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Blog

Dan Kusnetzky from ZDnet has a great post on his blog today about The Sullivan Group, a Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO) company (and Marathon customer) based in Savannah, Georgia. Erika Simpson, Network Administrator, and Rob Jones, IT Director, at The Sullivan Group, gave some great advice that can be applied to almost any IT implementation. Here’s what they suggest:

• Having a powerful enough infrastructure is something to focus on. Although the economy is tight, it is worth acquiring sufficient hardware and software resources to test applications before deploying. They are happy that they selected 64-bit industry standard systems as a platform because it has offered more than enough performance to handle their workloads.

• Test until you can’t test any more. This will allow you to make mistakes, learn from them and yet not have a negative impact on customers and their data.

• Read the instructions. If you don’t understand the instructions look for help from the vendor, from blogs, from forums and if all else fails, Google it!

Since implementing Citrix XenServer and Marathon’s everRun VM, which The Sullivan Group is now leveraging to protect their Microsoft Dynamics-based SamWare applications, the company has had zero downtime, even during a significant failure.

You can read the full article on the ZDnet Virtually Speaking blog here.
 

The Virtual Man posted this article today which we feel does a great job highlighting the different levels of virtual machine software. This is an important area to address because as we’ve discussed here before, the term “virtualization” is getting misconstrued frequently in and around the industry. Hopefully this will give a little more guidance to the decision makers. Dilbert’s boss could sure use it (see below).

Earlier this week we announced that we are expanding our family of everRun availability solutions with everRun CDP. This software extends our protection by capturing and replicating application data across any distance, in real-time.

Not being able to recover all the data quickly can cost big money in terms of lost revenue, potential fines or brand damage. Unlike traditional data protection and replication software that can leave gaps, everRun CDP ensures uninterrupted data protection. And it allows you to quickly and simply recover data from any point in time. Our customers are using it to ensure that their application data is safe, up to date and readily available at a remote location hundreds or thousands of miles away.

For more information check out the formal release found here and Dan Kusnetzky’s take over at ZDNet’s Virtually Speaking.

Software technology that makes it possible for multiple systems to be provisioned and managed as if they were a single computing resource. (See the original article by Dan Kusnetzky here)

Hardware and software technology that presents a view of the network that differs from the physical view. So, a personal computer may be allowed to only see systems it is allowed to access. Another common use is making multiple network links appear to be a single link. (See the original article by Dan Kusnetzky here)

Hardware and software technology that hides where storage systems are and what type of device is actually storing applications and data. This technology also makes it possible for many systems to share the same storage devices without knowing that others are also accessing them. This technology also makes it possible to take a snapshot of a live system so that it can be backed up without hindering online or transactional applications. (See the original article by Dan Kusnetzky here)

Hardware and software technology that hides physical hardware configuration from system services, operating systems or applications. This type of Virtualization technology can make one system appear to be many or many systems appear to be a single computing resource to achieve goals ranging from raw performance, high levels of scalability, reliability/availability, agility or consolidation of multiple environments onto a single system. (See the original article by Dan Kusnetzky here)

Dan Kusnetzky had an interesting post last week titled “Virtualization – Trend or Buzzword?” Based on our experiences with customers about virtualized infrastructures, we can relate to Dan’s insights on the subject. In their eagerness to tap into the virtualization trend, companies that are a long way from virtualization solutions are creatively renaming products to get on the virtualization bandwagon.

The mainstream market has yet to fully embrace virtualization technologies, and we suspect that market hype and market jargon may be contributing to this. For mass adoption of virtualization to happen, CIOs need to be comfortable that “virtualization solutions” really are virtualizing, and the language used to describe solution features and functions are clear, concise and credible. After all, they are the ones “signing the checks” and they should know what they’re getting.

Hmmmm…maybe a virtualization glossary might help? Stay tuned...

Dan Kusnetzky at Virtually Speaking had an interesting post yesterday that discussed the terminology behind the phrase “clustering”. It’s an interesting article and might help clear up some of the common misunderstandings about clustering that many decision makers face when dealing with the IT infrastructures of their organizations.

Kusnetzky points out that each of the cluster configurations have value, but none of them are a one stop shop to fulfill your organizations needs. Any business decision maker needs to make sure that they are getting the right solution for their needs

Moral of the story – Don’t become a victim of “Cluster Deception.” Make sure you know what’s best for your IT Infrastructure whether it be clusters or not.

Like Dan, we are also interested in how your organization uses clustering technology. Take our survey and tell us why you cluster.