Posts Tagged ‘Virtualization’
September eNewsletter
COMPANY NEWS
Annual IT Networking Event
A special thanks to all who attended our annual IT networking event last month. We had a great turnout and look forward to hosting the event again next year!
If you still haven’t had a chance to see our new customer lounge, give us a call and stop out and see us today!
DID YOU KNOW
September Featured Case Study
EarthLink’s featured case study in September is The National Baseball Hall of Fame.
National Baseball Hall of Fame: Cutting costs while moving to a highly available cloud environment, EarthLink was able to migrate the website from traditional dedicated servers to a cost effective, more redundant virtualized cloud environment. The team leverages virtualization software to provide a far more scalable environment to ensure 100% uptime.
Read the complete case study
Visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Website
BLOG-TIME
FEATURED BLOG POST
“Become Your Own Exchange 2010 Admin”
by Mike Salviski
With the EarthLink Exchange 2010 Hosted Control Panel, not only do you control costs but you can also control your Exchange 2010 environment. With our Hosted Exchange 2010 Control Panel, you can manage and edit your company’s Exchange options with the click of a button.
Our Exchange 2010 Control Panel offers you the ability to control…
SPECIAL PROMOTION
Your First Month is on Us!
For any new 1U colocation customer in September, receive the first month for free! Call and ask to speak to one of our sales engineers today for more details 800.957.4872.
If you’d like to view the complete newsletter, click here.
View Comments →Cloud Computing and Remote Desktop Services (Formally Terminal Services)
EarthLink has been providing cloud computing services for our customers in the Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo regions as well as across the U.S for 15 years. With the huge explosion of interest in cloud computing over the past year or two, we’ve had many current and prospective customers come to us for ways to migrate to a cloud platform. They have also heard that a cloud platform can reduce IT costs.
A great way to reduce costs is to run your application with terminal services. This method can reduce license costs for the application and streamline maintaining the software and hardware. This can free up your IT staff to concentrate on more mission critical projects. Typically, when introducing terminal services, additional layers were required. You had to purchase additional licenses for Citrix Terminal Services, for example. This can be very costly.
With Windows Server 2008 R2, a core virtualization technology available is terminal services. We can setup your architecture to take advantage of the functionality built right into the server’s OS. We utilize Remote Desktop Services (this used to be called Terminal Services and was renamed to Remote Desktop Services) to allow your users to access your applications from anywhere in the world from a hosted location. This is done directly through Windows Server 2008 without adding additional layers or Citrix licenses. Setting up Citrix Terminal Services also requires a high, upfront investment to purchase the licenses needed. With Windows Remote Desktop Services, we can provide an alternative payment structure with a small, per user, monthly cost. This can greatly reduce the strain on your IT budget and expenses.
Contact us today to speak to a Sales Engineer and see how much you can save with virtualization and our cloud computing services.
When it comes time to start thinking about Virtualization, here are 5 important factors to think about.
When it comes time to start thinking about Virtualization, here are 5 important factors to think about:
1. Platform: Which is the most Suitable Platform?
There really are only three major competitors: VMWare, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Parallels Virtuozzo. Each one of these platforms offers Competitive advantages as well as different pricing models. For Example, running Microsoft Hyper-V allows you to run unlimited Windows Operating Systems under a single License which would lower the license costs for your organization, but might it may not be the best candidate if you are a Linux based organization.
2. Number of Containers: How many virtual servers can you fit on each Server?
This really depends on the current CPU/RAM usage of your current environments. One commonly made mistake is overloading the host server with too many Virtual Instances which will cause poor performance.
3. Domain Controller Placement
Another thing to take into consideration is failover and proper disaster recovery for your Domain Controllers. Placing your Primary and Secondary DNS server on Separate Virtual Nodes is best practice as well as having enough failover machines to handle the event of a Virtualization Host Failure.
4. Migration Strategy
Determine a Migration Strategy and evaluate all your current candidate applications to migrate to your virtual environment. Note that not all applications should be migrated to virtual environments. For example, some versions of Microsoft Exchange are not supported on select Virtual Platforms. Doing your homework is one of the most important step that needs to be taken before moving to a new environment and/or platform.
5. Failover and Backup Plan
Now that you are running more environments on fewer servers, backup and disaster recovery become even more critical. Setting up a proper backup strategy for all of your Virtual Environments is crucial. On the disaster recovery side, even if you run your virtual servers in house, you should secure a failover Virtual environment. At EarthLink, we offer failover Virtual Environments that will run your applications in the event of a failure.
View Comments →When it comes time to start thinking about Virtualization, here are 5 important factors to think about
When it comes time to start thinking about Virtualization, here are 5 important factors to think about:
1. Platform: Which is the most Suitable Platform?
There really are only three major competitors: VMWare, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Parallels Virtuozzo. Each one of these platforms offers Competitive advantages as well as different pricing models. For Example, running Microsoft Hyper-V allows you to run unlimited Windows Operating Systems under a single License which would lower the license costs for your organization, but might it may not be the best candidate if you are a Linux based organization.
2. Number of Containers: How many virtual servers can you fit on each Server?
This really depends on the current CPU/RAM usage of your current environments. One commonly made mistake is overloading the host server with too many Virtual Instances which will cause poor performance.
3. Domain Controller Placement
Another thing to take into consideration is failover and proper disaster recovery for your Domain Controllers. Placing your Primary and Secondary DNS server on Separate Virtual Nodes is best practice as well as having enough failover machines to handle the event of a Virtualization Host Failure.
4. Migration Strategy
Determine a Migration Strategy and evaluate all your current candidate applications to migrate to your virtual environment. Note that not all applications should be migrated to virtual environments. For example, some versions of Microsoft Exchange are not supported on select Virtual Platforms. Doing your homework is one of the most important step that needs to be taken before moving to a new environment and/or platform.
5. Failover and Backup Plan
Now that you are running more environments on fewer servers, backup and disaster recovery become even more critical. Setting up a proper backup strategy for all of your Virtual Environments is crucial. On the disaster recovery side, even if you run your virtual servers in house, you should secure a failover Virtual environment. At EarthLink, we offer failover Virtual Environments that will run your applications in the event of a failure.
View Comments →