Posts Tagged ‘server virtualization’

Simplify Installing a Server Center While Growing Your Business

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

Secure data storage is essential for most businesses – whether the data is related to sales figures, customer information, client records, or something else altogether. While many business owners look for data storage from dedicated server centers, many recognize that there are benefits to maintaining a small – or large – server room of their own.

Setting up a dedicated data center can be challenging. It’s important to think about the racks that will house the server units. Ensuring that every unit has adequate power is crucial – and being certain that the equipment will not overheat is critical as well. Factor in the need for scalability, the importance of having software that’s easy to use that will help you monitor the data center, the amount of system security required, and the need to maximize up-time, and installing servers can seem daunting.

It doesn’t have to be.

Whether you are installing servers, storage devices, and networking equipment for the first time or are expanding your current setup, there is one tool available that can simplify the process. APC’s InfraStruxure will allow you to meet all of the requirements that your IT team has established. You’ll be able to reduce costs, increase efficiency and availability, and reduce the amount of power necessary to keep your equipment running. More than that you will be able to ensure that you have a system that’s scalable – whether you’re just creating a server environment or you’re expanding the storage and availability of an existing data center.

No matter what field your business is in, efficiency and reliability are top priorities when creating a data center. Similarly, regardless of your industry, it seems safe to assume that you’re looking to keep costs low. Knowing that you’re able to scale your data center to meet your needs and easily manage your servers, storage devices, and networking equipment lets you get the most out the system you establish – allowing you to focus on what’s more important: keeping your business running smoothly.

Posted in Application Delivery & Optimization, Uncategorized | 212 Comments »

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Is Your IT Architecture Prepared for Growth?

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Growth is something that most businesses strive for. In order to accomplish it, however, you’ll need to have the right systems in place. Having a scalable IT solution like the one NetApp provides is one part of this equation.

Your company’s IT architecture should allow you to:

1. Simplify backups so that you know that your records are up to date, your staff is on board, and downtime is minimized.

2. Support testing and development efforts. Some tools are available for one operating system and not another. Web design work needs to be tested across numerous browsers and on a variety of platforms. Virtualization allows you to create all of the scenarios that need to be addressed on a single machine.

3. Improve storage efficiency with server virtualization so that you are able to use the tools you have rather than adding another server to the rack each time that you need more space or access to additional software.

4. Simplify recovery by ensuring that your data is stored securely and is available when you need it – whether you are in the office, on the production line, or in an airport on your way to a client meeting.

Opportunities present themselves in various ways. Being able to quickly pull up data, run comparisons related to two different approaches, and test products on a range of platforms will ensure that you’re ready to take action – and that you’re making the choices that best support your business goals.

As needs and the demands on your business change, will you be prepared to act? The right IT architecture – and support – will ensure that you’re ready and positioned to grow your organization.

Posted in Archiving & Compliance, virtualization | 59 Comments »

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Top Five Business Reasons to Implement Virtualization

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

It isn’t easy to manage a heterogeneous infrastructure. If your datacenter is packed with disparate systems and cross-platform integrations, you need to maintain a variety of skill sets in your IT department – and it could take multiple groups to identify and resolve problems with your infrastructure. It’s easy for even the most easily managed problems to become taxing for your organization. A virtualized infrastructure – using Citrix XenServer, for example – can take the sting out of cross-platform management.

It’s a business decision first, so here are the top five business reasons to move to a virtualized infrastructure:

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Use Server Virtualization to Capture More Business Opportunities

Monday, September 20th, 2010

Did you know that virtualizing your server infrastructure could help your sales team? It’s no secret that there are some pretty clear business advantages to server virtualization, but it isn’t always easy to trace it directly to sales gains and client management. Think about how your clients interact with your sales force and customer care teams, though, and you’ll realize pretty quickly that the performance and reliability of your servers can affect your brand – which contributes to new and repeat sales.

Existing clients tend to be your best source of new sales. After all, it’s easier to use an established relationship to drive additional purchases than it is to break into a new account. So, “net-new” is extremely valuable and hard to achieve. To bring new business in the door, you’ll have to show that you can provide an excellent client experience, whether they engage your systems directly or indirectly (such as through a call center, with the rep using the systems to support a client transaction). In this regard, the IT department can affect the performance of the business as a whole.

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Cut Your IT Equipment Disposal Costs

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

IT equipment, it seems, never stops hitting your budget. You need to buy it, implement it and maintain it. And, when you replace a server, monitor or workstation, you even need to pay to get rid of it. Take an environmentally friendly approach to managing your datacenter, and you gain the advantage of lower equipment disposal costs. Virtualization is the key: a virtualized infrastructure requires less equipment, which leads to lower costs at the end of a piece’s useful life.

With virtualization, the advantage is pretty straightforward: less is more. Since you can make resources portable across systems in your datacenter, you’re able to avoid the trap of over-provisioning, which has long been seen as a necessary expense to maintain system reliability and performance in the face of uncertain end-user demand and market conditions. The implications of consolidated servers manifest themselves in a number of ways, most of which are recognized on the buy side: datacenter flexibility can be used to reduce purchases. Disposition, on the other hand, tends to be overlooked.

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Are You Over-Powering Your Virtualized Infrastructure?

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Your energy use may be higher than necessary, and it could be putting your equipment at risk. This probably seems counterintuitive for a virtual server environment; after all, a reduction in equipment should lead to a reduction in power. Yet, after virtualizing, you may have energy inefficiencies relative to your underlying physical infrastructure. This provides an opportunity for continued cost savings and risk mitigation, by optimizing power consumption for your newly architected virtual server environment.

The primary measure of energy efficiency in your datacenter is power usage effectiveness (PUE), reflecting total energy consumption relative to your physical equipment footprint. In a physical server infrastructure, energy consumption and costs are distributed over a larger set of hardware, much of which has loner latency periods. This drives a lower PUE. The equipment utilization efficiencies of a virtual server infrastructure, however, lead to less dormancy because of consolidation. Energy consumption relative to underlying equipment thus increases, elevating PUE.

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Beat the Heat: Optimize Cooling for Increased Server
Density

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Server and storage virtualization bring clear IT efficiency advantages to your datacenter. You can consolidate servers, reduce your equipment footprint and cut both new purchase and maintenance expenses. To make a virtualized environment effective, however, you need to be aware of the new set of risks you face and how you can overcome them.

Among the major challenges in a virtual server environment is the threat of heat – and the attendant importance of cooling – in your datacenter. Virtualized or not, this is a concern, but how you address it, and indeed the nature of the risk, is different when virtualization-driven efficiencies are at work in your company.

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