA) sometime in early 2019. Once deployed in your environment we would love to get your feedback on usability as well as any features requests.
Be sure to check out all of the sessions at Microsoft Ignite from the Windows Admin Center team.
- Windows Server management reimagined with Windows Admin Center
- Windows Server 2019: What’s new and what’s next
- Windows Server 2019 deep dive
- The Perfect Match: Windows Admin Center & Server Core
- Windows Server 2019 System Insights: Simplified ML for the intelligent edge
- Establishing hybrid connectivity with Windows Server 2019 and Microsoft Azure
- Retire your old file servers with Storage Migration Service in Windows Server 2019
Cheers,
Barkz