Many IT administrators run their homelabs to test latest technologies and increase their skills. Unfortunately, the main problem here is the lack of RAM. This is the case with VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 as its minimal deployment option requires 10Gb of RAM. However, it can be lowered by decreasing VMware VCSA memory size or by disabling services that are rarely used in your environment.

Read the full article by Vladan Seget, IT and virtualization consultant to learn how to configure VMware VCSA 6.5 to fit your homelab environment.

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.

Register now!

The previous part covered the basics of installing and configuring Microsoft Windows Server Core. Now, it is time to deploy the Hyper-V role on the server. The process is extremely simple, so all you need to do is just to type in few PowerShell commands and further use Hyper-V Manager to configure your virtual environment.

Read the full article by Alex Khorolets, a technical support engineer at StarWind, to learn how to deploy the Hyper-V role: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/windows-server-core-configuration-hyper-v-role-installation

We are introducing a solution that provides unprecedented storage performance and maximizes the efficiency of existing IT infrastructures, actually... right now!

Join us!

Ceph is an open-source software storage platform delivering the ability to simply manage vast amounts of data. It is based on the Reliable Autonomic Distributed Object Store (RADOS) technology providing applications with the object, block, and file system interfaces in a single unified storage cluster, making Ceph flexible and highly reliable. Ceph’s Controlled Replicated Under Scalable Hashing algorithm (CRUSH) dynamically replicates and rebalances data within the cluster, delivering ultimate performance and infinite scalability.

Join our live Tap Room meeting to learn how Ceph provides simple storage scalability, high performance, and unprecedented resiliency!

Register now: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/discovering-ceph-easily-scalable-and-highly-reliable-storage-platform

StarWind takes the stage at Experts Live Europe 2018 as a gold sponsor! We will talk about the Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) and how SMB and ROBO can consolidate compute, storage, and networking, and simplify the management of VMs and applications taking into account IT-resource and budgets limitations. Experts Live Europe is the annual Microsoft community IT conference that attracts the best speakers and experts in the world to talk about new achievements in the Microsoft Cloud, Datacenter, and Workplace areas.

The conference will be held on October 24-26, 2018 in Prague. Get more details here.

The revolutionary concepts of Software-Defined Storage and hyperconverged infrastructure seemed as the best way for bending the storage cost curve once and for all. These approaches managed to break the spell of vendor lock-in and separate value-add from commodity so that the commodity components could be purchased at a much lower cost. However, there is still one issue left unresolved – how to manage the heterogeneous storage infrastructure effectively?

Read the full article by Jon Toigo, a 30-year veteran of IT, and the Managing Partner of Toigo Partners International. https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/the-pleasant-fiction-of-software-defined-storage

Missile on site! Three, two, one… Yikes! Your on-premises storage infrastructure has suddenly crashed. What to do? Don’t worry. Use StarWind Storage Gateway for Wasabi to securely integrate your on-premises storage infrastructure and pay 2,5 less then AWS or Azure charges you now for cloud backup storage. StarWind is a virtualization pioneer focused on delivering Software-Defined Storage and HyperConverged Infrastructure solutions and Wasabi is the cloud/object storage provider. Take advantage of the solutions of both companies! Easily deploy Wasabi hot cloud storage as an economical and reliable place for backup and recovery or archival purposes and scale as needed without effort. Simplicity, reliability, and cost-efficiency – that’s all about StarWind Storage Gateway for Wasabi.

Onwards and upwards! Find out more about StarWind Storage Gateway for Wasabi at the following link.

As new applications appear every day, requiring more and more compute power, it is vital to timely upgrade the hardware to match those performance needs. That’s where StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comes into play. It’s a turnkey solution for building a high-performing virtualization infrastructure. It comes fully customized to meet your needs and covered with StarWind ProActive Support, making it a perfect choice for upgrading your IT infrastructure.

Learn more about StarWind HyperConverged Appliance: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/replace-piles-of-outdated-hardware-with-high-performing-starwind-hyperconverged-appliance

Are you an IT Manager, IT Specialist, or a System Backup Administrator looking for high-performing and cost-efficient cloud object storage? Please meet, Wasabi hot cloud storage! Wasabi is easy to understand, easy to use, and incredibly cost-effective to scale. It provides high-performing and enterprise-level cloud object storage to satisfy the 3-2-1 backup rule. This is really a tidbit for SMBs! But are there some pitfalls? Why is it important to follow the “3-2-1” backup rule? Do any other cloud object storage “major players” exist?

Learn from the upcoming webinar about the full scoop of creating backups and go up the ladder with Wasabi cloud storage!

VMware Labs often posts useful tools that can help VMware administrators manage their vSphere virtualization infrastructure much easier. These instruments were developed by VMware Engineers, Community, and Open Source. As for 2017, the most handy utilities presented on VMware Labs are vSphere HTML5 Web Client, ESXi Embedded Host Client, VisualEsxtop, VMware OS Optimization Tool and Horizon Toolbox.

Read the full article by Dmytro Malynka, a Solutions Architect at StarWind, to take a closer look at these awesome tools.
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/top-utilities-for-your-vsphere-infrastructure

Are you an IT Manager, IT Specialist, or a System Backup Administrator looking for high-performing and cost-efficient cloud object storage? Please meet, Wasabi hot cloud storage! Wasabi is easy to understand, easy to use, and incredibly cost-effective to scale. It provides high-performing and enterprise-level cloud object storage to satisfy the 3-2-1 backup rule. This is really a tidbit for SMBs! But are there some pitfalls? Why is it important to follow the “3-2-1” backup rule? Do any other cloud object storage “major players” exist?

Learn from the video about the full scoop of creating backups and go up the ladder with Wasabi cloud storage!

Microsoft has extended the Azure functionality with Nested Virtualization support for Dv3 and Ev3 VM sizes recently.

What you get with StarWind’s help is the ability to create a “stretched” Hyper-V cluster between on-premises and Azure. By configuring Failover Clustering with StarWind Virtual SAN handling distributed shared storage across locations, you achieve the maximum level of availability and redundancy for your mission critical data and applications: you can juggle with your virtual machines and decide where you want to run them: on-site or in Azure. Live Migrate, failover, HA etc.: you can treat your Azure instance as your Hyper-V cluster node.

Read the full article by Dmytro Malynka, a Solutions Architect at StarWind, to learn more about the Nested Virtualization support in Azure and what StarWind does to bring it to another level.

Hyperconvergence allows building environments out of commodity hardware so that they will be perfectly suited to any needs. So, why not grab the fastest hardware, install the feature-rich software, and enjoy the highest performance ever? Microsoft did that before. StarWind went beyond!

Find out how we clinched the HCI industry highest performance.

StarWind takes part in Storage Focus 2017 in Barcelona, Hammer’s established channel event dedicated to delivering a comprehensive view of the changing storage, server & networking marketplace. It will bring together more than 20 leading industry vendors to showcase their products, exchange information and experience.
Watch StarWind elevator pitch video on Twitter @hammerplc at 3.30 pm (GMT+2)!

This set of articles is dedicated to providing High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) options overview for SQL Server. In this very first part, we will guide you through the process of configuring SQL Server AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances (FCI).

AlwaysOn FCI is a natural part of the SQL Server AlwaysOn HA / DR strategy and has been designed to protect your SQL Server infrastructure from the unplanned cluster node failures. With this tech, even if one of your nodes goes down, the SQL Server will continue running on one of the remaining cluster nodes with zero downtime and no data loss to meet the most strict RTO / RPO requirements.

Read the full article by Bogdan Savchenko, a Solutions Engineer at StarWind, referencing our technical paper created with Data Platform MVP Shashank Singh to learn how to configure SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI in a detailed step-by-step walkthrough style.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 allows accomplishing multiple tasks and using a wide variety of Outlook features on phones, tablets, desktop, and the Web. It can be installed on Windows Server 2016 using either PowerShell or Graphical User Interface (GUI). This post will tell you how to install Exchange Server 2016 with the help of GUI.

Read the full article by Karim Buzdar, a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate for Server Infrastructure.

Before expanding your IT environment, it is crucial to know its workloads. That's when Veeam One Reporter comes in handy. This solution allows estimating such infrastructure properties as IO rate, throughput, and the extent of capacity and memory utilization in a straightforward and convenient way. It delivers all this information in server reports that can be displayed in a web browser, exported to different formats or scheduled for automatic delivery via email.

Join our Live Tap Room to learn how to evaluate your hardware performance with Veeam One Reporter.
Register now: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/estimate-your-it-system-performance-easily-with-veeam-one-reporter

Everyone knows that any production environment sometimes needs to be maintained due to a software update or hardware reconfiguration. To do this, you should stop your production server for a certain period which may lead to the decrease of the fault tolerance level and performance.

This can be easily avoided with StarWind Maintenance Mode. It eliminates the downtimes caused by the planned nodes shutdowns, keeping the constantly high level of performance and availability.

Read the full article by Ivan Talaichuk, a Solutions Engineer at StarWind, to learn about StarWind Maintenance Mode in action.

RVTools is a Windows .NET 4.0 application which uses the VI SDK to display information about your virtual environments. It connects to your vCenter Server and provides detailed reports on your virtual machines and ESXi hosts. What is more, it can perform a health check of the whole infrastructure by analyzing the most important properties which every admin should watch out for.

Read the full article by Vladan Seget, IT and Virtualization consultant, to learn more about RVTools functionality.