During the webinar, you will find out how to easily manage Azure VMs, schedule and restore their backups, and centrally monitor Azure and Hyper-V VMs in the same location.
Register now: http://info.5nine.com/webinar-simplify-azure-management-with-5nine-and-starwind
The previous post has covered the Microsoft Storage Spaces configuration process. Now, it’s time to see how you can accelerate your virtualization infrastructure performance and increase its resiliency by combining Virtual SAN (vSAN) with different types of Microsoft Storage Spaces: Simple and Mirror.
[Read the full article](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/starwind-ha-device-on-storage-spaces-performance-testing) by Vitalii Feshchenko, a Post-Sales Support Engineer at StarWind, to learn more.
Split brain is a state when active cluster nodes lose all synchronization and heartbeat connections between them, which may lead to some serious errors. It can be a real nightmare for a system administrator to deal with the split brain consequences. To solve the problem once and for all, StarWind offers several reliable strategies allowing to prevent a split brain syndrome, and one of them is Node Majority Strategy.
Read the full article by Sergey Sanduliak, a Technical Support Engineer at StarWind, to learn how to avoid a split brain.
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.
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
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.
For decades, RAID has dominated enterprise storage, but this technology isn’t a hot topic these days. Does it mean that RAID is gone and forgotten? No, it still is in use, and everyone knows it. Sure, there’re alternatives like RAIN, which beats RAID in some cases. But, does it really mean that it can ditch RAID so far?
Read the full article by Scott Miller, IT strategist and researcher, to learn why RAID still has its disks spinning.
Regardless of Docker’s awesome command-line interface (CLI), some users stick to fancy graphical user interfaces (GUI). This is typical for not only guys new to Docker but also seasoned admins who just prefer GUI to CLI to handle routine tasks. Still, that’s not that easy to pick a GUI to orchestrate Docker containers in Windows environment.
Learn from the recent article by Nicolas Prigent, a Microsoft MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management, about handy GUIs to manage Windows Containers.
While updating, VMware ESXi may display the “No space left on device” error without any good reason. Indeed, you may have pretty much free space when this guy starts nagging. Well, we know what’s going on with your host.
Find out how to resolve the “No space left on device” problem in ESXi hosts in the full article by Alex Samoylenko, a virtualization technology professional.
Two previous articles addressed SMB Direct and cool features brought to it by RDMA. This article is where the story ends. It covers on competing RDMA flavors for use with SMB Direct and contrasts RoCE and iWARP protocols.
Find out more about peculiarities of RDMA extension in SMB Direct in the full article by Didier Van Hoye, an experienced subject matter expert advisor and infrastructure architect.
Install Gitlab: the tool that comes in handy for any admin
Many of us view Gitlab as something that only developers may use. Indeed, these guys love it, but are they the only ones who may find it handy? That’s time to dispel that myth! Gitlab is more than the cool repository for scripts of any size and shape. It is a feature-rich solution, so that won’t be fair to leave that thing on the table.
Find out more about what Gitlab is and how to enable HTTPS and container registry in the full article by Gary Williams, a virtualization, storage, and Windows systems administrator.
These days, businesses do not stick to one location anymore. Such trend pushes companies to build stretched clusters, IT infrastructures spanned across several locations. Such approach enables them to implement better disaster recovery strategies and achieve higher performance. To build such environments, you need fast connection and the solution to use resources of all your remote sites just as they were located in one place. Here, StarWind Virtual SAN comes into play – the solution for building high performing active-active replicated shared storage.
Read the full article by Dmytro Malynka, a Solutions Architect at StarWind, to learn more how to build a stretched cluster with StarWind Virtual SAN, and its benefits.
Talking about SQL Server 2016 features, it won’t be fair to leave Always Encrypted aside. This feature prevents your sensitive data from leaking out and enables to get more freedom for your data placement choices. Always Encrypted comes in handy, when, let’s say, you hire external vendors to administer your SQL server and do not want them to see your sensitive data, or when both your client and data are hosted in Azure. So, if you still do not use it, that’s high time to start!
Read the full article by Mikhail Rodionov, IT engineer focusing on applications and infrastructure support domains, to learn more about SQL Server Always Encrypted benefits and why and when you need it.
Even though numerous Software Defined Storage solutions exist, picking the right one may be kinda of a quest for VMware vSphere users. These guys are typically limited with strict hardware compatibility lists or may need some special skills to deploy and manage such solutions. Also, they may face Windows licensing that can sometimes devastate budgets. Familiar with those pains? Here, free Linux-based StarWind Virtual SAN comes to play. Now, things change, so forget about changing the environment or paying a dime to ensure availability of your apps in vSphere environment!
Learn from our upcoming free webinar how to promote availability of your applications running in VMware vSphere with Linux-based StarWind Virtual SAN
Sometimes, problems may knock in right after upgrading your VMware ESXi. That may be NICs acting weird, Purple Screen of Death, or even both of them. Well, whatever it is, you may be thinking on how to revert things as they had been before. And, VMware provides you an option to do so.
Find out how to roll back VMware ESXi to its previous release in the recent article by Vladan Seget, an IT and Virtualization consultant.
Organizations still tend to use physical tapes for their backups for a number of reasons, however, many companies are willing to take advantage of the cloud to maintain business continuity. The perspective of using virtual tapes means that physical ones could be replaced and backup process will be accelerated. StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL) is a solution that easily integrates into existing infrastructures and significantly reduces the backup costs. Moreover, data safety levels are increasing because of ransomware-resilient virtual tapes used. With StarWind VTL and Veeam Backup & Replication customers get fast backup, granular recovery and huge cost savings, with no change to existing processes with the possibility to save backups right into Microsoft Azure.
Learn from the upcoming webinar about the reasons to extend the tape-based data archives to the cloud along with other useful tips.
Everyone in IT party seems to be excited about Windows Server 2019. Yes, it brings many cool features and improves user experience on the whole. And, you know what, Microsoft has released the new Insider Preview Build! It makes containers work better and brings a new base image to Windows Server. Do not miss the chance to try it out!
Check out the recent article by Karim Buzdar, a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate for Server Infrastructure, to find out more about Windows Server 2019 Insider Preview Build.
Looking for a bit higher performance for Windows system? Well, try optimizing it with VMware OS Optimization Tool! That’s a small tool with enormous possibilities created for more than just to optimize Windows systems for use with VMware Horizon View. Basically, you can disable some Windows services to make your system run more “light” and save some more resource for the REALLY useful apps.
Learn more about how to set up and use VMware OS Optimization Tool in the full article by Vladan Seget, an IT and Virtualization consultant
We all are excited about the upcoming Windows Server 2019 release. The new server OS brings many cool things to your IT infrastructures and makes some tasks far more easy. For instance, there will be the Storage Migration Service feature introduced. Well, server migration is kinda of a pain for some. There should be a lot of scripts written and some things mapped between servers. Forget about that hassle! Storage Migration Service makes a file server migration as easy as a pie.
Check out the full article by Romain Serre, a Senior Consultant, how to make a file server with Storage Migration Service.
