AMS.NET Blog

VDI Enables Workforce Flexibility- Work Anywhere, Anytime

Work is no longer a physical place you go to every day. Work is something you do whether you are at the office, on the road, at the local coffee shop or at home. Just as the place of work lines are blurred so is the line between work and personal time. Employees are working after hours, on the weekend in between family activities and even on vacation. VDI and the virtualization of Unified Communications support workforce flexibility and allow employees to work anywhere, anytime.

Virtualization began with servers and with further advancements in hypervisor technology; organizations now can virtualize desktops and mission critical applications such as Unified Communications (UC). Since UC delivers real time communications with call control and instant messaging, careful consideration should be made to the platform that supports this virtualized application so that it provides high availability and quality of service. A virtualized infrastructure should support virtualization features such as vMotion and Storage vMotion for high availability, optimization of resources and consistent security.   

VDI coupled with virtualized Unified Communication applications enable employees to access company resources from virtually anywhere, from any device at any time. From a company laptop, employee owned device or a thin client, employees can access their desktop. Along with user and organization benefits, a virtualized UC solution minimizes the traditional desktop maintenance. The desktop image is pushed from the virtualized data center. If there is a breach of security or malware attack, the session can be terminated and another desktop pushed to the user. Integrated Unified Communication phones and virtual desktop thin clients provide a smaller footprint on the user’s desk and further reduce IT maintenance and support.

Delivering UC services with VDI on a virtualized architecture enables the flexibility required of today’s workforce. Successfully delivering these applications requires planning, consideration of the virtualized data center and the virtualized desktop infrastructure. To learn more, please join us at one of our VDI Technical Seminars coming to a location near you.

Top 3 Storage Musts to Boost IT Efficiency

Organizations of all sizes are experiencing ever-increasing data growth and a growing demand for storage. Increased use of video conferencing and video surveillance in the workplace along with government compliance requirements have resulted in an overwhelming amount of data that must be organized, protected and archived. IT is tasked to manage this storage demand with limited IT staff and budgets. Unified storage as a part of a virtualized infrastructure has been significant to enabling IT organizations to accommodate this growth. In addition to consolidation, organizations demand that their storage solutions be flexible, efficient and easy to use. 

1. Flexibility
   Organizations run many different applications with various network protocols that require storage including iSCSI, FCoE, NFS, and more. Unified storage consolidates legacy block storage, file servers and direct-attached application storage and enables organizations to cost-effectively manage multi-protocol file systems and multi-protocol block storage access. Flash-optimized solutions deliver the highest system performance and the lowest storage cost with auto-tiering. With Unified Storage, IT managers don’t need to decide between cost and performance.
2. Efficiency
   IT managers require that their storage solutions are efficient and support virtualization features such as thin provisioning and automated data movement. Block compression and file-level deduplication are important to reducing disk space and allowing IT to regain capacity for the most efficient use of storage resources.
3. Easy To Use
   Storage solutions must have a centralized, simple to use management interface to setup and manage storage pools. Unified storage solutions deliver snapshot capabilities, replication and wizard-based management tools for provisioning. Unified storage solutions must integrate with VMware or other virtualization software to ensure an efficient server and storage virtualized infrastructure. Application administrators or generalists can manage storage pools.

Storage used to be a balancing act between performance and cost. Today, IT efficiency is a top priority and is solved with a unified storage solution. Unified storage solutions have the flexibility to support all types of applications, the efficiency to make the most efficient use of resources and an easy to use management interface to simplify storage management.

Public or Private Cloud Computing? You don't have to decide.

When we talk to our customers about virtualization or cloud computing, their answers to the question, “private or public?” are somewhat cloudy.  Public clouds have raised some security and compliance concerns while private clouds often require new operational processes. Both cloud computing models have their strengths and weaknesses therefore most organizations will likely use both or a hybrid cloud architecture.

Private Cloud
Private clouds or virtualized data centers reside on-premise or virtually outside of the enterprise data center. Users can access the private cloud via a secure HTTP browser or if outside the firewall via VPN.  Private clouds are inherently more secure than other models because data resides in the enterprise data center. IT remains in control and can maintain regulatory compliance. There are some operational process changes that can be challenging. With the integration of server and network operations in data center, the distinct roles of a server administrator and an IT administrator now overlap.

Public Cloud
A public cloud is a model where a service provider makes resources, infrastructure and applications, available to one or more organizations over the Internet for a fee. This model allows an organization to handle resource peaks and valleys but security and control become concerns with critical data being transmitted over the internet into the cloud.

Hybrid Cloud
The hybrid cloud takes advantage of both models and allows organizations to maintain secure sensitive or critical applications on their private cloud and utilize the public cloud for additional resources in high peak periods. While a hybrid cloud sounds ideal, there are still challenges with interoperability and with management that can monitor both platforms. Many organizations are waiting until standards are developed before embracing a truly hybrid cloud infrastructure. 

There are many considerations when deciding whether a private cloud, a public cloud or a hybrid cloud best fit your organization. Building a cloud infrastructure is a journey and often an organizations first step is virtualizing the enterprise data center and building a private cloud infrastructure. AMS.NET can help you evaluate your current infrastructure, discuss your applications and business challenges and help recommend a solution that will meet your current needs and allow for an integrated hybrid cloud in the future.

The Difference a Private Cloud Makes

The difference in cloud computing in comparison to traditional data centers is computing resources that aren’t specifically tied to a physical box. IT professionals don’t need to be as concerned about where these resources “live.” That’s because the private cloud allows IT to pool applications and resources together within a shared-hardware environment where resources can be allocated based on need, without dependency on a single box. That’s a big difference from traditional application deployments where each application required its own server, many of which sat (or still do) using only a small percentage of their capacity.

When you look at the physical components of cloud computing, they look a lot like typical hardware such as boxes, memory, keyboard and screen. But when IT pulls these resources together, they have the capability to build a “super” resource pool. This introduces new levels of performance because resources are no longer limited to the functionality available on a specific box. It also means IT can multiply the resources they have available without adding more physical servers. Now IT can maximize the demand for resources based on need, rather on the existence of an application.

Virtualization is a component of the private cloud. Virtualization is what allows IT this latitude to shift the location of resources to another virtual server (VM) when capacity needs expand. This level of flexibility allows IT to gain optimal productivity out of the data center without adding new hardware.

Here’s an example:

Let’s take an email server that is used heavily during the business day, but sits idle after the workday ends. The server then sits dormant, but is using power and energy as if it is still running.

Now, consider that you may have a backup system that runs at night, sitting idle during the day.

With virtualization, I can use the same computing resources to do both, maximizing compute cycles based on demand for the services IT needs to deliver to the business. This capability serves to reduce the cost of power, space requirements and hardware costs.

Additional benefits of a private cloud include:

• Reduced maintenance of hardware
• Reduced application disruption when issues with servers occur
• Perform maintenance during regular hours by moving virtual machines.
• Scale is no longer limited by rack space or time requirements to build, test and launch new servers
• Higher availability of services and applications
• Reduced power consumption
• IT can support more applications in the future with less footprint

If you haven’t considered a private cloud to help your IT department gain efficiencies and do more with less, there are a lot of great reasons why you should.

Top Reasons Why SMBs Transition to a Private Cloud

Organizations both large and small face similar IT challenges including managing the increasing demand for new IT capabilities with fewer resources. Sometimes of greater emphasis to small and medium size businesses (SMBs) is the need to secure business critical applications and data along with working more efficiently or doing more with less. Transitioning to a private cloud addresses these challenges and provides SMBs the virtual infrastructure to not only better manage resources and enhance security but also provide business agility and continuity.

Many SMBs are transitioning to the private cloud for these reasons:

• Better Resource Management
  A private cloud infrastructure delivers a centralized management platform in which IT can provision, monitor and manage resources for the entire infrastructure and respond to issues when they arise. Automated virtualization features such as VMware DRS dynamically allocate compute resources based on business priorities and pre-defined service levels eliminating the previous manual process while ensuring business users have the performance they need. With better resource management, IT resources can provide better service levels and be available for strategic projects.
  
  
• Enhanced Security
  Security is of utmost importance to SMBs and also one of the main objections to public cloud computing. Private cloud infrastructures provide many of the same cloud computing benefits and keep your critical data behind the firewall within your data center. When layering on applications such as desktop virtualization, data security is maintained. Virtual desktops are created, updated and maintained in the data center. IT sets policies that are updated and applied each time the virtual desktop is launched. Virtual machines can also be wiped out after each user session to ensure data integrity is protected.
  
  
• Business Agility
  One of the drivers of private cloud computing is the ability to quickly adjust resources or scale to meet the needs of the organization. A private cloud built on virtualization, unified computing and unified storage allows IT to rapidly provision resources and deliver new applications for faster time to market. Shared resources, built-in automation and centralized management provide private cloud computing and enable the agility organizations require to remain competitive.
  
  
• Business Continuity
  The fact is that when the business infrastructure and applications are down, the organization's production is delayed and the company loses money. Quickly recovering from an equipment failure or a natural disaster is critical to all organizations. With automated VMware features such as High Availability for automated restart of applications and Fault Tolerance for continuous availability without any data loss or downtime to applications, data can be quickly recovered and day-to-day business can continue.

Whether you are a SMB organization or a large enterprise, your organization can benefit from Private Cloud computing and realize increased productivity, enhanced security and overall improved business agility and continuity.

Why is it called the 'Journey to the Private Cloud'?

Building a private cloud infrastructure has been coined with the phrase 'Journey to the Private Cloud' because of the implementation stages involved and the transformation to both the IT organization and business alike. Most organizations have virtualized some resources and a number have virtualized their entire data center and still have only begun the journey.

Virtualization is the foundation of a private cloud and the starting point on this journey. By eliminating the traditional one server to one application model and pooling compute and storage resources, organizations consolidate servers, reduce their data center footprint and, in turn, lower their power and cooling costs.

As organizations move to stage 2, they are focused on business production. Applications are virtualized, resources are centrally managed and basic IT tasks are automated to realize greater OpEx savings. Cisco UCS is an excellent way to integrate compute, network and storage into a unified system to further unify IT operations and support improved business productivity. IT can efficiently deliver services, provide faster time-to-market and increase their alignment with business initiatives.

Moving closer to the private cloud, organizations begin to layer on applications such as voice, unified communications, desktop virtualization and more. Desktop virtualization or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) delivers user desktops from the virtualized data center for improved performance, increased security and a lower total cost of ownership.

To truly achieve private cloud computing, IT organizations integrate automation by providing self-service protals and chargeback models. Also at this stage, organizations consider a hybrid cloud computing model where some services are migrated to a public cloud and those that require more control and security remain on the private cloud.

Virtual computing providers such as AMS.NET can help you towards the ultimate goal of private cloud computing. With a proven migration plan in place, AMS.NET delivers complete implementation services including assessments, pilots, deployment plans and support. We realize that this is a journey and have aligned our services to help you along the Journey to the Private Cloud.

Are you struggling to keep up with your server refresh cycle?

If your answer is yes, from what we're hearing you are not alone! A typical server refresh cycle is 4 years. With flat or shrinking budgets, organizations are looking for ways to reduce costs and delaying a server refresh is often considered. This isn't always the answer.

When the life of a server is stretched beyond 4 years, often performance isn't up to par with business applications, equipment reaches end-of-life or end-of-support and reliability or maintenance costs become a concern.

Server consolidation through a virtualized infrastructure is a better alternative. In a virtualized architecture or private cloud, hardware resources are pooled and dynamically allocated when and where they're needed. Moving away from a traditional 1:1 server to application environment maximizes resources and consolidates servers. Organizations realize both CapEx and OpEx savings from fewer servers and a smaller data center footprint with lower power and cooling and requirements.

Beyond cost savings, a virtualized infrastructure avoids performance issues of aging equipment. In fact, Dynamic Resource Management delivers improved performance and business agility. Resources are mapped to business requirements and can quickly be changed as a business scales or changes.

Reliability concerns are also circumvented with a virtual infrastructure. With fewer servers, servers can be updated on a regular schedule minimizing equipment failure and keeping equipment under standard maintenance contracts. In the event of an equipment failure, resources are automatically reallocated and affected virtual machines are restarted.

Instead of pushing our your server refresh, consider virtualizing your infrastructure and realize more than just cost savings.

Top 3 Reasons Why Private Clouds Make Sense

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider information.

There are four standard deployment models that are widely debated including public cloud, community cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud. Essentially the public cloud is delivered by a provider who makes computing resources available over the Internet to the general public. Generally a user pays for the resources as they use them. On the other hand a private cloud is operated solely for an organization. A community cloud is a cloud infrastructure shared by several organizations and supports a specific community. When an organization best utilizes a combination of these models, it’s called a hybrid cloud.

Over the last few years the definitions and benefits or risks of cloud computing has been widely debated by analysts and manufacturers. The pay as you go model of a public cloud is attractive but there are concerns over data security and latency with critical applications. A private cloud preserves the value of existing investments, provides resource pooling and automation to improve data center maintenance but doesn’t eliminate it all together. Definitions and best practices around cloud computing will change as the technology continues to evolve. The phrase Journey to the Cloud might be the most apropos since it considers your requirements and needs are changing as the technology and market evolve.

When planning your journey to cloud computing, consider these 3 reasons why private clouds make sense:

1. Agility
   One of the drivers of cloud computing in general is the ability to quickly adjust resources or scale to meet the needs of the organization. A private cloud built on virtualization, unified computing and unified storage allows IT to rapidly provision resources and deliver new applications for faster time to market. Shared resources, built-in automation and centralized management provide cloud computing and enable the agility organizations require to remain competitive.
   
   
2. Security
   Top of mind to most organizations, especially government, healthcare and education, is the security of applications and critical data. In a cloud computing model, once your data enters the cloud, it can circulate through hundreds of systems. In a private cloud, security is maintained and even enhanced. Data resides within the data center behind the firewall and as data moves from virtual machine to virtual machine, the security profile is maintained.
   
   
3. Control
   With a private cloud solution, you retain the ability to place each of your workloads in the optimal location and the ability to set service levels to ensure applications and users receive optimal results.

However the cloud is defined, it is clear that cloud computing provides a vastly more efficient and flexible way for IT to meet escalating business needs. Wherever you are on your Journey to the Cloud, consider building a private cloud solution to preserve your existing investments, improve agility and ensure security and control.

What is the real value of VDI?

It’s more than just cost savings.

As Paul Maritz, President and CEO of VMware, recently spoke about at VMworld 2010, most organizations are on a virtualization journey. Generally IT approaches virtualization in 3 stages: IT Production, Business Production and IT as a Service which delivers the greatest business value. In the IT production stage, organizations are consolidating servers and storage devices and building a private cloud with the primary goal of reducing capital expenditures. Migrating applications and implementing desktop virtualization occurs farther down this virtualization path and delivers more than just cost savings. The real value of a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is the increased security, improved IT services and business agility it offers your organization.

Increased Security
Desktop virtualization provides inherent security by housing data within the private cloud and delivering virtual desktops to a local PC or device for execution. Virtual machines are created, updated and maintained in the data center. IT sets policies and creates a single master image that is updated in real-time and applied to the virtual desktop each time it’s launched. Security policies can be configured by user role, location, network and device. Further security features include settings to block application installation and in the event of an unauthorized installation, virtual machines can be wiped out after each user session to ensure data integrity is protected. Integration with smart card technology can provide another level of authentication if necessary. Improved management and security controls support compliance requirements and organizations that require tight data security.

Improved IT Services
VDI simplifies desktop management and improves IT services. IT manages and updates the OS and applications one time, from one location and the master image pushes out the updates to all virtual machines the next time they are launched. Virtual desktops can be quickly provisioned and deployed to local and remote users. By centrally managing virtual desktops from within the data center, VDI eliminates the costly and time consuming desktop support of a traditional desktop environment and allows IT to provide faster service to the business and end-users.

Greater Business Agility
Delivering desktops with desktop virtualization via the private cloud delivers greater business agility. Virtualization capabilities enable IT to quickly provision and deliver desktops as they are requested. Live migration capabilities allow for updates and patches to be performed without downtime along with providing business continuity in the event of a system failure. With VDI, IT can quickly respond and scale resources to the demands of the business.

Cost is certainly a factor to be considered when embarking on a virtualization journey but it’s not the whole story. Also of prime importance to organizations, VDI delivers increased security, improved IT services and greater business agility.

Key Virtualization Capabilities that Transform Business

According to companies that have implemented virtualization; simplification, speed and sustainability are just as important to business growth as cost savings. Doing more with less is no longer a distasteful phrase when used within the context of virtualization.

In fact, if you can answer yes to any of these questions, you should look into the benefits beyond hardware costs reduction to build the business case for your company.

Is the time it takes getting services deployed to end users delaying business objectives?

Is your IT organization spending more time maintaining systems instead of supporting new business initiatives?

Are you having difficulty scaling capacity based on fluctuating demand?

Is it imperative that you have a disaster recovery plan to ensure the continuity of systems during a system failure?

Take a look how virtualization can help mitigate those issues:

Simplification

Simplifying processes and making IT more efficient is appealing especially when resources are limited. Virtualization standardizes processes and simplifies management. Virtual machine templates allow you to easily clone and create additional virtual machines reducing the amount of time to build or upgrade a server from days or weeks to hours. The use of templates also ensures that virtual machines are created consistently and avoid potential errors that occur when machines are built by hand. Virtualized architectures are centrally managed from an integrated management platform. IT administrators can simplify virtual data center operations across virtual and physical environments with policy-driven administration and automated IT processes.

Speed

By simplifying processes, IT is able to speed up deployment of applications and servers and shorten the time to market of IT services. Scaling services to respond to business needs is also done more quickly in a virtualized environment. Servers are easily upgraded, added or removed based on business requirements. Not only does virtualization speed up IT provisioning and management, actual virtual machines and applications run faster. By utilizing shared compute and processing resources, applications get the resources they need even in peak times.

Sustainability

Redundancy and disaster recovery used to be a costly and difficult task. With virtualization, organizations have disaster recovery on all applications by allowing failed virtual machines to automatically restart on new virtual machines ensuring critical business applications are available. A virtual infrastructure can also act as a backup for a physical infrastructure in the event of a system failure.

 

The overriding business reason for virtualization is cost savings from fewer servers, longer refresh cycle and lower power and cooling costs. Many organizations are also finding business value from the simplification, speed and sustainability benefits of a virtualization solution. A virtualized architecture will allow you to reduce capital and operating costs, speed up the delivery of IT services and provide a true disaster recovery solution – all transforming your business.