What is the ServerQuarium?

If you have attended a large Microsoft event in the last couple years (MMS or TechEd) you’ve probably walked past a glass-enclosed area that houses several racks of HP servers. The ServerQuarium, as it’s come to be called, is a beast of a private Cloud put together to serve the onsite computing operations for the event. Run by a good friend of mine, Martin Dey, the ServerQuarium contains the network, DNS, Active Directory, Hyper-V, and everything else required to spin-up the onsite labs in a crazy-few seconds. Powered by HP hardware, managed by System Center 2012, and running on Windows Server 2012, it’s a feat to behold.

Several groups of people were offered a tour of the ServerQuarium during MMS 2013, allowing them to understand the enormity of how efficient and powerful it truly is. For those that could not get tour access, Channel 9 hooked up with Jeff Woolsey at MMS 2013 to give a proper tour for everyone else.

If you are attending TechEd 2013 North America this year, make sure to check it out. Drop by and say, “Hi” to Martin Dey.  I’ll probably be hanging around there myself, drinking coffee and reminiscing with Martin about the good old days.

Despite a slow take-off (in the tour, not Joey and Rick's intro!), make sure you stick with the tour throughout the following video.  There’s some really incredible stuff going on behind the scenes in the ServerQuarium.