You're facing VM sprawl if you're experiencing an uncontrollable increase of unused and unneeded objects in your virtual VMware environment. VM sprawl occurs often in virtual infrastructures because they expand much faster than physical, which can make management a challenge. The growing number of virtualized workloads and applications generate “virtual junk” causing VM sprawl issue. Eventually it can put you at risk of running out of resources.
Getting virtual sprawl under control will help you reallocate and better provision your existing storage, CPU and memory resources between critical production workloads and high-performance, virtualized applications. With proper resource management, you can save money on extra hardware.
This white paper examines how you can avoid potential VM sprawl risks and automate proactive monitoring by using Veeam ONE, a part of Veeam Availability Suite. Veeam ONE will arm you with a list of VM sprawl indicators and explain how you can pick up and configure a handy report kit to detect and eliminate VM sprawl threats in your VMware environment.
Read this FREE white paper and learn how to:
Optimizing the way applications are delivered and managed has been an ongoing challenge in enterprise IT, and the variety of approaches over the years have been received with varying degrees of success. While every method has pros and cons, some of the most stubborn issues include time-to-deliver, application conflicts, plug-ins and licensing. The too-frequent result is high IT overhead, too many gold images and excess spending on application licenses.
Too many companies are settling on less than optimal solutions because that is all they are presented with and they are unaware of the true state of the art for application management. It is possible to dramatically reduce the number of Windows gold images, in some cases to a single image. It is possible to deliver exactly what each and every end user needs to do their job, and nothing else. It is possible for a user to log into a random system and instantly be presented with their personal desktop, all the right applications, plugins and add-ons, the right printers, and the right fonts. It is possible and it is simple.
Citrix AppDisk, when integrated with FSLogix Apps, provides a unique set of features that can improve end-user productivity, reduce IT overhead and lower the cost of desktop management. With FSLogix patent pending Image Masking technology, AppDisk gains very granular and powerful user-based policy control over every aspect of a user’s desktop and applications, and enhances the ability to distribute applications on network attached disk images. FSLogix Apps also enable AppDisks to scale to a much greater degree than any other similar technologies available today.
Duncan Murdoch, of Amber Reef, uses this white paper to outline the necessary approach to centrally control and manage FTAs for Word 2013 and WordViewer using FSLogix.
After addressing the reason and symptoms of the issue, Duncan asserts, "If the desire is to 'Control the FTA' centrally and manage the associations with FSLogix, preventing the users from overriding the FTA settings," then "to achieve this you can create 2 separate FTA rules, one for Word 2013 and another for WordViewer."
By applying these rules alongside the FSLogix Hiding rules for the applications, then the Administrator can ensure that the FTA that is applied is the one that they have allocated to the application group.
NOTE: This will also prevent a user from being able to right-click the file and assign their OWN FTA preferences.
With so many organizations looking to find ways to embrace the public cloud without compromising the security of their data and applications, a hybrid cloud strategy is rapidly becoming the preferred method of efficiently delivering IT services.
This guide aims to provide you with an understanding of the driving factors behind why the cloud is being adopted en-masse, as well as advice on how to begin building your own cloud strategy.
Topics discussed include:• Why Cloud?• Getting There Safely• IT Resilience in the Hybrid Cloud• The Power of Microsoft Azure and Zerto
You’ll find out how, by embracing the cloud, organizations can achieve true IT Resilience – the ability to withstand any disruption, confidently embrace change and focus on business.
Download the guide today to begin your journey to the cloud!
Security is the No. 1 concern on many IT executives’ minds these days. With the rampant data leaks, breaches, and ransomware attacks in recent years, it’s no wonder that IT leaders walk on eggshells when it comes to changing anything regarding infrastructure, access, or security.
Infrastructure sprawl and complexity has made the challenge of security and managing changes to the environment more difficult to stay on top of than ever.
Read this white paper to get insights into the security and change control issues of the Modern Data Center.
With XenApp 6.5 going EOL on June 30, 2018, organizations across the world are migrating to the latest version of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7.x. This upgrade comes with radical changes to Citrix architecture, configuration, policy settings, protocols and deployment models. There are many components in the Citrix architecture that have been replaced with new ones. And many have also been newly introduced. With such a strategic change in the Citrix environment, traditional methods of monitoring won't hold good.
Read this white paper by George Spiers, Citrix CTP and EUC Architect, where you will understand the changes in Virtual Apps and Desktops 7.x in detail and what types of monitoring best practices to adopt for ensuring top performance of your virtualized environment and outstanding user experience.
The public cloud has unleashed an unprecedented wave of creativity and agility for the modern enterprise. A great cloud migration has upended decades of established architecture patterns, operating principles, and governance models. However, without any replacement for these traditional controls in place, cloud spend inevitably rises faster than anticipated. If not addressed early in the cycle, this is often overlooked until it gets out of control.
Over the course of a few decades, we have created a well-established model of IT spending; to arrive at economies of scale, procurement is centralized and typically happens at three- to five-year intervals, with all internal customers forecasting and pooling their needs. This created a natural tendency for individual project owners to overprovision resources as insurance against unexpected demand. As a result, the corporate data center today is where the two famous laws of technology meet:
With its granular and short-term billing cycles, the cloud requires a degree of financial discipline that is unfamiliar to most traditional IT departments. Faced with having to provide short-term forecasts and justify them against actual spend, they need to evolve their governance models to support these new patterns.
Having a well thought out AWS strategy is crucial to your long-term cloud gains. Taking the time to understand and pick the right instances for your apps is well worth the time and effort as it will directly impact your AWS pricing and bill.
We hope these ten strategies help inform and support you as you navigate the sometimes-turbulent waters of cloud transition. They are here for you to consult and rely on as best practices and cost-saving opportunities.
Given the virtually uncountable number of combinations, we have tried to identify the most practical and reliable ways to optimize your deployment at all stages and empower your end-users while insulating them from temptations, assumptions and habits that can cost you some unpleasant surprises when the bill arrives.
Each version of Windows and Windows Server showcases new technologies. The advent of PowerShell marked a substantial step forward in managing those features. However, the built-in graphical Windows management tools have largely stagnated - the same basic Microsoft Management Console (MMC) interfaces had remained since Windows Server 2000. Microsoft tried out multiple overhauls over the years to the built-in Server Manager console but gained little traction. Until Windows Admin Center.
WHAT IS WINDOWS ADMIN CENTER?Windows Admin Center (WAC) represents a modern turn in Windows and Windows Server system management. From its home page, you establish a list of the networked Windows and Windows Server computers to manage. From there, you can connect to an individual system to control components such as hardware drivers. You can also use it to manage Windows roles, such as Hyper-V.
On the front-end, Windows Admin Center is presented through a sleek HTML 5 web interface. On the back-end, it leverages PowerShell extensively to control the systems within your network. The entire package runs on a single system, so you don’t need a complicated infrastructure to support it. In fact, you can run it locally on your Windows 10 workstation if you want. If you require more resiliency, you can run Windows Admin Center as a role on a Microsoft Failover Cluster.
WHY WOULD I USE WINDOWS ADMIN CENTER?In the modern era of Windows management, we have shifted to a greater reliance on industrial-strength tools like PowerShell and Desired State Configuration. However, we still have servers that require individualized attention and infrequently utilized resources. WAC gives you a one-stop hub for dropping in on any system at any time and work with almost any of its facets.
ABOUT THIS EBOOKThis eBook has been written by Microsoft Cloud & Datacenter Management MVP Eric Siron. Eric has worked in IT since 1998, designing, deploying, and maintaining server, desktop, network, and storage systems. He has provided all levels of support for businesses ranging from single-user through enterprises with thousands of seats. He has achieved numerous Microsoft certifications and was a Microsoft Certified Trainer for four years. Eric is also a seasoned technology blogger and has amassed a significant following through his top-class work on the Altaro Hyper-V Dojo.