virtualisation

• Are you looking to virtualise your network in part of full?
• Are you trying to understand what can and can't be virtualised?
• Do you want to have your network assessed to see how virtualisation could consolidate your servers and improve availability?
• Do you have problems with VM sprawl?
• Do you have visibility of how applications are performing within the virtual machine?

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NewBase are a Brisbane based VMware Enterprise Partner and Vizioncore SilverPartner with a strong focus on virtualising networks to make them highly available. 

We have trained and certified staff who design, deploy and consult on virtualisation solutions.   NewBase are focused on how information technology can be used to benefit the business - essentially to have IT recognised as a Business Enabler, not a cost centre.  Virtualisation is a great way a help achieve that.  As a VMware Partner we have achieved Enterprise Level status, and we combine the best of different technology solutions to assist organisations in achieving their requirements of a highly available, adaptive network.

We can help you understand the transition to a virtualised network and what the benefits are both for the business and for the IT Department. 

Cost effectiveness is important, and our Virtualisation Capacity Assessments will give you the information you require to  make an informed decision on what virtualisation can do for your business. Our regular Lunch and Learn events will help you gain a good understanding of what virtualisation offers and the benefits it can provide your organisation.

What is virtualisation?

One of the growth areas of business technology recently has been in server virtualisation.  In simple terms, server virtualisation creates a virtual server, so instead of the server hardware being tied to only one operating system and set of applications at a time it can run multiple virtual servers on the same hardware at the same time.  This could mean you are running Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2000 Server, and Linux all on the same box, or it could be all the same operating system but instead of separate hardware servers for different applications, they could all run on the same piece of hardware, just in virtualised environments. 

• Virtualisation presents virtualised hardware to operating systems thereby rendering the OS and applications non-dependent on the underlying hardware.
• The OS “sees” the virtualised drivers as actual hardware. The drivers presented appear to the OS as a generic PC regardless of whatever brand of hardware it is running on.
• This seemingly small change has incredible benefits.
• Virtualisation is NOT emulation.

This allows greater adaptability for an organisation as new applications can be tested and launched more rapidly.  With the growth in use of virtualisation organisations can reduce their server numbers by running multiple servers on the same hardware. While virtualisation is not suited to all situations in reality there are only a small number of applications that don't sit well in a virtual environment.  Most businesses can implement this at least in part, which can reduce your hardware usage and save power.  The diagram below illustrates the difference between a traditional 'single server, single application' setup and a virtualised server environment. 

In fact virtualisation technology now has the capacity to switch off some servers when they are not being utilised and to direct the users to another server, bringing the downed server back on when the demand increases – this reduces the power consumption of hardware at times when it is not being needed.  VMware are the leaders in the virtualisation space, but with Citrix purchasing XenSource this has increased the offerings available.  NewBase are a VMware Enterprise Partner, so are well equipped to assist with virtualisation assessments, design and deployment.

Take a look at this VMware document on how virtualisation can reduce server costs:

Reducing Server Total Cost of Ownership with VMware Virtualisation Software
This VMware white paper examines how virtualisation software reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) in server environments and provides almost immediate return on investment (ROI).

Transforming Business Continuity with VMware Infrastructure and Vizioncore

Data sheet on how VMware and Vizioncore together provide a solution for business continuity.

Finding Out More - Lunch and Learn Sessions

NewBase and VMware are jointly holding regular lunch and learn sessions in Brisbane to illustrate the benefits that virtualisation can provide, including virtualising Exchange, Disaster Recovery, Advanced Virtualisation Technologies, and a non technical Business Focused look at Virtualisation.  To find out more about when these lunch and learns are on subscribe to our lunch and learn updates by sending an email to info@newbase.com.au

Our next Virtualisation Lunch and Learn sessions are on October 17th (Virtualisation Overview) and October 24th (VMware - the Roadmap Ahead) in the Brisbane CBD.

To find out about attending email to events@newbase.com.au

Virtualisation Capacity Assessments

For organisations that are unsure about the benefits that virtualisation will provide we recommend undergoing a Virtualisation Capacity Assessment . 

A Virtualisation Capacity Assessment will provide an understanding of how server consolidation would effect your environment and the many benefits it will provide.  

We will assess your current environment, performance, utilisation and provide an informative feedback report including a consolidated design plan based on your network requirements.

Intended for organisations who are:

• Planning future environment refresh projects
• Interested in server consolidation and the associated business benefits
• Interested in reducing the environmental footprint of their environments

In order to make the Virtualisation Capacity Assessment (VCA) seamless to your business and infrastructure, NewBase will provide a pre-configured locked down laptop device ready for connection to your network to enable the gathering of infrastructure performance metrics for the VCA.  No client hardware is required.

To organise a Virtualisation Capacity Assessment contact NewBase on (07) 3216 0776 or email to info@newbase.com.au

High Availability

One area of increasing interest that is often overlooked is providing high availability through use of virtualisation to support Business Continuity.

VMware, the leaders in the virtualisation space, have a High Availability (HA) offering that provides easy to use, cost effective high availability for applications/servers  running in virtual machine  environments. In the event of server resource failure, affected virtual machines are automatically  seamlessly migrated  to other production server  resources, thus ensuring high availability and business continuity to users. 

 It works by continuously monitoring all servers  within a  server resource pool and detecting server failures. An agent placed on each server maintains a “heartbeat” with the other server  in the resource pool and a loss of “heartbeat” initiates the  seamless migration  process of all affected virtual machines on other server  resources. VMware  automatically manages sufficient resources  within the resource pool at all times to be able to migrate virtual machines on different physical server  resources in the event of server failure. Combining VMware with software from Vizioncore, can replicate the server images to provide an affordable offsite DR strategy.

Benefits:

• Minimise downtime and IT service disruption while eliminating the need for dedicated stand-by hardware and installation of additional software.
• Provide uniform high availability  / business continuity across the entire virtualised IT environment without the cost and complexity of failover solutions tied to either operating systems  or specific applications.
• Automatic detection of server failures. Automate the monitoring of physical server availability. HA detects server failures and initiates the virtual machine  migration without any human intervention.
• Resource checks. Ensure that capacity is always available in order to restart all virtual machines affected by server failure. HA continuously monitors capacity utilisation and “reserves” spare capacity to be able to restart virtual machines. 
• Hardware independent.  Unlike standard "Clustering" solutions which are hardware dependant, VMware virtual environments are hardware independent, enabling clients to use a mix of hardware technologies (brands, specifications etc.) within the server resource pool environment. 

Virtualisation of Citrix:

Contrary to what many people think, NewBase have found that Citrix XenApp / Presentation Server can be successfully deployed on virtualised servers - we have done it with VMware VI3, and this speeds up the process of deploying Citrix environments and there is no loss of performance.

Virtualisation of Microsoft Exchange:

Exchange 2007 is a major jump from previous versions, requiring 64 bit servers and to provide high availability is much more complex than with 2003.  However, there is a way to avoid many of the challenges, and the hardware overhead - virtualise it.   We have had great success with the virtualisation of Exchange 2007 - if you are looking to go down this path then contact NewBase.  We are holding Lunch and Learn events focused on Exchange 2007 virtualisation as well, check out the next event on our Events page.

Desktop and Application Virtualisation

While most of the focus has been on server virtualisation, the area of desktop and application virtualisation is rising in prominence.  We see this as an area that will become increasingly relevant to many organisations utilising technologies like application streaming and even streaming of desktop operating systems. VMware lead the way with  their VDI/Virtual Desktop Manager product but with Microsoft's acquisition of Softricity and their SoftGrid product, and Citrix's purchase of Ardence (now called Provisioning Manager) there is added activity in terms of offerings in this space. 

In fact Citrix's traditional Presentation Server product provides application virtualisation (applications that are not actually running on the user's desktop) and the introduction of application streaming with Presentation Server Platinum Edition increases the options available.

Check out the latest on some of the technologies we work with at NewBase Updates

To obtain Informative Reports on relevant technologies and how they can help you overcome business challenges take a look at some of the reports we have available in PDF format here.

NewBase are based in Brisbane, Queensland, but provide services throughout Australia.

Citrix Consulting, Disaster Recovery, Microsoft networking, Email Archiving, Firewall, Intrusion Prevention, Optimisation, Clustering, Support Agreements, Storage Area Networks SAN, Thin Client Computing, Content Filtering, Small Business Server, Exchange, SQL Server, Blade Servers, Virtualisation, Secure Remote Access, VMware Services, Vizioncore vRanger Pro, vReplicator, vFoglight implementation..