Entries categorized under “Virtualization”

The allure of client virtualization is increasing in the eyes of enterprise organizations. Aside from its obvious benefits of eliminating the management headaches and upgrade cycles of corporate desktops and laptops, organizations can better meet the growing demands of employees who want to bring their own devices (BYOD) to access corporate networks. However client virtualization can result in enterprises simply swapping one set of problems for another unless organizations first assess what their requirements are so they may put a solution in place with the right framework for their environment. (read more)

As small and midsize businesses (SMBs) virtualize their servers at an increasing pace, many fail to consider the impact this change has on how they do backups - or that it impacts their backups at all. However since many IT administrators who are responsible for backups in these environments would freely admit to not being backup gurus, here are some tips on what features to look for in backup software in order to properly protect and recover your newly virtualized environment. (read more)

As small and midsize businesses (SMBs) virtualize their servers at an increasing pace, many fail to consider the impact this change has on how they do backups - or that it impacts their backups at all. However since many IT administrators who are responsible for backups in these environments would freely admit to not being backup gurus, here is some insight into how server virtualization changes backup and what SMBs need to know about backup as they implement virtualization in their environment. (read more)

As organizations virtualize more of their infrastructure, many face the question, "Use separate physical and virtual backup software products to protect these respective environments or consolidate on one backup platform?" Adding to the difficulty in making this decision is that virtualization-only backup software tends to release new features very quickly to keep up with user demands while having no roadmap to take on the protection of physical environments. (read more)

Ever since continuous data protection (CDP) was introduced nearly a decade ago, it has largely been a technology looking for a problem to solve. However in the last few years it is finding a home in the most unlikely of places - social media websites. But maybe what is most interesting is that little known R1Soft CDP has emerged as the early and widely recognized leader in this space. (read more)

In this third part of our interview series with GreenBytes CEO Bob Petrocelli, we learn about some of the advantages of using solid-state drive (SSD) technology and how Solidarity's use of SSD differs from others' implementations of it. As well, Petrocelli divulges what he calls a "dirty little secret" about some hardware that was cleverly repurposed to give Solidarity an edge in compression. (read more)

VMware vSphere is clearly trending toward hosting more mission critical applications. However one objection that many enterprises still have to virtualizing these applications is the lack of an enterprise caliber multi-pathing software driver on VMware vSphere. Today the release of Symantec's Veritas Dymanic Multi-Pathing for VMware 6.0 not only overcomes that objection, it opens the door for enterprises to move more mission critical applications to VMware vSphere. (read more)

Companies that implement a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployment may discover that it provides no greater performance and yet is more expensive than a standard PC deployment. That is, until they convert to a diskless VDI deployment. (read more)

For some time, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) promised great benefits but suffered from performance and cost hiccups. Companies going with VDI got stuck in the pilot phase as the disappointing realities of up to $2,000 per desktop coupled with slow performance hit them hard. (read more)

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a hot topic among DCIG readers. That's because VDI offers a number of desirable benefits for desktop deployments, including centralized management, lower management costs, and an enhanced ability to rapidly provision computing resources to end users. However, the storage infrastructure required of VDI can push the costs of a conventional VDI environment way beyond that of a physical PC environment. (read more)

Private cloud-based infrastructures are becoming a priority for almost every small and midsize business (SMB) as they deliver levels of flexibility, scalability and value that traditional IT architectures simply do not provide. But many of these cloud solutions are still immature and implementing the wrong one may be worse than having no cloud solution at all. The IBM Ready Pack for Cloud changes that by addressing today's SMB concerns while positioning them for tomorrow's requirements. (read more)

In the last few years, Quest Software has gone from having a small footprint in the data protection space to owning some of the leading products in this space through its acquisitions of BakBone Software and Vizioncore. To lead the company into this next decade of data protection and data management, Quest recently tapped Walter Angerer, who previously worked at Symantec and helped bring its NetBackup appliances to market. Today, I begin an interview series with Walter where we open by discussing how backup is changing, and examine the quantum leaps forward that have occurred in how backup and recovery are done. (read more)

One of the most exciting and terrifying times in the lifecycle of a company is transitioning from a small to mid-range or mid-range to enterprise sized company. Well led companies that survive those transitions have often been planning for the occasion for some time. The longer they have been planning the more likely they've become aware of the need for long term archiving. Of everything. (read more)

Everyone sings the praises of how great and wonderful private cloud infrastructures are and what a difference maker solid state disks (SSDs) are. However Virsto has found that its software provides some of the secret ingredients needed to make private cloud infrastructures easy to manage and what it really takes to make SSDs sing. Today I complete my interview series with Virsto's CEO, Mark Davis, about what Virsto offers to bring out the best in private cloud infrastructures and SSDs. (read more)

Using a common console to manage servers and storage coupled with a roadmap to automated disaster recovery (DR) are becoming almost prerequisites in VMware vSphere deployments. Key to delivering on these emerging requirements is employing a midrange array that (1) integrates with and is managed by vCenter Server, and (2) facilitates the implementation of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM). (read more)

Symantec's announcement that it intends to reduce operational expenses (OPEX) associated with backup by up to 80% over the next 3-5 years is a pretty aggressive goal. It is only when one looks at the problem areas within companies and the new features found in NetBackup 7.5 that it becomes clear that achieving these savings are within any company's reach. (read more)

Using array-based snapshots for virtual machine (VM) protection and optimizing storage efficiency are two sought after features in VMware deployments. However, this does not mean that all midrange arrays deliver on these capabilities equally. If anything, the differences in how midrange arrays support them may be quite substantial. (read more)

Today's defining characteristics of enterprise backup software are not whether they support VMware backups or use VMware's APIs for Data Protection (VADP). Those features should be a given. The new hallmarks of enterprise backup software are how well they manage physical and virtual environments from a single console and accelerate and simplify virtual machine (VM) restores. It is these enhancements that users will find natively included with CommVault® Simpana® 9. (read more)

One of the major problems facing enterprises interested in adopting server virtualization is the heavy throughput created by their virtual machines (VMs). Beyond that, if companies look to also virtualize their desktops and create a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), they also face provisioning problems when attempting to provision and manage new workstations. These I/O intensive applications of virtualization technologies present a major stumbling block to VM technology adoption. (read more)

One of the more revealing findings out of the recent DCIG 2012 Midrange Array Buyer's Guide was the gap between those midrange arrays that integrate with the VMware vSphere storage APIs and those that do not, as it was almost a case of the "Have's" and the "Have-not's." But among the "Have's" there are still levels of differentiation in vSphere integration that the Buyer's Guide did not examine in depth. (read more)

Fusion-io installs its ioDrive in server PCI Express slots and its software driver in the server OS so it is easy to understand why Fusion-io gets labeled as DAS. While it may certainly be used that way and started there, Fusion-io has a much different endgame in mind. As Fusion-io's CMO Rick White explains in this second part of our interview series, Fusion-io creates an active data tier that seamlessly moves data between the new active data tier it creates and backend high capacity disk. (read more)

Companies are adopting server virtualization at an accelerating rate each year and, as they do, the need for performance on the back end hardware is growing right along with it. To accommodate this, enterprises need a way to increase the I/O throughput of their virtual machines (VMs). Today, I continue my blog series talking with Virsto Software CEO Mark Davis where we discuss the VM I/O blender problem, what it is and how Virsto boosts VM performance using a hypervisor plug-in that is up to ten times faster than what VM hypervisors natively provide. (read more)

We have seen a lot of focus in the past twelve to 24 months on enterprise virtualization, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and technology investments in storage. All of this emphasis on moving away from the traditional server-based deployments in the data center is putting a major emphasis on virtual server performance and, more specifically, on enterprise storage performance. Today, I begin an interview series with Virsto Software CEO Mark Davis, where we look at how Virsto creates a VMware storage hypervisor in VMware vSphere to give incredible boosts in performance using even traditional hardware. (read more)

The differences between small, midsize and large organizations may be many but when it comes to backup, they all seem to share one thing in common: a desire to speed up and simplify their backups. The challenge is that for each of these organizations to accomplish this they need to take different paths to do so. This universal desire for better ways to do backup was the impetus behind many of enhancements found in today's announcements of Symantec Backup Exec 2012 and NetBackup 7.5. (read more)

In this final installment of our blog series on WhipTail Technologies, a Solid State Drive (SSD) array provider with some impressive features and capabilities, I am continuing my discussion with WhipTail Technologies Chief Technology Officer, James Candelaria. Last time, we looked at how WhipTail implements software RAID on its devices. Today, we will be discussing the different transport protocols supported by the WhipTail array and why the FCoE and iSCSI protocols trump Infiniband in today's SSD deployments. (read more)