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Server Virtualization for Small and Medium-sized Businesses

Source:
Storage Virtualization
Published:
Apr 13, 2009
Pages:
10

In recent years, just about every company with an Information Systems department has begun some form of consolidation and virtualization effort with the goal of increasing asset utilization while reducing management and infrastructure costs. The virtualization marketplace is flled with solutions from just about every traditional vendor and a bevy of startups, but the company that is universally acknowledged as a leader in the virtualization space is VMware.

With the release of the VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.0 Suite, companies can decouple business applications from physical server hardware, which in turn reduces operational costs and provides a much more fexible and dynamic infrastructure.

By reducing the amount of physical servers, network ports, foor and rack space, maintenance contracts, and electricity required to run an IT operation, companies can actualize the return on investment from consolidation efforts within months. Separating server processing power from server storage is the key to more effcient growth, easier management and simpler backup as well as restoration tasks. (For more information, read the Introduction to Network Storage white paper at www.storevault.com.)

Virtual infrastructures are a fantastic solution to the challenges of a distributed server architecture. However, the native storage virtualization capabilities shipped with VMware ESX Server do not provide the same benefts and hardware reductions as those seen in the server space. Many customers have experienced an increase in storage requirements after implementing their virtual infrastructure. The reasons for this increase are many, including, but not limited to, requirements for a shared storage platform, ineffciencies in the multiple layers of storage virtualization, overprovisioned servers, and challenges with backups that can lead to ineffcient disk-to-disk backup solutions.

This solution brief demonstrates how integrating StoreVault technologies in a virtual infrastructure can solve the unique challenges inherent with ESX deployments in the areas of storage utilization and management, data protection, and backups. This brief explains how simplifying your hardware and server applications with virtualization software provides key improvements to your IT environment. It also provides a simple overview of how to achieve these benefts of virtualization with a StoreVault.

To download the full whitepaper/case study, please provide the following information:

Other Storage Virtualization White Papers

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As cybercriminals become more sophisticated, it is likely that the amount of attacks on the virtual layer will increase. Organisations with virtualised servers need to be aware of the security risks in order to protect themselves. This paper outlines the risks facing virtual environments and reveals 10 top tips for keeping virtualised servers secure.

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