For some time now, Microsoft has made a single-node configuration available for its cloud service Azure Stack HCI. The name is somewhat misleading since a cluster requires two or more servers to form a group for high availability. Nonetheless, this version is good for dev, test, proof of concept, or initial setup tweaking for further scaling.

Read the article by Brandon Lee, a virtualization expert, on the idea, features, use cases, and benefits of Azure Stack HCI single-node cluster configuration.

Serenity Insurance, a U.S.-based insurance company, had aging 8-year-old servers with no redundancy in place. This factor put its production at risk of losing critical medical data and applications. Implementing StarWind HCI Appliance (HCA), Serenity Insurance moves to hyperconvergence, builds a remotely supported and managed IT infrastructure, and on top of everything else, unlocks a new customer base with no threat to its data and apps.

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

Business continuity today largely depends on data availability. There are multiple ways Microsoft allows you to achieve that with its Azure cloud services. Among many disaster resistance options, if you use more than one Azure Region, you can use disaster recovery in Azure Site Recovery to replicate your virtual machine (VM) from one region to another.

See the quick guide by Nicolas Prigent, a three-time Microsoft MVP, on how to replicate an Azure VM to another Azure Region using the disaster recovery feature.

The 1st season of the cost-free StarWind “Hyperconverged Infrastructure. Educational Episodes” project is coming to an end. In the last 6th video, we did something extra special for you: we discuss all the tips so you can start building your own production environment. But for this, you need to choose the right way for HCI in your IT strategy - virtualization or containerization.

The answer is in the episode, already available for viewing at this link. Watch the video and find out about virtualization, hypervisors, containers, Docker and Kubernetes, and more.

Windows 11 2H22 includes several new elements that make its installation into vSphere 8 and then the creation of a VMware Golden Image much easier. Before that, the OS missed some drivers that required more juggling to make things work. Now, it includes the VMware PVSCSI and VMXNET3 drivers and other stuff to fix previous issues.

Read the article by Vladan Seget, a virtualization expert, on the tips for creating a VMware Golden Image for your Windows 11 in your vSphere 8.0.

TrustRadius has included StarWind HCI Appliance in its Best Software 2022! The software-centric hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution from StarWind is singled out as the go-to data center option for modern SMEs. The products for the list were chosen based on customer satisfaction, performance via reviews, and respective market fit.

Click the link to learn about the TrustRadius Best Software 2022 Awards and how StarWind receiving several of them can help your future IT infrastructure decision-making.

Trumid Technologies, LLC., a U.S.-based financial technology company, had end-of-life (EOL) servers that challenged its continuous business operation. The company needed a virtual shared storage solution to create a hyperconverged IT environment. Using StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN), Trumid deploys an HA cluster, replaces its aging servers, achieves zero downtime, and ensures 24/7 operation of its fintech services.

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

Veeam Backup & Recovery v11 now includes the option to backup data to Google Cloud Storage. This provides more flexibility to users who wish to choose Google over Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, or other public cloud vendors. Such a feature offers further user-friendliness while still abiding by the 3-2-1 backup rule.

Read the new guide by Paolo Valsecchi, a virtualization expert, on what steps to take to store your backup data to Google Cloud Storage via Veeam B&R 11.

RealTime Services, a U.S. company providing accounting and financial outsourcing services, had problems with licensing rented servers and slow storage operations. Whenever they wanted to increase their IT infrastructure performance, the competitor company tried to add another 1-2 years to the contract to extend the license. Using StarWind HCI Appliance (HCA), RealTime Services move to hyperconvergence, achieve ultimate flexibility and performance, and save about $1,500 each month on its IT operational expenses (OpEx).

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

Being a small rural hospital in the U.S., Northwest Regional Health had an extremely thin IT budget. However, it was forced to purchase new $100,000+ hardware every 5-6 years within its existing IT infrastructure. It was a very heavy cost, plus all DIY support articles were locked behind a service contract. Using StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN), Northwest Regional Health deploys an HA cluster and gets a sizeable performance increase, while saving $85000 on its capital expenditures (CapEx).

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

While VMware has been overhauling and stepping up in all arias of its vSphere environment over the last decade, it’s been sort of looking over its hypervisor. The recent VMware ESXi 8.0 has seen some new introductions here and there. Most notably, improvements are seen in its installation, configuration, and user interface (UI).

Read the article by Vladan Seget, a virtualization expert, on what’s new to note in the latest installment of VMware ESXI 8.0.

Synergium, an international translation and localization company, needed to ensure 24/7 operation of its translation services. However, its SAN implementation represented a single point of failure (SPOF) putting in jeopardy smooth IT infrastructure functioning. Using StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN), Synergium creates an HA storage cluster, eliminates a SPOF issue, and builds a fault-tolerant environment allowing for up-to-the-minute translation technology adoption.

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

StarWind is a trusted partner to a whole host of successful retailers around the globe. Our solutions easily support all the mission-critical services between HQ and Edge locations, granting superb performance, resiliency, and scalability to retail IT. We’ve got a lot of useful new information for the industry and offers in-store to share with new audiences.

Register in the link to attend Tech for Retail and learn how to make your retail business’ IT infrastructure resilient and future-ready from StarWind Engineers themselves.

COFED, a Congolese public institution, required a shared storage solution to ensure continuous business operations and data integrity. The institution experienced many problems in case its single data center broke down. The work stopped for several hours or even a day while waiting for the data restoration. Using StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN), COFED creates a 2-node high availability (HA) storage cluster, achieves 24/7 business operations, and ensures zero downtime.

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

Microsoft announced Azure Basic Load Balancer (LB) end-of-life from September 30, 2025. Anyone using that tool will have to migrate to the new Azure Standard LB. There are several prerequisites to be made, as well as associated downtime during migration. The new format of the tool is also for-pay.

Read the guide by Florent Appointare, a Microsoft Engineer, on which steps to take to easily migrate from Azure Basic LB to Standard LB.

Azure Stack HCI cluster is a hybrid solution that successfully units on-premises infrastructure with Azure cloud services, managing both Windows and Linux workloads relatively easily. However, it isn't without its problems, and most come from incorrect network configurations that decrease performance and increase latency.

Read the article by Romain Serre, a Microsoft MVP, that explains the best approach to design the network for an Azure Stack HCI cluster and utilize its potential to the fullest.

PERN S.A., a Polish treasury-governed crude oil logistics company, thought its IT infrastructure was foolproof until a disaster came knocking. Its core data center crashed, ensuing downtime and costs for the company by stalling its operational activities. The company had to achieve replication of data coming from its security systems and make sure the environment is disaster-ready. Using StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN), PERN S.A. deploys an HA cluster and gets an array of disaster recovery options that helped to elevate its environment’s resilience and ensure 24/7 business operation.

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

At VMware Explore 2022, the company introduced a lot of new products and technologies, jointly called “VMware Projects”. While some of them are rebranded solutions previously existing within the line of VMware products, others represent entirely new functionalities.

Read the article by Alex Samoylenko, a virtualization technology professional, to find out more details about VMware Projects, new solutions introduced at VMware Explore 2022.

The client company of PurpleJelly, a British managed IT services provider (MSP), was using an outdated HP server and wanted to update its IT infrastructure by including a full disaster recovery solution and full virtualization of its servers and creating a full cloud RDS environment. Due to a limited IT budget, the customer needed to keep the cost as low as possible. Using StarWind Virtual SAN (vSAN), the client company of PurpleJelly deploys a high availability (HA) cluster, gets failover capabilities at a cheaper price than a failover server, ensures replication, and achieves full server virtualization.

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.

The Society of St James, a British charity for the homeless, was searching for a solution to reuse its existing IT resources smartly, bring constant uptime, and tie the whole infrastructure together. Before the charity’s IT infrastructure was built on 7 physical tower servers connected via several NAS, so there was no ability to logically organize the environment, which resulted in high latency. Using StarWind Virtual SAN, The Society of St James deploys a Hyper-V high availability (HA) cluster, achieves constant uptime and redundancy, and ensures 24/7 operation.

You can read about how StarWind could do the same for your company by following this link.