One of the initial questions any system administrator would think of is something like “Do I really need deduplication?”. In fact, the answer depends on particular environment peculiarities. To figure out how much resources you save, StarWind offers a great freeware tool – StarWind Deduplication analyzer.
To learn more, read the full article by Boris Yurchenko, a Tech Support Engineer at StarWind.
In fact, connecting iSCSI targets in Microsoft environment is not rocket science, but requires time and efforts. First, you are to add target discovery portals (a dozen of clicks), then proceed with connecting the targets (numerous clicks again)… and you need to repeat these operations again and again! Sounds not that good, right? Fortunately, this annoying procedure can be automated.
Read the full article by Boris Yurchenko, a Support Engineer at StarWind, to find out how to automate Windows iSCSI connection.
How to create developer and test environments in minutes with Azure DevTest LabsAzure DevTest Labs is a service that helps developers and testers quickly create environments in Azure while minimizing waste and controlling cost. The only thing to do is to configure Azure DevTest Labs to allow developers deploy only a specific version of SQL Server which is called a VM image. When they need a new VM image, you simply add this image to the Lab and it’s over! The Developers are autonomous and can create their own servers without interacting with the production environment.
Read the full article by Nicolas Prigent, a Microsoft MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management, to learn how to use Azure DevTest Labs.
OK, so you’re a VMware administrator looking to free your CPU resources to run more VMs in your environment. No problem, this can be effectively achieved by offloading network I/O to RDMA hardware. So what should you do? Just replace iSCSI with iSER. In this way, data will be transferred directly from the application memory to the network adapter, avoiding few additional network layers and remarkably lowering system’s CPU utilization, allowing to increase VM density.
Join this webinar and learn how to increase your VMware VM density!
Storage tiering allows ensuring maximum storage utilization efficiency while also improving its performance. What is more, by combining StarWind Virtual SAN with tiered Microsoft Storage Spaces, you ensure the high level of redundancy and fault tolerance for your data.
Learn how to ensure your data high availability with StarWind Virtual SAN tiered storage.
Migrating on-premises VHD files to Microsoft Azure may be quite a headache for system administrators. The remedy to this problem lies in PowerShell and Azure Portal. Simple as that! Using some PowerShell commands and Azure Portal functionality, you can accomplish that task as “1-2-3”.
Read the full article by Nicolas Prigent, a Microsoft MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management, to learn how to migrate your VHD file to Azure easily.
We all clearly understand that underlying storage performance determines how fast your mission-critical applications can go. So, Intel SSD DC P3700 provides the highest performance out of all Intel NVMe Data Center-focused product line, sure with a proper SCSI controller. In this article, we’ll try to find the SCSI controller that ensures the highest throughput, lowest latency, and a minimal processing cost, allowing our NVMe drive to show its best.
Read the full article by Dmytro Khomenko, a Pre-Sales Engineer at StarWind, to learn how to drive Intel SSD DC P3700 performance to the max.
Achieve unrivalled performance with StarWind Fractal SAN powered by Mellanox. Recently, StarWind has released its Enterprise Storage Appliance, codename Fractal SAN. Running on top of Ceph and being powered by Mellanox, this solution ensures unmatched performance and resiliency.
Watch this video and gain insight in Mellanox and StarWind joint solution.
Why choose either private or public cloud if you can use benefits of them both? That, actually, is what StarWind achieves with its recent solution, StarWind Hybrid Cloud. It allows complementing your on-premises IT infrastructure with any public cloud, be it Azure, AWS, or GoogleCloudPlatform. Now, you can scale compute and storage resources whenever you want by means of the public cloud instead of buying new hardware. StarWind Hybrid Cloud keeps your data highly available and secure by providing active-active data replication between on-premises and public cloud.
Learn about StarWind Hybrid Cloud, the solution combining the best of private and public clouds.
Need to manage your IT infrastructure remotely? No problem, StarWind provides Web-based management functionality allowing you to access your StarWind environment from any point of the world using any device with an HTML5-capable web browser. In this part, we’ll describe how to get the full control over the storage-related operations from any remote location by deploying StarWind Virtual Storage Appliance.
Read the full article to learn how to manage your StarWind-based infrastructure remotely using StarWind Virtual Storage Appliance.
As we all know, Microsoft Failover Cluster is a group of independent computers that work together to increase the availability and scalability of clustered roles. In its latest Failover Cluster 2016 version, Microsoft has added some new features that will provide your environment with additional resiliency and redundancy. These include Storage QoS, Shared VHDX, VM Compute Resiliency, VM Storage Resiliency, and many more.
Read the full article by Vitalii Feshchenko, a Post-Sales Support Engineer at StarWind, to learn more about the new feature in Microsoft Failover Cluster 2016.
Nowadays, IT administrators should be able to keep a finger on the pulse of their environment 24/7 no matter where they are. To achieve this, StarWind has added Web-based management functionality allowing to access your StarWind-based infrastructure from any remote location and from any device with an HTML5-capable web browser. All you need to do is deploy StarWind Gateway VM or StarWind Virtual Storage Appliance, and you get the full control over the storage-related operations.
Read the full article to learn how to deploy StarWind Gateway VM and get a remote access to your StarWind infrastructure.
Back in the day, the Redundant Array of Independent Disks technology, or simply RAID, was considered the king of the storage landscape. Now, however, we see some evident and growing challenges around common RAID levels that are pushing storage makers to turn to alternative data protection mechanisms.
Read the full article by Karim Buzdar, a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate for Server Infrastructure to learn if RAID is the right solution to protect your data.
Microsoft Intune is a service allowing to manage the mobility of your IT environment, including mobile devices and laptops. All you need to do is enroll the users’ devices in Intune and you're good to go: deploy new apps, set their protection policies or monitor all your applications on devices where users use Intune.
Read the full article by Florent Appointaire, a Microsoft Engineer specialized in Cloud Technologies, to learn how to work with Microsoft Intune.
vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) is a pre-configured Linux virtual machine designed for managing the whole vSphere infrastructure. Over several VCSA releases, VMware managed to make this product equal to the Windows-based one and pushes the development even further. However, many VMware admins are also Microsoft guys and like the graphical user interface to work with. However, we have 5 hints that will help you managing vCSA just as easily as you do with the Windows-based vCenter server.
Read the full article by Vladan Seget, an IT and Virtualization consultant, to learn how to manage VMware vCenter Server Appliance with ease.
Migrating your VMs from one hypervisor to another may be quite a complicated task if there’s no decent virtual machine converter at hand. Fortunately, there are various V2V tools allowing to turn this process into a simple thing. But, when choosing a V2V converter, there are several factors you should take into consideration.
Read the full article to learn how to choose a V2V converter that will become a perfect fit for your needs.
Throughout 2017, StarWind has added several features to its Software-Defined Storage Solution – StarWind Virtual SAN, that takes its functionality to an entirely new level. Now, StarWind Virtual SAN not only provides high-performing and fault-tolerant storage for VMs but also brings best of private and public clouds to your existing infrastructure. Moreover, with StarWind VSAN, submitting support tickets becomes a legacy since it’s covered by ProActive Support allowing to resolve issues before they even appear.
Check out: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-new-features-and-extended-functionality
During its lifetime, any system reaches a point when it needs to be upgraded, either in terms of hardware or software. So, if you want to take your Windows Failover Cluster functionality to a next level, Cluster Rolling Upgrade will come in handy. The procedure allows upgrading Windows Failover Cluster nodes from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016 with no production interruption.
Read the full article by Boris Yurchenko, a Support Engineer at StarWind, to learn how to upgrade your Windows Failover Cluster with no downtime.
StarWind Hybrid Cloud provides true hybrid cloud functionality for your existing Hyper-V infrastructure by extending it to the Azure public cloud. StarWind replicates the data between the locations, allowing to migrate workloads and create a Highly Available cluster on-premises and Azure. Furthermore, the solution is exceptionally simple to manage thanks to 5nine Manager.
Watch this video to learn more about all the benefits of StarWind Hybrid Cloud: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resource-library/manage-your-azure-hybrid-cloud-workloads-with-5nine-and-starwind
BitLocker it is the encryption technology from Microsoft, allowing to encrypt the host’s underlying storage logical volumes and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). By utilizing this technology, your data gets reliable protection from unauthorized access to physical and clustered logical volumes.
Read the full article by Ivan Ischenko, a Technical Support Engineer at StarWind, to learn how to improve your data security with Microsoft BitLocker.
