Reddit is a perfect place to get into news and trends, isn’t it? Actually, that’s why StarWind has started a subreddit!
There, we share blog articles, announce events, and discuss interesting stuff going on in IT these days.
Stay tuned, subscribe to StarWind’s subreddit!
Database availability is a must-have for modern businesses. You, a database admin, are to keep the risk of data loss minimal. Sure, you need some tools to accomplish that mission. In the series of upcoming free webinars, we’ll discuss technologies that may come in handy.
Find out more about SQL Server Always On Failover Cluster Instances!
StarWind announces the new generation of StarWind HyperConverged Appliances. What will they give you? Being 100% software-defined, the Appliances require only one onsite node to make your applications Highly Available. Once one more node added, the entire setup can tolerate one disk and even single node failure. Another nice thing about the solution is that it makes sysadmin's life easier due to bringing configuration, migration, and integration efforts entirely on StarWind’s side.
For more info, check out the product page!
Evolving along with companies’ needs, Microsoft is about to release new Windows Server 2019. Feeling comfortable with the good old 2016 version? Get ready for something even better!
Learn more about the features Windows Server 2019 will bring to your IT environment in the full article by Karim Buzdar, a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate for Server Infrastructure.
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.
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.
The previous article from this series shed light on SMB Direct and why you need it. Regarding the features RDMA brings to SMB Direct, it deserves a separate article! So, this part covers which flavors of RDMA are available for use with SMB Direct.
Read the full article by Didier Van Hoye, an experienced subject matter expert advisor and infrastructure architect, to learn more the role RDMA plays in SMB Direct.
StarWind team will take part in VeeamON 2018 – the premier conference for intelligent data management. The event will be held in McCormick Place, Chicago and is aimed to bring together thousands of IT peers and industry leaders to learn about what’s working best in their industries and explore innovative technologies. At VeeamON 2018, we will introduce our latest solution – StarWind Virtual Tape Library. It is designed to automate data backup and archive processes while increasing their cost-efficiency and security by bringing in cloud and object storage support.
Join us at booth 501! Awesome gits and swag guaranteed.
Squeeze all the performance out of your Hyper-V with SMB Direct SMB Direct is too cool to be left on the table. However, that’s not a “plug-and-play” thing – before bringing that thing to your environment, you need to understand the technology itself and your environment.
Q: How many IOPS can your Windows Server do?
A: ALL OF THEM!
Find out more about SMB Direct and how the technology improvement over SMB 3.0 comes in handy in your virtualization or SQL Server environment in the full article by Didier Van Hoye, an experienced subject matter expert advisor and infrastructure architect.
Companies expand, and IT ecosystems are to keep up with their pace. Usually, such growth is associated with opening one or more new offices. This brings admins not only new toys to play with but also makes their work more annoying. Indeed, that’s your storage admin’s mission to grant all your colleagues their data availability wherever they are, right? Fortunately, we know how to help you.
Learn from our recent video how building Hyper-V or vSphere stretched clusters simplifies your IT routines.
These days, Amazon AWS has become one of the most popular public cloud storages. No wonders, these guys offer extremely cheap storage and cover their service for good. Though, you are to stay vigilant: without careful control over your expenditures on the cloud, even Amazon AWS may break your bank!
Read the full article by Florent Appointaire, a Microsoft Engineer specialized in Cloud Technologies, to learn how to set up a solution for managing Amazon AWS costs.
Using Microsoft Azure for whatever purpose (be it extending production, or gaining some extra storage), is usually believed to be cheaper compared to buying new hardware. Still, without careful control, expenditures on the cloud may cost you pretty penny!
Find out in the recent article by Florent Appointaire, a Microsoft Engineer specialized in Cloud Technologies, how to control your spending on Azure.
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.
In fact, underlying storage you have determines your applications’ performance. That’s not something new for you and, being a storage admin, you know that excellent storage performance is about not only disks but also the right system configuration.
Learn from this video how to configure your system to squeeze maximum performance out of your NVMes.
This article finalizes the trilogy about building a Highly Available (HA) and Fault-Tolerant (FT) production environment with Microsoft Windows Server 2016. Putting the long story short, two previous articles covered on installing Windows Server 2016 Core on a single server and adding shared storage for VMs. Though all storage admins know that two nodes are much better than one, so we cannot leave a single node! The final solution must be redundant. That, actually, is why we need Failover Cluster Role to be added.
Read the full article by Alex Khorolets, a technical support engineer at StarWind, to learn how to deploy the Failover Clustering role.
Almost every application run in our datacenters can be orchestrated via some sort of web-based interface. It allows you to access things wherever you are from whatever browser. Everything looks wonderful, but there’s one thing – self-signed certificates. Sometimes, they become really annoying due to making your browser whine about accepting numerous self-signed certs. Fortunately, there’s Microsoft Certificate Server, the role within Active Directory environment that stops all that nightmare.
Read the full article by Mike Preston, Toronto VMUG Co-Leader and vExpert, to find out how to avoid all those annoying self-signed certificates with Microsoft Certificate Server.
Unfortunately, all environments fail one day. Mistakes are made, disasters occur, and there are no IT infrastructures immune to that yet. Being a system admin or IT department manager, the only thing you can do to mitigate troubles’ harsh consequences is coming up with a disaster recovery strategy and employing a nice dedicated solution. If your IT environment runs on Windows Server 2016, we are happy to discuss some of them.
Learn from our upcoming free webinar about architecting a disaster recovery site for IT ecosystems run on Windows Server 2016 with Storage Replica, Hyper-V Replica, or Veeam Replica.
Setting up Live-Migration only for a couple of nodes in Hyper-V cluster is not rocket science. Sure, it requires some time, but nothing more than that. Still, in large environments, where you have, let’s say, 40 or even more nodes, configuring Live Migration manually looks like torture. Fortunately, we know a way around!
Read the full article by Romain Serre, a Senior Consultant, to find out how to set up Live-Migration in Hyper-V clusters faster and easier.
Microsoft considers AlwaysOn as an agile and efficient set of technologies capable of ensuring high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) for SQL Server platform. You should really learn a bit more about this tech even if you are already familiar with it.
Why? Just ‘cause AlwaysOn saves you from stitching an HADR solutions from various different vendors that at the end of the day turns your life into one big finger pointing session.
Read the full article by Mikhail Rodionov, IT engineer focusing on applications and infrastructure support domains, to figure out what SQL AlwaysOn is and how it works.
That’s kinda of a black box for these guys that contains log files, diagnostic information, and performance metrics which together provide them with the insight into what’s going on with your environment.
Find out more about retrieving a support bundle in the full article by Alex Samoylenko, a virtualization technology professional.
