The Flash- Transformed Server Platform Maximizing Your Migration from Windows Server 2003 with a SanDisk Flash- enabled Server Platform

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1 WHITE PAPER The Flash- Transformed Server Platform Maximizing Your Migration from Windows Server 2003 with a SanDisk Flash- enabled Server Platform.

2 Table of Contents Windows Server 2003 EOL: What It Means to You 3 Microsoft will end support Windows Server 2003/R2 on July 14, Now is the time to migrate. 3 Understand What End of Support Means 3 No Updates 3 No Compliance 3 No Savings 3 No Safe Haven 3 Transform Your Datacenter 3 SanDisk Flash Memory Solutions in Your Datacenter 4 How Will SanDisk Flash Memory Solutions Benefit My Datacenter? 4 Improving End User Experience 5 Simplified Infrastructure 6 How Can SanDisk Reduce My IT Costs? 6 Infrastructure Consolidation 6 Business Benefits 6 Increasing IT and Employee Productivity 6 How Will SanDisk Make My Applications Run Faster? 7 SanDisk Solutions That Fit Your Datacenter and Windows Server 2003 Migration 8

3 Windows Server 2003 EOL: What It Means to You Microsoft will end support Windows Server 2003/R2 on July 14, Now is the time to migrate. Migrating away from Windows Server 2003/R2 is an investment in your organization s future, and there has never been a better time to begin the migration process. Take the next step to transform your datacenter by upgrading your server platform with leading edge Windows Operating Systems and SanDisk flash solutions. Understand What End of Support Means End of support for Windows Server 2003/R2 can have a dramatic impact on your business. It will mean no more updates or patches from Microsoft, which can result in a less stable and less secure infrastructure for your organization. No Updates Microsoft will no longer develop or release any updates after ending support. To put this in perspective 37 critical updates were released in 2013 for Windows Server 2003/R2 under extended support. Imagine what impact zero updates will have on your infrastructure. No Compliance After support ends, your organization will likely fail to meet most industry- wide compliance standards and regulations. This could result in lost business or dramatically increase the cost of doing business, in the form of high transaction fees and penalties. No Savings The costs of maintaining your legacy servers can add up quickly. Maintenance costs for aging hardware will likely increase, and you will have to deal with added costs for intrusion detection systems, more advanced firewalls, and network segmentation all simply to isolate 2003 servers. Staying put will likely cost more in the end. No Safe Haven Without continued support from Microsoft, your virtualized and physical instances of Windows Server 2003/R2 will not pass a compliance audit. Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 will also be affected. Transform Your Datacenter The end of support for Windows Server 2003/R2 could signal the beginning of a new stage in your organization s evolution. Migrating to the latest Microsoft Server OS, coupled with SanDisk flash solutions, enables greater business agility and performance. This guide provides a quick overview of the value SanDisk flash solutions will enable you to maximize your Microsoft server/application platform and take your business to new heights.

4 SanDisk Flash Memory Solutions in Your Datacenter How Will SanDisk Flash Memory Solutions Benefit My Datacenter? From significantly accelerating application performance and responsiveness to reducing datacenter operating costs, SanDisk offers numerous advantages for enterprises of all sizes. At the macro level, the business benefits of flash memory solutions enable improved user experiences, service levels and business productivity for happier customers, while also simplifying datacenter infrastructure. Simply stated, SanDisk enterprise flash memory solutions provide new levels of scale to your Microsoft Windows Server Platform supporting all of your workloads and resulting in a more cost- effective and flexible environment. Virtualization Servers Unleash the cost saving potential of virtualized environments: More and larger VM s per server even for databases Virtualize the most data intensive workloads Drop into your existing Hyper- V or VMware system Application Servers Fully utilize the processors you already own: Maximize application performance and scalability Minimize server footprint Database Servers Fully utilize the processors you already own: Provide databases the performance they need Eliminate shelves of disks, expensive network infrastructure and hours of tuning SAN Relief Enhance your existing storage assets: Caching on servers Virtualization support Performance optimization Balanced server/storage Enterprise App Servers Accelerate and consolidate enterprise IT applications including: Microsoft Exchange Microsoft Sharepoint Microsoft Dynamics Search applications Virtual Desktop Server Deliver extraordinary user experience: Offload desktop performance to server performance Backup Power Slash energy needs: Reduce power usage Cut costs across the datacenter Extend Existing Storage Life Eliminate the need for performance storage to extend the life of SAN/NAS infrastructure: Use capacity for storage not performance Minimize hardware footprint and maintenance costs Slash power and cooling costs Cooling Unit Cut cooling costs by: Reducing hardware footprint Increase airflow between servers Use less hot- running RAM in application and database servers Control Room Simplify entire datacenter management: Dramatically consolidate infrastructure Monitor all SanDisk iomemory from a single interface UPS/Battery Minimize infrastructure: Reduce battery power needs Shrink power outage

5 Improving End User Experience In a worldwide survey of top enterprises 1, IT professionals were asked why they were adding flash memory solutions to their datacenter. More than 57% of the respondents said they wanted to achieve more consistent response times. In fact, the top four reasons driving flash adoption were focused on improving performance for end users. 60% 50% 40% 57% 56% The top four reasons driving flash memory solution deployments focused on improving performance for the end user. 30% 20% 31% 25% 22% Provide More Consistent Response Time Need Faster Aceonable Data Service More Customers Faster 10% Provide More Reliable Product 0% PROVIDE MORE CONSISTENT RESPONSE TIME Why Enterprises are Adding Flash Memory Solutions Avoid SAN Upgrade The chart above shows that the top two reasons for deploying flash memory solutions are its ability to provide more consistent response times and to extract insights from data faster. To achieve these goals, IT professionals are increasingly turning to flash solutions to improve business responsiveness, ultimately driving more revenue. JD.com, China s second largest e- commerce website, is one company that is achieving breakthrough success using flash to improve customer experience. JD.com s transition to flash memory solutions eliminated lost sales from website outages and slow response times, while reducing total cost of ownership. 2 While companies of all sizes have helped their customers win with flash memory solutions, the benefits of these solutions also offer improvements within the organization. RCR Tomlinson, based in Australia, operates across a wide geography in multiple industries, including mining, energy, resources, and power. The RCR Tomlinson team decided to centralize its IT operations to improve hardware efficiency, create a common user experience across business units, and streamline infrastructure management by virtualizing all of the company s business applications. 3 Virtualization helped to consolidate RCR Tomlinson s datacenter hardware, but it also made it more complicated to support high performance workloads. After implementing flash directly in its virtualization servers, RCR Tomlinson s Infrastructure Manager, Stacey Squire, noted how flash memory solutions affected the company s workforce. Employees can get more work done, armed with the reports they need in minutes instead of hours. In addition to raising employee productivity, flash memory solutions also made it possible for RCR Tomlinson to boost the efficiency of its current infrastructure by increasing its concurrent user load of Microsoft SharePoint by 300 percent. RCR Tomlinson s success is consistent with other companies experiences, as over 50% of IT professionals surveyed by Fusion- io reported 4 more than a 5x improvement in application performance with flash memory solutions.

6 Simplified Infrastructure In addition to providing significant benefits to end users, flash memory solutions often enable companies to do more with less infrastructure, which leads to lower operating costs. With flash- enabled servers, servers and storage are more efficient, so they need less overprovisioning of RAM, disks, and network to handle more and peak workloads. By streamlining datacenter operations with flash memory solutions, customers often discover savings when evaluating their total cost of ownership (TCO). This holistic approach factors in cooling, power, and maintenance cost savings. With the ability to do more with less, many IT teams also report being able to assign new workloads to their current servers, helping them take on new projects with the systems they already have in place. How Can SanDisk Reduce My IT Costs? In the datacenter, SanDisk flash memory solutions provide cost savings that deliver an extremely high return on investment. In addition to accelerating applications to generate more business value from IT resources, flash memory solutions can reduce IT costs and simplify systems, making datacenters easier to manage. Infrastructure Consolidation Using flash memory solutions to store active data allows companies to greatly consolidate and simplify IT systems. Flash memory solutions can provide tens of terabytes of capacity, delivering powerful application performance on fewer servers, less storage, and with fewer software licenses. In addition, by offloading application performance demands to flash memory solutions, companies can lengthen the lifespan of their traditional storage systems by using SANs for capacity, rather than trying to configure and stripe disk systems for performance. Shrinking infrastructure also greatly reduces the operating costs associated with datacenter power, cooling, and floor space. By deploying SanDisk flash memory solutions in its datacenter, mixi 5, Japan s largest social media network, decreased its server count from several hundred to a few dozen. mixi also reduced its datacenter footprint by 75 percent and cut power costs by 80 percent. This was accomplished by moving mixi s distributed, scaled databases from hundreds of local hard disks onto SanDisk flash memory. With SanDisk, mixi increased the workload each server could handle, enabling the team to slash the number of servers they had to maintain by over 10 to 1. mixi is not alone in realizing significant cost savings. In the 2013 Fusion- io flash survey, 68 percent of respondents reported that they generated IT related savings by deploying flash, with three percent achieving savings of over one million dollars. Business Benefits Cost savings achieved through Lower power and cooling costs Avoid/delay SAN upgrade Minimize application license fees Time saved allows IT team to focus on strategic objectives Increasing IT and Employee Productivity In addition to saving on operating costs, flash memory solutions free IT professionals from reacting to ongoing performance issues so they can instead focus on strategic business objectives. For example, AT Internet reported that before deploying SanDisk flash, We were doing everything we could to improve performance, including different RAID configurations and continual tuning just to meet our SLAs. With [Fusion iomemory products from SanDisk] we know exactly what workload each server can handle and just put them into production without complex configuration. We can now focus tuning efforts proactively, instead of reactively. 6 Many companies also discover additional savings by improving the productivity of employees in other business functions. Quaker Maid Meats was able to recover 10 to 15 working hours a day when Fusion iomemory reduced its report generation

7 time from 600 seconds to 15 seconds. The IT team estimated that the company saves approximately $52,000 a year from increased employee productivity. How Will SanDisk Make My Applications Run Faster? Flash memory stores and retrieves information electronically instead of through physical access to magnetic media. With magnetic media, the disk head also has to physically find the portion of the disk holding the data. Since flash memory solutions are implemented as memory instead of disk, flash memory solutions are thousands of times faster than disk drives, increasing application performance, throughput, and responsiveness. By deploying terabytes of high- performance, persistent SanDisk flash capacity throughout the datacenter, businesses can add flash acceleration to their entire system, or just to areas experiencing bottlenecks. Given the benefits of this flexible technology, companies are increasingly using SanDisk flash memory solutions to boost application performance as data demands increase. This enables enterprises to keep up with the speed of business in our information economy, all without sprawling datacenters, software licenses, or additional energy and floor space costs. When you combine SanDisk flash memory with database software such as Microsoft SQL Server, SAP HANA, or Oracle, you can expect to see dramatically faster database queries, faster data load times, faster reporting, faster transactions, better SAN utilization, and a reduction in disk queues. In one example, TransUnion Interactive moved its reporting software to a Fusion iomemory- powered blade server and found that reports ran four to five times faster than with their traditional system. Now, everyone from accounting to marketing who uses those reports has the information they need at the beginning of the day. By equipping teams with more timely information, TransUnion was able to empower employees to make the best possible decisions. 7 To assess flash memory solution adoption by application, the 2013 Fusion- io flash memory survey 8 documents which applications enterprises are commonly accelerating with flash memory: 60% 50% 40% 57% Top Applications 1. Databases 2. Server Virtualization 3. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 4. Big Data 30% 20% 10% 35% 22% 19% 18% Microsoo SQL Server Virtualizaeon Oracle Database VDI MySQL Big Data 0% PROVIDE MORE CONSISTENT RESPONSE TIME Applications Accelerated with Flash

8 SanDisk Solutions That Fit Your Datacenter and Windows Server 2003 Migration We hope that this introductory guide to enterprise flash memory solutions from SanDisk has helped start you down the path to finding answers to the key questions about accelerating your business success with flash. There are flexible approaches for adding flash memory solutions to your Windows Server environment - as a high performance tier in your server for application acceleration, virtualized or non- virtualized, with your SAN or without, among others - with the right answer depending on your own specific needs. Hopefully this document inspires more learning in the future. Flash memory is an exciting innovation that has finally reached maturity for widespread adoption in the enterprise, and understanding best practices can help you deepen your knowledge on how to help lead your company though its current datacenter transformation. As you consider your Windows Server 2003 migration, SanDisk flash memory solutions will maximize the value of your new server platform. In today s digital economy a modern server OS, like Windows Server 2012/R2, combined with industry leading flash memory solutions from SanDisk will accelerate your business enabling you to meet the current and future demands of your users and customers. Interested in learning more about how you can transform your server platform? We d love to talk. Contact us at flash- transformed@sandisk.com or visit us at SanDisk Corporation. All rights reserved. SanDisk is a trademark of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. Fusion iomemory and others are trademarks of SanDisk Enterprise IP LLC.. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s). The performance results discussed herein are based on customer internal testing and use of SanDisk flash memory solutions. Results and performance may vary according to configurations and systems, including drive capacity, system architecture and applications Fusion- io Customer Survey 2 JD.COM Case Study, studies/jdcom/ 3 RCR Tomlinson Case Study, studies/rcr- tomlinson/ Fusion- io Customer Survey 5 Mixi Case Study, studies/mixi/ 6 Technical Architect, Thomas Fisher, at AT Internet Case Study, studies/at- internet/ 7 TranUnion Case Study, studies/transunion/ Fusion- io Customer Survey