Virtualization Technology News and Information
White Papers
RSS
White Papers Search Results
Showing 1 - 11 of 11 white papers, page 1 of 1.
High Availability Clusters in VMware vSphere without Sacrificing Features or Flexibility
This paper explains the challenges of moving important applications from traditional physical servers to virtualized environments, such as VMware vSphere in order to take advantage of key benefits such as configuration flexibility, data and application mobility, and efficient use of IT resources and highlights six key facts you should know about HA protection in VMware vSphere environments that can save you money.

Many large enterprises are moving important applications from traditional physical servers to virtualized environments, such as VMware vSphere in order to take advantage of key benefits such as configuration flexibility, data and application mobility, and efficient use of IT resources.

Realizing these benefits with business critical applications, such as SQL Server or SAP can pose several challenges. Because these applications need high availability and disaster recovery protection, the move to a virtual environment can mean adding cost and complexity and limiting the use of important VMware features. This paper explains these challenges and highlights six key facts you should know about HA protection in VMware vSphere environments that can save you money.

Understanding Windows Server Cluster Quorum Options
This white paper discusses the key concepts you need to configure a failover clustering environment to protect SQL Server in the cloud.
This white paper discusses the key concepts you need to configure a failover clustering environment to protect SQL Server in the cloud. Understand the options for configuring the cluster Quorum to meet your specific needs. Learn the benefits and key takeaways for providing high availability for SQL Server in a public cloud (AWS, Azure, Google) environment.
Implementing High Availability in a Linux Environment
This white paper explores how organizations can lower both CapEx and OpEx running high-availability applications in a Linux environment without sacrificing performance or security.
Using open source solutions can dramatically reduce capital expenditures, especially for software licensing fees. But most organizations also understand that open source software needs more “care and feeding” than commercial software—sometimes substantially more- potentially causing operating expenditures to increase well above any potential savings in CapEx. This white paper explores how organizations can lower both CapEx and OpEx running high-availability applications in a Linux environment without sacrificing performance or security.
Controlling Cloud Costs without Sacrificing Availability or Performance
This white paper is to help prevent cloud services sticker shock from occurring ever again and to help make your cloud investments more effective.
After signing up with a cloud service provider, you receive a bill that causes sticker shock. There are unexpected and seemingly excessive charges, and those responsible seem unable to explain how this could have happened. The situation is critical because the amount threatens to bust the budget unless cost-saving changes are made immediately. The objective of this white paper is to help prevent cloud services sticker shock from occurring ever again.
Ten Topics to Discuss with your Cloud Provider
Find the “just right” cloud for your business. For this white paper, we will focus on existing applications (vs. new application services) that require high levels of performance and security, but that also enable customers to meet specific cost expectations.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of cloud services available to organizations. In many cases, the capabilities of the service, adjusted for cost, matter more to decision makers than the infrastructure itself. As an example, the underlying infrastructure that supports common business software such as Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365, is rarely scrutinized, as the products are trusted solely on the brand’s reputation.

Choosing the right cloud service for your organization, or for your target customer if you are a managed service provider, can be time consuming and effort intensive. For this paper, we will focus on existing applications (vs. new application services) that require high levels of performance and security, but that also enable customers to meet specific cost expectations. Topics covered include:
•    Global access and availability
•    Cloud management
•    Application performance
•    Security and compliance

Step-by-Step: Configuring Amazon EC2 for Business-Critical Applications
In this eBook, the author describes in great detail what is needed to prepare the EC2 infrastructure to support business-critical applications clustered with Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC).
AWS guarantees that if two or more instances are deployed in different availability zones (AZs), at least one of those instances will have external connectivity. The SLA does not guarantee that the application running inside the instance will be available. To address availability of the application, users will need to take additional steps to monitor the application and recover it should a failure occur.

In this eBook, the author describes in great detail what is needed to prepare the EC2 infrastructure to support business-critical applications clustered with Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC). In order to qualify for the 99.99 percent availability, instances must be deployed across multiple AZs. Readers will learn how to design EC2 infrastructure to support cross-AZ failover clustering.
Build a Better vSAN
This white paper explores the development of a next-generation virtualized storage area network (vSAN) that provides high performance, data integrity, and cost-efficiency. Addressing the limitations of traditional VMware vSAN, it emphasizes the need for a solution that integrates seamlessly into a hypervisor, supports deduplication at the core, and offers robust data resiliency, including maintaining access during multiple hardware failures.
Building a superior Virtual Storage Area Network (vSAN) involves addressing traditional solutions' performance, resilience, and cost shortcomings. The next-generation vSAN, like VergeIO's VergeOS, integrates storage and hypervisor functionalities into a single efficient code base, matching the capabilities of dedicated storage arrays while maintaining the cost advantage of vSANs.

Key improvements include:
  • Hypervisor Integration: Seamless integration for better performance and scalability.
  • Cost Efficiency:  Eliminates expensive server hardware and storage controllers.
  • Built-in Deduplication: Core-level deduplication for minimal performance impact, maximum efficiency, and significant cost savings.
  • Intelligent Hardware Failure Protection: Enhanced resilience with data copies across multiple nodes and drives.
  • Advanced Snapshot Capabilities: Unlimited, efficient and independent snapshots.
The white paper "Build a Better vSAN" offers an in-depth analysis of these advancements, providing insights on improving vSAN performance, ensuring data integrity, and reducing storage costs. This approach sets a new standard in virtualized storage solutions, offering the reliability of dedicated storage arrays at vSAN prices.

Case Study: With IGEL OS, Heidenreich gains a solution that provides Ease of Management
Norwegian pipe wholesaler Heidenreich needed an endpoint management solution to extend the lifespan of older devices and streamline management systems. IGEL was chosen due to its excellent functionality, ease of integration, and cost savings achieved by not replacing three hundred thin clients, laptops, and PCs.

Heidenreich had challenges with their Citrix platform due to a combination of old and new DELL and Wyse hardware, laptops, and thin clients. When the company was expected to upgrade its Citrix platform to a new generation, the firm expressed concerns about the perceived high cost. Heidenreich started to look for an alternative solution, and their IT consultancy provider, Wedel IT, came up with the idea to implement IGEL OS. This case study focuses on IGEL’s ease of management, flexibility on the client side (new/old hardware), future-focused solutions, and security.

Data Deduplication for Backup Q&A
A Q&A that answers what data deduplication is and why it is used for backup storage, what effects it has on backup and restore performance, what the different types of data deduplication are, and what can impact the amount of data deduplication that you get.

There are many misconceptions about data deduplication, and making decisions based on those misconceptions can produce undesirable (and unplanned) results. For instance, deployment of the wrong type of deduplication typically results in:

•    Excessively high disk usage and using as much as three times the bandwidth for offsite replication, and the resulting impact on short and long-term costs
•    Slower backup storage ingest due to inline compute-intensive data deduplication that greatly slows backups down and expands the backup window
•    Slower restores, VM boots, and tape copies that can take hours or even days due to the time-consuming rehydration of deduplicated data
•    Backup windows that continue to expand with data growth

Choosing a Tiered Backup Storage solution will have a major impact on the cost and performance of your backup environment for the next three to five years because backups are written to a disk-cache Landing Zone for fastest backup performance, and then tiered to a deduplicated data repository to reduce storage and resulting storage costs.

Product Review: ExaGrid EX189
An independent review of ExaGrid’s newest and largest Tiered Backup Storage appliance: the ExaGrid EX189.

Enterprises facing rapidly growing backup demands and ever shrinking windows of opportunity need to rethink their data protection strategies. ExaGrid is the ideal solution as the Tiered Backup Storage systems deliver a smart scale-out solution, and the latest EX189 model takes density into the stratosphere with an industry-leading 12PB of raw backup capacity in 64U of rack space.

ExaGrid’s EX appliances are a natural choice for enterprise data backup and disaster recovery as they deliver an easily deployed, highly flexible and high performing scale-out storage solution. Their innovative data protection features keep ransomware attacks at bay and ExaGrid’s flagship EX189 appliance offers a huge backup capacity that defies belief.

Coretek Teams with IGEL to Transform VDI Deployment for a Defense Contractor
IGEL’s industry leadership has made it an integral part of Coretek’s on-premises VDI offering. This offering uses Nutanix in combination with Citrix VDI to deliver secure end-user access to virtual applications and desktops.

A defense contractor with whom Coretek has had a long-standing relationship spanning nearly two decades had attempted to migrate to a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment twice with another technology services provider without success. Impressed by Coretek’s success with VDI implementations in healthcare and other industries, the defense contractor turned to the solution provider for help.

Coretek's VDI offering has evolved significantly over the years to better support today's power users. Due to its industry leadership, IGEL OS is currently the standard for new customer VDI rollouts at Coretek. One of the things that the Coretek team appreciates most about IGEL OS is its high level of configurability, as well as IGEL’s commitment to staying current with trends in the EUC space by aligning IGEL OS with a broad ecosystem of leading vendors, including those providing unified communications and collaboration (UCC) applications and tools. In this particular case, IGEL OS, in combination with new Dell endpoint hardware, enabled Coretek to restore performance following a significant shift in the customer’s usage of its UCC tools.

The customer is currently utilizing high-performance VDI desktops, leveraging IGEL OS at the endpoint, to design defense equipment and support connectivity and collaboration through video conferencing. IGEL’s Preventative Security Model™ supports Zero Trust security approaches and partners with leading Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) vendors to complement and reinforce these solutions from a security standpoint.