Do Your Servers Affect Your SEO Strategy?
By: Mark Kennedy
There are over 200 factors (and counting) that are part of the Google search engine algorithm. And while tags, links and content get the lion’s share of the press, your servers actually play a part in your SEO efforts as well.
One of the newest factors in the search ranking algorithm is the load time of your web site. And while things like proper web coding and correct image sizing can impact load speed, the biggest component of a web site’s load time is the server. Having the correct server that correlates to the size of your site can have a positive impact on your keyword rankings.
Another factor is server reliability. Having a server that is down more than up can negatively affect your SEO strategy. And while this isn’t good for your rankings, it just isn’t good for your users either. Visitors don’t return to web sites that are constantly experiencing down time.
As the owner of a Philadelphia SEO company, I always tell clients that tags, links, and keywords are vital parts of their SEO strategy, but that you can’t ignore the IT aspects of your efforts either. Make sure your servers have adequate speed and reliability. Not just for the search engine’s sake, but for your users’ (and potential users’) sake as well.
IT Pro: Job Description Redefined
by David Moorman, President, DynaSis
So as an IT pro, you might be asking, “What does my job look like as the technology industry and my company move toward managed services?” “Why would we use an Atlanta managed IT company if the internal IT pro can handle it?” In the same way you may hire a maid to clean your home, or a gardener to landscape your lawn, you may hire an IT expert to handle basic chores for your business. The maid and the gardner afford you more time to dedicate to activities that are of higher value to you. Just like tasks around the home, technology tasks can also be broken down into those that offer you value and those that don’t. Those technologies that offer you value are said to have competitive advantage.
A technology that offers a competitive advantage is one that offers a higher value to the company, and helps outperform the competition. Technologies such as capacity planning and forecasting, customer relationship management, data mining, and enterprise resource planning are some of those technologies that can give a company an edge over what the other guy down the street is doing. They provide additional intelligence that allows the business to operate smarter and more efficient.
Those technologies that do not offer a competitive advantage include email, network monitoring, spam and virus protection. These technologies have become par for the course in today’s business climate. Today, all companies are expected to have a website, with an easy to use contact form and email. Their systems are expected to be up and working around the clock with no downtime. Using internal resources to maintain these technologies takes away from time that could be spent developing advanced technologies and processes that can further the company in the long run.
So to answer the questions above, IT pros should focus their time and skills on developing advanced technologies that offer the company additional benefits over the competition. An Atlanta managed services company can then be leveraged to perform routine maintenance and basic services for the company, the “housekeeping” if you will, while the internal IT pro is free to further develop advanced skills. Their value to the company will be equal to the competitive advantages they can bring to the table, and in turn IT pros can secure their jobs. So instead of fearing the possibility of a managed services company, IT pros have the opportunity to further secure their place in the company by offering value that will far outweigh the cost of a managed IT provider.
Reducing Business Risk With IT
by Chas Arnold, Partner and Executive VP of DynaSis
What business risks do you have? Reducing a significant amount of business risk can be as simple as implementing the right IT practices. Network security, downtime, and data loss are among the biggest concerns for companies when considering their liabilities, but a well built infrastructure with solid procedures in place can help mitigate those concerns.
Security
A hole in your network security is cause for huge concern considering the many mutations of spam, viruses, spyware, and even internal attacks from disgruntled employees. Your IT network should be protected on both the server and client side of your network, meaning you need enterprise level firewalls, anti-spam packages, and anti-virus software both on servers and employee computers to make sure your network is protected. Physical access to server room equipment should also be guarded, and a detailed security policy should be published for all employees to follow.
Downtime
Downtime in a company is not often calculated as a hard risk, but the impact of losing productivity can cost your company thousands if not hundreds of thousands in lost revenue. Avoiding downtime means having constant monitoring in place to know when a server is being overloaded or other resources are over capacity. Processes must be in place to make sure the IT network is stable, and levels of redundancy should be implemented so failover is automatic. Proactivity and planning is the key to minimizing downtime and decreasing lost productivity and revenue.
Data Loss
Companies that lose all their business data have a very small chance of surviving without a reliable means of restoring data. Avoiding data loss starts with a reliable backup system. Data should be backed up regularly and stored at a secure offsite location. Instead of relying on an employee to change tape drives, backups should be disc based and happen automatically to minimize human error. The same goes for email archiving, as it is the most common form of communication and is often used as evidence in legal proceedings.
If reducing risk is important to your business, examining your IT liabilities should be your top priority. DynaSis provides managed IT services, managed security, guaranteed uptime, proactive monitoring, and reliable backup systems. Contact DynaSis today to learn more at 770.882.2432 or visit www.dynasis.com
Case Study: Microsoft Hosted Exchange
Boh Bros. Construction Co., LLC was founded in 1909 by Arthur Boh as a small residential construction company and expanded to include heavy and civil construction. Driven by the leadership of the Bohs, the company has evolved into a stable, growing enterprise employing over 1500 people.
Boh Bros. decided to migrate their roughly 350 email mailboxes from Novell Groupwise to Microsoft Exchange. Although Boh Bros. had a fully staffed, experienced IT department, they did not have the experience with Exchange to undertake the project themselves without considerable preparation and training.
Bellwether, a New Orleans IT services provider, recommended its hosted Exchange offering, and within a couple of days of Boh Bros.’s acceptance, the 350 mailboxes were created and ready to go. Bellwether supported Boh Bros. staff through the migration process and continues to take care of all the administration and maintenance of the servers.
Hosted Exchange allowed Boh Bros. to avoid not only training and administration costs but also the significant upfront licensing fee that implementing Exchange from scratch would have required. In addition, a traditional mail solution in New Orleans necessarily entails disaster recovery precautions, which can become challenging with a sizeable Exchange environment.
Rather than deal with such considerations, Boh Bros. staff is now free to focus on more strategic priorities.
TIP – Moving Outlook Signatures from one computer to another
We’ve all set up new computers for folks, and have had to set up and migrate Outlook Mail Settings.
We’ve all moved PST files, and if we’re good, we’ve also moved NK2 files… but sometimes Signatures can be a real pain in the outbox.
Sure, we could go to the users’ Sent Items and play the copy-paste game, which is fine for basic signatures. But what about sig’s with fancy web links and HTML graphics? And what if the user has multiple signatures for various reasons? Searching the Sent Mail folder for all the sig’s could turn into a chore.
Microsoft made an easy way to browse right to the obscure location that Signature Files are stored. It’s hidden and scarcely documented… but in every version of Outlook starting with 2000, you can hold down the CTRL Key when you click on the Signatures Button to open a Window with all the files that go into the making of a profile.
Whether you get to the button via “Tools –> Options –> Mail Format” in Office 2000, XP, 2003, or 2007… or “File –> Options –> Mail” in Office 2010, CTRL-Clicking the “Signatures” button opens a window that will allow for easy backup, and copying of Signature Data from one setup to another.
This method will ensure that all Signatures and all versions, HTML, Rich Text, and plain text get moved quickly and easily.
Stick that in your toolbox and use it!
iPad: Be Prepared.
yes. this is a real photo
Yes, this picture is real. Not bogus. That is Windows 7, running on an iPad. Now, if only we could get OS X to run on it. Oh, the irony…but I digress.
But for those people working in IT who have been trying so desperately to convince themselves that they actually NEED an iPad, this may push you over the edge. This screengrab is basically an iPad running an application called the Citrix Receiver which connects to an updated version of Citrix’s XenApp, and into Windows 7. Voila. Multitasking is officially on the iPad–but the irony is so thick here. It’s brought to the iPad only by using Windows on it. How could Steve Jobs think for once that this wouldn’t happen? How could he leave such a gaping hole in functionality on this device that has been specualted about for the past 3+ years by IT pundits and fanboys alike? No matter. It’s left for another blog post elsewhere. The real point here is that this thing might ACTUALLY be usable for IT folks around the world.
In my particular role as a Consultant/Engineer, it’s already been brought up in talks with some of our clients in the Medical field. Doctors LOVE tablets. They love the idea of strolling the halls on rounds being able to literally tap their reports into the system in a ultra-sleek, fully-functinoal, sexy, and paperless fashion. Until now, tablets have always come up short in at least one of those categories. And the thing is, the iPad comes up WAY short as well. (Not in the ’sexy’ category, mind you, but just in the ‘functional’ one).
Citrix has been developing the XenApp update for the iPad for quite some time now. It’s almost as if they were working WITH Apple to bring forth the functionality; which wouldn’t make a lot of sense on the surface. However, looking further, it’s yet another glimpse of Jobs’ Genius. Apple gets to market its iPad as the iPod Touch’s Steriod-laden big brother, touting ’simplicity’ all along the way. Meanwhile, they allow the development of a 100% integrated support for Citrix, which then brings a full-fledged SysAdmin weapon to a company’s IT organization–granted there are adequate WiFi support. Doctor’s can now walk down halls touching to their heart’s content, and looking good while doing it. Zoom around the Fisher-Pricey but gorgeous iPad interface one moment, then boot XenApp and slip into a Citrix session running Windows 7 (plus multitasking) the next. Apple has quietly reached the pesky IT demographic for the iPad.
Actually, there is a public report now of a medical facility in Oregon that has already offically begun a rollout of about 5 iPads using the Citrix Receiver to run Windows 7 and NextGen EMR application. Do not forget–the iPad was released less than a month ago.
Citrix has already put the demo video on their website of the Citrix Receiver for iPad. iPad Citrix Receiver
Which speaks volumes–seeing is believing.
As a fanboy who has posted here before about Apple, I had no inital interest in the iPad. I have an iPhone, and this to me was just an expensive toy with functionality that was severely lacking. When asked by my peers not long ago about Citrix’s ability on an iPad, I quickly scoffed at the idea saying it wouldn’t work. Urged to open my own mind about the idea, I did my research. And while I will stand my ground about the iPad’s functionality natively leaving much to be desired, as an IT professional I cannot be short of bouncing in my seat when I see this Citrix capability to run a Windows desktop over WiFi or 3G (hopefully, 4G soon). And with the announcement of iPhone Software v 4.0, which DOES do multitasking and folder support, I can only think that the iPad will get better very soon, allowing us to run Citrix/Windows session WHILE we oh-so-elegantly zip around the sleek native apps on the iPad such as eBook reader, custom You Tube and eBay apps and the like.
The iPad might be in my sights after all. And, it might as well be, since I can easily see this as a tool to be adopted by enterprise organizations everywhere. Be Prepared.
Now, if we can only get Apple to move to Verizon…
So what is Cloud Computing?
By now, most of us have heard of cloud computing. Talk about a buzzword – it’s easy to get caught up in the term and not know what it actually does. Is there any clarity about what cloud computing is? Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and countless others offer the cloud with lots of claims associated with it: it saves money, it boosts efficiency, it does email, hosting, backups, and so on.
So what is cloud computing?
In short, cloud computing is the future of technology for business. Traditionally, businesses have managed their own infrastructure and IT resources themselves. This in-house management requires high overheads, specialized staff, capital expenditures, and honestly – going in to work some mornings wondering if IT would work that day.
Do you ever wonder if the lights will work when you wake up in the morning? Unless you’re in the middle of a blizzard, probably not. Further, you probably don’t manage your own generators, substations, transformers and so on. You pay experts with the best equipment, professionals and resources to manage all this for you. The same should be true with your information technology, and the cloud makes this happen.
History repeats itself.
In the early 1900s, few people took advantage of electricity as a utility. The technology was young and buyers were wary of the unproven systems and infrastructure. Energy was self-manufactured by water wheels, steam engines, and muscle. But by 1933 buyers were more confident in mature technology, and over 90% of electricity was provided as a utility. Now any appliance could be simply plugged into the electric grid – the network.
Companies are seeing the same thing happen with the cloud. The IT industry saw the first PCs rollout in the 1980s, and that led to the client server computing technology of the 90s. As computing technology has emerged, the industry is moving to a virtualized cloud infrastructure. Gartner research indicates that “by 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets.”
The shift to IT provided as a utility has begun. As it continues, computing will become a service almost exclusively supplied over a network. Today’s desktop machines will turn into simple appliances that simply plug into the wall and pull their value from the cloud.
Cloud Technology
Cloud computing is essentially the convergence of three major technological trends:
1. Virtualization
With the traditional hosting model, businesses have needed one dedicated server per each application. Each of these servers runs the application on top of an operating system, but only utilizes around 10% of its capacity on average – wasting countless resources and dollars. Now, virtualization and virtual hosting allows those applications to be consolidated onto one server built specifically for virtualization. Within each box run multiple virtual servers, each with its own operating system, CPU, memory, and storage.
A virtualized hosting environment allows a few machines to do what previously would have required several dozen.
2. Utility Computing
Also commonly referred to as grid computing, utility computing is a way to provide technology where consumers access server capacity across a grid and pay on a fixed fee, monthly basis. Under this model, computing technologies are provided in the same way that electricity, water, and other utilities are provided.
3. Managed Services – SaaS and HaaS
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a managed service that enables worldwide, anytime access to a hosted application from any computer with internet access. SaaS applications are generally available through subscription or membership, and allow businesses the benefits of traditional hosting minus costs and capital expenditures. Popular SaaS platforms are Salesforce.com, Gmail and other Google Apps, and Wordpress.
Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) is a managed service that provides hardware to customers usually on a monthly licensing agreement without their having to purchase it. The advantage here is that most small to medium businesses undergo significant financial strain for capital expenditures to purchase their own hardware. HaaS allows businesses to use the most current hardware for one monthly cost and no capital expenditures.
By themselves, each of these technologies brings limited benefit to the end user. But when combined to into the cloud computing model, they create a service with significant advantages for business computing:
Cloud Computing Benefits:
- Businesses no longer have to own their own hardware, software, and licensing.
- The service is fully managed by the provider – the consumer needs nothing but a personal computer and Internet access.
- It is elastic – a user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time.
- It is sold on demand.
- Stored data is available through any computer with an internet connection.
- Businesses no longer incur large costs to refresh hardware and software.
- Technology resources are used at nearly 100% efficiency – saving money and preserving resources.
- Resources scale infinitely with business growth.
The data center.
For a large, Fortune 500 company, the costs and resources associated with housing a complete data center with redundant environmental controls, fire suppression, security, and backup provisions are easy.
For the average small to medium sized business, though, this kind of data center is unrealistic.
Cloud computing allows small to medium sized businesses to utilize the same technological resources that Fortune 500 companies do because of the cloud provider’s data center. A small business with 10 employees enjoys the same network that a 500 employee company does.
What drives cloud adoption?
Businesses adopt new technology for one primary reason: money. If the cloud were just a novel technology, businesses would be reluctant to adopt. Considering the huge financial advantages with cloud computing, more and more businesses are moving away from traditional hosting to a cloud model.
Netbooks vs. Notebooks
It seems I get asked at least once a month if I think someone should buy a netbook, or a notebook… and to be honest, I’m always hesitant to answer that question because I’ve never had the chance to really put one through the paces. The specs on them “look” okay and the prices are generally awesome, but how would they really perform on a normal everyday use basis? Well, in mid-January Verizon Wireless was kind enough to let me borrow one for a month so I could get a better feel for them. Before we dive in to what I think about it though, first lets take a step back and define “netbook”, and look a little closer at the unit I tested.
Sooo… what is a netbook?
So what makes a netbook different from a notebook? Well, not much these days. When the netbooks started showing up in stores in late 2007 / early 2008, they admittedly got a bit of a bum rap because the manufacturers built them severely underpowered; in many cases with just enough power to run a browser and maybe an email client, proving frustrating to even the most novice of users. Since the form factor has caught on though, the power battle has taken hold and most models will hold their own quite nicely next to a standard notebook. The major delineation at this point is size and subsequent lack of peripherals (optical drive, tons of ports, etc., etc.). With a netbook, you will see screen sizes of anywhere from 10.1 inches (like the one I tested) all the way down to smallest of the small with 5 inches; any smaller and you’d call it a phone. There comes a point where they are just too small, in my opinion… not because of screen size, but because of the size of keyboard that goes along with that ultra small screen. As I mentioned earlier, you will also notice that in the name of conserving size and cutting weight, some things you are accustomed to have been shaved off; like a CD / DVD-rom drive. Another common trait you will find as of late is the addition of a built-in mobile broadband card letting you connect to the internet virtually anywhere, and truly putting the “net” in netbook.
The particular netbook I got my hands on is a HP mini 1151NR. This unit comes equipped with an Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz (single core) processor, 1 GB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive. It also features a 10.1 inch screen, 802.11 b/g WLAN, LAN, Bluetooth, 2 USB ports, stereo speakers with built-in mic, built-in web cam (640×480), and of course, built-in mobile broadband… all wrapped up into a 2.4 pound bundle of computing joy. This particular device ships with Windows XP SP3 Home Edition, but other models are available with Windows 7 (and I actually loaded this one with Windows 7 Professional just as a goof). Now here is the really awesome part; as tested, this device is priced at $199 with a $50 mail-in rebate and a 2 year service contract from Verizon. $200 for a laptop. That ain’t too shabby in my opinion!
Well? Did it work?
Not wanting skimp out and do a half-way test scenario where I just use the system as a toy when I had time to play with it; I actually decided to push my other systems to the side and use this as my only computer for a whole month. That meant loading all the applications I commonly use like Microsoft Office 2007 (as well as 2010 beta for part of the test), VMware vSphere client, TweetDeck, our corporate VoIP call manager, Office Communicator, Microsoft Live Writer, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Fireworks (yeah, I like it better than Photoshop), and our corporate antivirus client to name the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Additionally, for half the test (two weeks) I ran the system with Windows 7 Professional installed, complete with desktop gadgets and Aero, AS WEL AS the applications I listed above. My job and my hobbies have me on my computer at the very least 10 hours per day, so it is fair to say that this little guy didn’t get much of a break.
So how did it work? Pretty darn good actually. The keyboard, while not too much smaller than a standard sized laptop keyboard, did take a little getting used to. The buttons of the built-in touchpad are placed on either side instead of below, and I quickly found myself using it with two hands (one hand moving the pointer and the other doing the left clicks) which also took some getting used to, but ultimately wasn’t a deal killer… I actually got pretty quick with it and in fact using it that way made dragging and dropping easier than one handed (I never use a mouse, much to the dismay of my co-workers). I found the speed of the machine, believe it or not, to be actually better with Windows 7 than with Windows XP, and I think I know why. HP builds these laptops with a 42k RPM hard drive, which is SLOW by anyone’s standards. Windows 7 is optimized to work more from RAM than Windows XP is, thus in the heat of battle at the office that hard drive was getting thrashed in XP and caused noticeable lags, whereas it was much more tolerable in Windows 7. Windows 7 did run out of RAM on me a few times while I was doing some photo editing, but that is to be expected with 1GB of RAM. The nice thing about this is that all the performance bottle necks of the system are easily fixable. For less than $200 more you could add a smoke’n fast solid state hard drive and another 1GB of RAM (for a total of 2GB, which is the maximum supported) and I’m confident you wouldn’t be feeling any slow downs. That would make this a REALLY nice laptop for right at $400, a good value for sure.
One of the things I really appreciated about the HP was the built-in mobile broadband. I used it multiple times, but it really saved my butt twice. Both times I was driving down the road and got that oh-so-dreaded afterhours phone call from someone needing technical help. In both cases I was able to quickly pull over and let the wife take over the driver’s seat while I logged on to the internet and started working on the problem servers. The convenience of being able to ride down the road and work online is unspeakably valuable. Sure you can accomplish this by tethering a cell phone to a standard laptop, but then you have to deal with remembering to bring the cable with you and trying to manage a cell phone sliding around while you work. You could also just get an air-card, but again, you have to remember to bring it with you and then hope you don’t accidentally knock the antenna or device itself off. Having the air-card built right in to the laptop is the way to go in my opinion. Nothing else to keep track of; it just works… which in my mind is what a netbook is all about. Computing convenience.
Who should buy one?
So is a netbook right for everyone? Well, probably not. Lets be honest here; these machines are not going to be great video editing machines, hard core photo editing machines, or gaming machines. They would, however, be a perfect fit for those “average computer users” (i.e. email, IM, internet, word processing, etc) or people who are on the go a lot. I personally enjoyed using it and was a little sad to see the little guy go. I’ll be giving some serious thought into purchasing one in the future.
The Importance of Remote Backup
Why is a strong disaster recovery plan important to your business? Just ask Johnson Rice & Company…
Johnson Rice & Company L.L.C. was founded in 1987 as an institutional research and sales firm. The investment banking department was added in 1991 and has been involved in over $14 billion in capital transactions. Located in New Orleans, Johnson Rice focuses on a limited number of industries in order to provide superior, value-added services to its institutional and corporate clients. The firm is nationally recognized for its expansive coverage of the energy industry and also has a strong consumer focus with coverage of specialty retailer companies.
The nature of their business requires that Johnson Rice has a thorough, workable disaster recovery plan. The fact that they are based in New Orleans adds to the urgency of the plan and the likelihood that it will be implemented. From an IT standpoint, Johnson Rice needs uninterrupted access to files, email, instant messaging, and various financial platforms whenever the market is open.
Bellwether Technology, a New Orleans IT company, worked with Johnson Rice to craft a business continuity plan for their IT systems that is designed to preserve access to all systems in the event of a complete loss of their New Orleans office. In addition, Bellwether identified remote office space and other resources for Johnson Rice’s trading desk to use in the event of an evacuation of the New Orleans area.
In September 2008, Hurricane Gustav provided a real-life test of Johnson Rice’s business continuity plan, and all aspects worked as intended. When the market opened following a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, Johnson Rice’s traders were up and working productively in a temporary office, and other personnel had complete access to corporate data with the full support of Bellwether’s service desk.
Whether it’s a hurricane, flood, fire, earthquake, tornado, or basic human error, disasters happen; and they have a tendency to catch people completely off-guard. A remote backup plan allows organizations to avert disaster, and Johnson Rice is a prime example of a successful financial firm that survived a legitimate threat in Hurricane Gustav without missing a beat.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” –Arthur C. Clarke
Looking back at the last decade, virtualization is the only business information technology I’d describe as being like magic. This statement isn’t offered as hyperbole, without explaining the technical details, it does seem more impressive than pulling a rabbit out of hat. Server, storage, and network virtualization changes IT dramatically—it undergirds most of the significant trends in the field, both real and hyped.
Although the technology has been around for decades, I still encounter clients, prospects, and partners who don’t understand virtualization. Mostly because servers are something they don’t think about much– that’s my job. Upon describing the concept, I usually receive one of two responses: near instant interest followed by enthusiasm or the bored look which I sometimes deserve when enthusiastically explaining trivia like:
- highlighting offensive clauses in end user licensing agreements
- exactly what an ampere is and why people should care, or
- stupid pivot table tricks.
So what is virtualization in ten words or less? Virtualization abstracts the software environment from the underlying physical hardware. I managed with ten words, but now you’re already feeling sleepy and thinking about finding a cup of coffee to revive yourself– it is that word abstract, isn’t it? I’ll try again– what does this abstraction mean to you? With virtualization you can take a physical server and install multiple and varied operating systems and applications instances and have them actively run in isolation of each other on that single host server. For example, you could install four copies of Windows 2008, two copies of Redhat Linux 7.1, and MS-DOS 6.1 running on the same physical server with shared storage and network resources allocated to each guest operating system. That’s a neat trick, but why would you want to do it?
Typically, virtualization is sold as way to reduce costs by more efficiently using server hardware resources, resulting in fewer capital costs associated with hardware purchases and savings associated with ongoing reoccurring electrical and cooling costs being reduced. These server consolidation opportunities spark significant interest– what technical or budget minded person doesn’t appreciate the beauty of something more efficient? Who wouldn’t appreciate the idea of reducing the number of physical servers from 12 to 2? However, focusing only on efficiency misses the magic.
As someone who is feverishly working to avoid system failure, the real magic of virtualization is its ability to reduce risk of failure by offering truly jaw-dropping opportunities to provide immediate uptime in cases of routine mechanical failure. That’s the magic: watching a server fail with six guest servers and fail over instantly to another host server without interruption. Compare this with some physical server failure scenarios where restoring from yesterday’s tapes on a different server takes eighteen very stressful hours— don’t forget to factor in the hours of lost productivity, data lost since the last back-up job, cost of the restore, and the drama of that level of uncertainty.
That’s just part of the magic. Understand that often a bigger threat than dramatic mechanical failure, is often routine, sometimes seemingly trivial changes to the system environment– perhaps a routine security update, a new application, or, an updated printer driver. These changes can have undocumented and unintended consequences resulting in a system interruption as dramatic as if you had spilled a cup of a coffee in your server. Virtualization addresses this daily threat, by offering affordable and flexible staging environments to test system changes before rolling those changes into production environments. Testing becomes a truly affordable option for nearly all IT operations, allowing improved flexibility to accommodate changes with a greater certainty of maintaining excellent service.
There are a lot of technical details which I’ll address in next month’s entry. However, don’t wait until then if you’re thinking about upgrading servers or purchasing new equipment, talk to us immediately! We can advise you on what to buy with an eye towards accommodating server virtualization and work with you to implement a plan to consolidate and to improve your disaster recovery prospects.
Thinsolutions currently supports VMware’s vSphere, ESX, and ESXi products and Microsoft’s Hyper-V, in a variety of implementations and we’ve tested other products. We can help balance the pros and cons of these products and a variety of scenarios. The technology is solid, we’ve been supporting virtualized production environments for over four years, and the improvements come at surprisingly low licensing costs.