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Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

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Microsoft SQL Server High Availability: Always On Availability Groups VS Failover Cluster Instances. What to choose and when?

Microsoft SQL Server is the backbone of many businesses, but when it comes to high availability, which path should you take: Always On Availability Groups (AG) or Failover Cluster Instances (FCI)?

Turn two VMware vSphere hosts into a full-blown cluster without breaking the bank, in 5 minutes and 5 easy steps

Security, privacy, and performance have always been a priority for many businesses even over the limitless scalability offered by the cloud. Join us for a new video, on how to transform two on-prem VMware vSphere hosts into a bulletproof high-availability (HA) cluster for improved cost-effectiveness, high VM performance and enhanced security, in 5 easy steps.

What is V2V (Virtual to Virtual)?

V2V in Focus: What’s virtual-to-virtual migration all about? Learn what V2V is, why it matters, and how it works. Check out reasons for migration, hot vs. cold migration, and tools like StarWind V2V Converter.

StarWind SAN & NAS as Hardened Repository for Veeam B&R

Ransomware is a global threat, and the best answer to it is to have immutable backups. Veeam’s Hardened Backup Repository is an efficient and cost-effective solution, but it can require some effort to configure. StarWind simplifies the process, allowing you to easily set up an immutable backup repository with just a few clicks.

ESXi is free… So why would you buy an ESXi anyway?

Most admins know that VMware offers Free and Evaluation versions of their hypervisor. However, there are still some nuances that explain why people would actually buy ESXi.

How to Convert Hyper-V to VMware VM

VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V are among the most popular type 1 enterprise hypervisors. However, their VM formats are incompatible, and it is not uncommon for users to look for an easy way to migrate a virtual machine from one hypervisor to another.

Windows Server 2022 Hyper-V VM Licensing

Software and feature licensing is often complex, requiring in-depth expertise to be licensed correctly and efficiently. Microsoft ecosystem is no exception.

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Hyper-V backup challenges Windows Server 2016 needs to address

Introduction

Personally I have been very successful at providing good backup designs for Hyper-V in both small to larger environments using budgets that range in between “make due” to “well-funded”.  How does one achieve this? Two factors. The first factor is knowing the strengths and limitations of the various Hyper-V versions when you design the backup solution. Bar the ever better scalability, performance and capabilities with each new version of Hyper-V, the improvements in back up from 2012 to 2012 R2 for example were a prime motivator to upgrade. The second factor of success is due to the fact that I demand a mandate and control over the infrastructure stack to do so. In many case you are not that lucky and can’t change much in already existing environments. Sometimes not even in new environments when the gear, solutions have already been chosen, purchased and the design is deployed before you get involved.

Windows Server 2008 (R2) - 2012 Hyper-V Backup

How VMware sees IT future. VMworld 2016. Day 1.

As you know, the main virtualization conference VMworld 2016 arranged by VMware is now being held in Las Vegas. On the first day of the conference several interesting announcements were made. For example, VMware Cloud Foundation, which soon will be available on the IBM platform and later with other vendors, as well, was presented. It allows to get a ready-made infrastructure at customer’s site with both necessary software and hardware components and ready, configured and integrated control and automation tools like NSX, Virtual SAN and vRealize:

Don’t Fear but Respect Redirected IO with Shared VHDX

When we got Shared VHDX in Windows Server 2012 R2 we were quite pleased as it opened up the road to guest clustering (Failover clustering in virtual machines) without needing to break through the virtualization layer with iSCSI or virtual Fibre Channel (vFC).

vSphere Auto Deploy

The Auto Deploy is one of the underestimated vSphere features. I have seen many vSphere Designs where using Auto Deploy was outlined as overcomplicating and manual build of ESXi servers was preferred. That is pretty frustrating as we, as IT professionals, strive to automate as much as possible in our day to day work.

Musings on Windows Server Converged Networking & Storage

Too many people still perceive Windows Server as “just” an operating system (OS). It’s so much more. It’s an OS, a hypervisor, a storage platform with a highly capable networking stack. Both virtualization and cloud computing are driving the convergence of all the above these roles forward fast, with intent and purpose. We’ll position the technologies & designs that convergence requires and look at the implications of these for a better overall understanding of this trend.

Is NVMe Really Revolutionary?

To hear advocates talk about NVMe – a de facto standard created by a group of vendors led by Intel to connect flash memory storage directly to a PCIe bus (that is, without using a SAS/SATA disk controller) – it is the most revolutionary thing that has ever happened in business computing.  While the technology provides a more efficient means to access flash memory, without passing I/O through the buffers, queues and locks associated with a SAS/SATA controller, it can be seen as the latest of a long line of bus extension technologies – and perhaps one that is currently in search of a problem to solve.

How to Deploy and Manage Storage Spaces Direct Cluster using SCVMM 2016?

With the release of Windows Server 2016, Microsoft is introducing Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), which enables building highly available Software-Defined Storage systems with local attached storage. This storage can be leveraged by VMs running on the same cluster (in hyper-converged mode) or the storage can be presented as a File Share (in disaggregated mode). The hyper-converged deployment scenario has the Hyper-V (compute) and Storage Spaces Direct (storage) components on the same cluster. Virtual machine’s files are stored on local CSVs. Once Storage Spaces Direct is configured and the CSV volumes are available, configuring and provisioning Hyper-V is the same process and uses the same tools that you would use with any other Hyper-V deployment on a failover cluster.

Why moving from Windows Server 2012 R2 to 2016 for Hyper-V

Windows Server 2016 will be released the next month said Microsoft the last month. Windows Server 2016 brings a lot of new features compared to the last Windows Server version for Hyper-V, networking and storage. In this topic I will try to convince you to move from prior Windows Server edition to Windows Server 2016 with eight reasons.

  • Oksana Zybinskaya
  • August 16, 2016
  • 5 min to read

Seagate introduces 60TB SSD drive

Seagate shows off two new SSD products: an 8TB NVMe drive and a spacious 60TB SSD prototype in a 3.5-inch form factor.

This 60TB consists of more than a 1,000 Micron 3D NAND dice fitted into a full-size, 3.5-inch disk form factor package. Apparently, it has dual port 12Gbit/s SAS interface and 150,000 random read IOPS, with undisclosed write IOPS. The sequential read/write numbers should be 1.5 and 1.0GB/sec.

Ubuntu: Manage your SQL Server from Linux

We will see how to install and use tools to manage your SQL Servers. We will use the version 13, who is compatible with Ubuntu. You can use these drivers from SQL Server 2008 to 2016, and it’s compatible with Azure SQL Database too.