Are you a VMware or Hyper-V user, or maybe a system administrator who wants to deploy a stretched cluster in your IT environment? Do you experience any difficulties in this process or want to keep your data secure under any unforeseen circumstances, including hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes? We will answer all your questions and tell tips and tricks on how to build the cluster between different separate geographical locations and do not lose the mission-critical data. A stretched cluster allows combining servers into a single system, providing high availability (HA) and load balancing. With its help, you can easily migrate your VMs from one place to another and make sure of the safety of your data even during an earthquake of 12.0 scores on the Richter scale!

Learn from the upcoming free webinar about a stretched cluster differentiation, replication options for it, different deployment scenarios, ways to secure data and prevent split brain.

PowerApps is a corporate service that allows you to create, connect, and share business applications with your team. This happens in minutes and from any device. With PowerApps, you not only optimize the work of your team but also contribute to the implementation of innovative ideas in business activities. And guess what? You can create a PowerApps application by yourself for a SharePoint list. Have no idea how?

Read the article by Florent Appointaire, a Microsoft Engineer, to find out how to create a PowerApps application for a SharePoint list with Azure Function.

Previously, South Gibson School Corporation, the largest public school in Gibson County, Indiana, was running an aged non-virtualized environment. Management of the system with multiple servers, each of those dedicated to a separate service, was rather exhausting. Optimization and modernization were badly needed. Instead of just replacing old hardware items the company decided to let StarWind break into its existing IT infrastructure and do its job.

Learn more about gains of South Gibson School Corporation owing to StarWind.

VMware's release of vSphere 6.7 U was launched in October 2018. What's new? This release includes the necessary tools for convergence and repointing. An external Platform Services Controller (PSC) has sunk into oblivion and the client can move to a simplified embedded deployment. The HTML5 based vSphere Client is now fully functional and the vSphere SSO domain has gained more flexibility with support for embedded repointing. Not bad, right? Catch this wave!

Read the article by Vladan Seget, IT and Virtualization consultant, to find out how to install and configure VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 U1 (VCSA).

KEMP's main product is LoadMaster, a load balancer, which allows you to work with dozens of web applications. The problem is that some web resources do not include an authentication form, as for example SSO. Therefore, moving to these applications through Kemp, the security of your data is at risk. But don’t worry! ESP or Edge Security Pack is an authentication form provided by Kemp and presented to clients before accessing the web applications.

Read the article by Romain Serre, a Senior Consultant, to find out how to configure ESP on a virtual service and provide with access only those users that belong to an Active Directory Group.

Lipman Insurance Administrators Inc., a U.S. company specializing in employee benefits administration, had a mixed Windows/Unix environment with dedicated servers and clusters of servers for each business application with Microsoft Hyper-V on top. Such an infrastructure provided for a multitude of hardware items and expensive support contracts with very little data redundancy. What kind of infrastructure do we have in the end? Time-consuming, inefficient, costly, problematic, and complicated. StarWind became a game-changer and allowed creating a high-performing, high-functional, fault-tolerant, highly available, reliable, and easy-to-use environment.

Find out how Lipman Insurance Administrators achieved IT infrastructure optimization with StarWind.

Are you a Windows Infrastructure Administrator and looking for the best option of managing Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) that will tick all the boxes? We’ll help you slice and dice this question with a detailed analysis of Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT), Microsoft Windows PowerShell, 5nine Manager, Windows Admin Center (WAC), and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). Eliminate all malfunctions and fortify server workloads with a WSFC management option that satisfies all your requirements!

Learn from the video about different WSFC management solutions, pros and cons of each, and choose the best for you.

Let's imagine a situation: a power outage went out and an incorrect server shutdown has occurred. Everything is aggravated by the fact that you have no power backup. What will happen to your write operations? They sink into oblivion and data will be lost. But StarWind says “no” to these troubles! Log-structured Write-Back Cache (LWC) is a StarWind feature which speeds up the processing of write requests and saves data when the server is incorrectly shut down. What about RAM caching? Your data also will be saved.

Read the article by Boris Yurchenko, StarWind Tech Support Engineer, to find out how to configure StarWind Log-structured Write-Back Cache.

A webhook is a method of extending or changing the behavior of a web page or web application using custom callbacks. In the case of SharePoint, webhooks allow you to track all changes that are on the site as well as receive notifications about specific events.

With Azure Functions, you can host your SharePoint webhooks in a romp!

Read the article by Florent Appointaire, a Microsoft Engineer, to find out how to call an Azure Function webhook for SharePoint list items.

The golden rule for the safety of your data is as follows: always back up and distribute copies to different locations. However, the choice of backup environments can be accompanied by high-cost issues, security concerns, the risk of service interruption/termination, and so on. Storing your data in the cloud seems to be the most optimal solution. But even here you may encounter certain troubles such as the need to pay for all services, subscriptions, service plans, and configuration of a public cloud storage provider.

Do you want to know about a backup storage solution that eliminates the drawbacks of costly backup processes and meets regulatory data archival and retention requirements?

Read the article by Oleg Pankevych, StarWind Pre-Sales engineer, to find out how about Wasabi + VEEAM + StarWind formula and how it meets the 3-2-1 backup strategy.

A reverse proxy is a service that sits in front of one or more servers and accepts requests from clients for resources that are located on the server or servers. From a client point of view, a reverse proxy looks like a web server and can be easily used for remote access.
The Kemp LoadMaster platform provides reverse proxy services that expand the range of workloads and provide access to dozens of web applications via a single IP address/port. Set up a reverse proxy server on the LoadMaster and get the perfect point in the network to control traffic and optimize performance!

Read the article by Romain Serre, a Senior Consultant, to find out how to configure a reverse proxy manually!

In October 2018, SharePoint Server 2019 became available to the public. Compared to SharePoint 2016, the new release attempts to prepare the user for the hybrid route and move to the cloud.

Do you need to design and build your SharePoint based solutions and infrastructures with the cloud in mind, even if you still install on-premise version?

Read the article by Mikhail Rodionov, StarWind IT engineer, to find out how to install SharePoint 2019 on top of Windows Server 2019.

Split Digital LLC, a U.S. company that provides cloud service solutions with high requirements to customization and security levels, switches to hyperconvergence from StarWind to get extreme reliability and uptime. 
Before the StarWind deployment, its infrastructure contained active/passive cluster which deprived from sufficient storage speed rates. 
Another issue was a necessity to easily increase capacity on demand without extra licenses burden. The company did consider several solutions, but they could not provide enough flexibility, or offer reasonable price and handy management.

Learn how Split Digital LLC benefits from StarWind and gets all necessary features that mega corporations use for providing cloud services.

StarWind is delighted to be included in the November 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure.

A Gartner Magic Quadrant is a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors. With this recognition, we feel that StarWind takes its place on the HCI stage.

StarWind HCI offering includes StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA), StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), and StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL).

Share this moment with the StarWind team and read more about Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure.

StarWind Log-Structured Write-Back Cache (LWC): Transaction-aware Write-Back Cache (WBC) unlocks stellar write performance without need to sacrifice data integrity.

The problem of latency in write operations with traditional cache technology becomes a daily hassle which can lead to a bottleneck in writing and data loss. What is more, the cache cannot ensure consistent performance under intense virtualized workloads which are prone to random I/O. 
StarWind VSAN feature optimizes the data flows for your underlying storage, thus revolutionizing the way data is cached. Tailored for intense virtualized workloads, StarWind LWC provides accelerated write speed and increased reliability by effectively combining the fast memory like flash or RAM and a tiny portion of your storage.

Ensure the desired resiliency and high performance for your apps with StarWind LWC!

Find out more about our new feature

Mellanox, an Israeli company, is a leader when it comes to FPGAs and all kinds of programmable logic in the switches and NICs. The latter allow having 25Gbps at a cost and quality level traditional network companies won’t allow. Recently rumors about an acquisition of Mellanox by Microsoft began to circulate. The only decision assessment does not exist, as well as the determination of reasons for which Microsoft decided to take this move. Why does Microsoft want to buy Mellanox?

Read the article by Didier Van Hoye, a Microsoft technology expert, to explore all pitfalls of this issue.

Hallam Medical Ltd, a UK Primary Care recruitment specialist, had already outgrown their IT infrastructure of Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster on top of HP Fibre Channel Enterprise SAN. The latency the company had was through the roof.

Learn from this success story how Hallam Medical Ltd builds new infrastructure on a working Production system with zero downtime with StarWind.

IT administrators are always confronted with the problem of building innovative, fast, modern, and reliable IT infrastructure that fits the budget and saves resources for future growth. To commence, you should plan, select, re-plan, clarify goals, and so on ad infinitum in a vicious circle. However, the issue of guaranteeing the data safety will always be relevant on the agenda. Choosing a SAN (Storage Area Network) with the iSCSI protocol as one of the possible storage solutions will ensure data security and constant availability. In addition, this approach is cost-effective in terms of maintenance and support.

Read the article by Michael Rakitin, StarWind Post-Sales Support Team Lead, to find out the best practices of building iSCSI SAN.

The Department of Finance (The Republic of the Philippines) which formulates a revenue policy and provides funding for government programs required a shared storage solution for protecting their data and ensuring fault tolerance (FT). Any problems in the DOF’s IT infrastructure could lead to financial data loss and, accordingly, reputational losses. StarWind helped secure an organization’s virtualized environment and achieve high availability (HA) and fault tolerance (FT) by providing a shared storage solution.

Find out how the Department of Finance achieved government level data protection and IT infrastructure optimization with StarWind.

The flawless operation of your Office 365 infrastructure directly depends on the updates installed on time. An SSL certificate provides secure communication between Office 365 components. If it expires, your infrastructure becomes unprotected. This is where the Azure AD Connect tool comes in. With its help, you can update the SSL certificate for both AD FS and WAP Servers quickly and easily.

Read the article by Paolo Valsecchi, a System Engineer, to find out how to update the SSL certificate successfully with the Azure AD Connect tool.