Tag Archives: Virtualization

The standard in hyper-converged infrastructure

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Dell EMC VxRail appliance

VxRail is the only fully integrated, preconfigured, and tested HCI appliance powered by VMware vSAN, and is the easiest and fastest way to extend a VMware environment. VxRail provides a simple, cost effective hyper-converged solution that solves a wide range of your challenges and supports most applications and workloads. Dell EMC VxRail features purpose-built platforms that deliver data services, resiliency, and QoS, enabling faster, better, and simpler delivery of virtual desktops, business-critical applications, and remote office infrastructure, so IT can focus on more important things: Continue reading →

Want to simplify the mobile infrastructure fast? Here’s how.

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Ever since smartphones displaced the BlackBerry as the device of choice among pretty much everyone outside of government, businesses have been working hard to devise a simple, all-things-to-all-people approach to mobile deployments.

BYOD is cheap, but is by definition a multi-platform solution that presents a number of compatibility, management, and security issues. CYOD strategies restore a good deal of control to the organization, but add to the number of devices an employee will be carrying.

The recent launch of HP’s Elite x3 and VMware’s Workspace ONE could change all that. Continue reading →

Meet the challenges of digital business

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Cisco Digital Network Architecture

Legacy business processes are becoming increasingly digital, requiring fast and flexible network services to facilitate and support them. On top of that, business leaders and the IT professionals who run them are under pressure to accelerate adoption of big data, mobile, cloud, video, and IoT technologies.

Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) gives you a clear and efficient way forward. DNA centers around a network infrastructure that is not only fully programmable and open to third-party innovation, but can also fully and seamlessly integrate the cloud as an infrastructure component. Continue reading →

The state and future of hyper-converged infrastructure

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Data Center BlogHyper-converged appliances simplify the design, deployment and management of complex infrastructures, easing pressure on IT staff and leadership. With components designed and built from the ground up to function as a pre-validated system, hyper-converged appliances eliminate the risk of incompatibility you run when rolling out a converged infrastructure.

Hyper-convergence delivers three key benefits:

Faster Deployment – You’re acquiring a single appliance from a single vendor. That means no finger-pointing among component manufacturers when you need support.

Simplified Management – A hyper-converged system provides true single-pane-of-glass management for the entire system.

Rapid Scalability – When you need to scale, you simply deploy additional building blocks.

An excellent example of state-of-the-art hyper-converged appliances is Cisco’s HyperFlex System. These appliances evolved to bring new levels of efficiency and adaptability to the data center, allowing IT to deploy in less than an hour, create clones in seconds, and save on data storage day after day, year after year.

What’s next?

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Understanding the software-defined data center

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Virtualize the infrastructure to transform your business

0116-securityUntil about the year 2000, each server in a data center ran a single application. While this approach ensured application performance, as processing capability increased, it often left a lot of a server’s processing power sitting idle much of the time. This one application per server approach also uses up a lot of real estate in the data center, not to mention the attendant power and cooling costs.

Taking advantage of available excess capacity, software engineers adapted a concept from the world of supercomputers that provides a layer of abstraction between the hardware and the applications running on it. This allows for a single physical server to be divided into multiple “virtual” servers or virtual machines. This virtualization allows administrators to run multiple applications on a single physical server, recapturing underutilized processing capacity and reducing the data center footprint. It also allowed multiple virtual servers across multiple physical servers to be viewed, managed, and utilized as pooled resources.

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Windows Server Datacenter now has more to offer

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Win10-Logo-5 ExtWindows Server 2012 became generally available in September 2012 and came in two flavors through volume licensing: Windows Server Standard and Windows Server Datacenter.

You would expect technical differences between the Datacenter and Standard editions, yet Microsoft only addressed virtual machine entitlements – that’s it. Standard allows for two VMs per license, while Datacenter gives admins the opportunity to run an unlimited number of VMs, as long as the hardware could handle it. In regards to the software, there were no technical advantages in having Datacenter edition.

Windows Server 2016, which is rumored to be available this quarter, brings new features and technical advantages of having the Datacenter edition, as well as additional advantages of Software Assurance. Continue reading →

Explore the benefits of Software Defined Networking

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7-18-16-DataCtr-Blog-graphic-742x388Like server and storage virtualization, network virtualization abstracts existing resources and allows them be viewed and managed from a single pane of glass, using open protocols such as OpenFlow.

This allows for on-demand provisioning of resources without the need to physically configure cabling and switches with every network change. Software Defined Networking (SDN) takes things a step further, entirely separating the control plane from the data plane, and enabling administrators to spin up virtual components, virtually at will.

Zones teams with industry leaders like Cisco and Avaya, to bring the speed, flexibility and scalability of software defined networking to all kinds of organizations.

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Bridging the gap between resources and expectations

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SJ111 advanced-tech-largeA hybrid infrastructure helps IT balance responsiveness with control

In an age when multibillion dollar businesses such as Uber launch, grow, and thrive with a nearly 100 percent cloud-based infrastructure, it should be no surprise that business leaders turn to the cloud to complement their existing IT infrastructure.

Increasingly, workers aren’t even including IT in the conversation. When a need is apparent and a cloud app or service can address it, some business leaders assume they can provide a credit card number and get to work. And it’s easy to see why.

Consider something as straight-forward as a department head’s request for a project management application. Given sufficient time and resources, IT could design, develop code, test, deploy, and maintain an on-premises project management solution that rocks. In most cases, the big stumbling block is going to be time and resources, not interest or capability.

But when IT shares its three-to-six month timeline for completion with that department head, it’s hard to fault that department head for saying, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and seeking out a “shadow” alternative in the cloud.

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Revolutionize your company’s data storage

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Businesses today struggle with the increasing amount of data that they need to store, manage, and back up.Netapp-Blog-graphic-742x388 Growing competitive pressure and 24-hour business cycles require that your mission critical business processes and data remain accessible around the clock.

With your business environment in a constant state of evolution, you need a more agile approach to storage that can eliminate downtime, improve the efficiency of your infrastructure and your IT staff, scale nondisruptively as your business grows, and quickly adapt to changing business requirements.  Continue reading →

Creating a more advanced and adaptable infrastructure

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Data Center VMware HPEIn virtually every industry, IT challenges are becoming increasingly dynamic and complex, with new requirements emerging on a regular basis.

One significant shift in IT is characterized by new applications designed specifically for mobility and cloud service delivery, and for leveraging the power of Big Data and enhanced security capabilities.

Capitalizing on these innovative trends requires an IT architecture that can deliver all-new levels of flexibility, security, scalability, and openness. And to help you protect your investments and control costs, these architectures must also support a hybrid mix of traditional IT, working in concert with private and public clouds.

If your company is making enterprise-level moves into Big Data, cloud or mobility, it’s time to consider an enterprise grade solution like HP ProLiant Gen9 servers with VMware® vSphere 6.0. Continue reading →