Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

Traffic in the network is similar to the movement of cars on the roads. If there are no traffic lights and a traffic controller or the number of cars is too large, a traffic jam will arise. How about user traffic incoming to your website? The situation is similar. To ensure high availability and high performance, you need an efficient traffic manager. Azure Traffic Manager (ATM) is a DNS-based traffic load balancing subsystem that allows you to distribute traffic between services in all Azure regions optimally, ensuring a high level of availability and responsiveness. Productivity, priority, balance, multitasking – these characteristics fully describe Azure Traffic Manager. Are you still losing valuable time in information packets traffic jams?

You may have different reasons for moving the K2 database to a new SQL server instance. But there are mandatory steps you need to follow to complete this action successfully. You need to backup and restore all the data of the K2 database to a new SQL Server instance, do encryption/decryption operations, and many other things. But how can you protect your data and ensure minimum downtime?

Do you have problems with a lack of space when using SQL express or setting up ODBC parameters before installing vCenter? So it’s time for you to think about VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) – a pre-configured virtual appliance running Linux (Project Photon OS). It has been optimized specifically for vCenter services. What about the scale? VCSA supports up to 2000 hosts or 3500 VMs per appliance. Sounds good, right? In addition, VCSA provides enhanced security. Why wait? Take a step into the future!

Windows Admin Center offers a great web interface for managing Windows Server. Microsoft’s desire to bring the capabilities of the hybrid cloud to on-premises systems has led to the inclusion of the Azure Backup feature in Windows Admin Center. Now you can configure Azure Backup for your Windows Server with just a few clicks and save your time and resources. This is especially suitable for those who have a small environment in a data center. Or maybe it is hosted by another service provider, where having your own backup infrastructure does not make much sense.

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?

In this article, I compare deployment of Microsoft Azure SQL and SQL Server in a VM. I review the pros and cons of both approaches towards SQL Server deployment and take a closer look at cases when you may actually need each.

Data is the lifeblood of any businesses. That is why its loss can be comparable to the loss of vital organs. In order not to bring the situation to a critical state, backup is mandatory. The 3-2-1 backup strategy is most effective and based on making three copies of your data, two of which are stored on different media, and one is located offsite. In terms of keeping data off-site, backups can be stored on tapes, which today are the cheapest and most reliable carrier. But infrastructures that are completely focused on tape devices are expensive and do not provide decent performance. That is why virtual tape library with a public cloud storage tier may be a good alternative. StarWind offers StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL) – a solution allowing to make backup processes faster and more cost-efficient. So, why does the sequence of these numbers, 3-2-1, have magical power for your peace of mind and how does StarWind VTL fit in well with this backup plan?

In this article, I’d like to compare results of the previous two and find out whether SQL Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) can provide you two times higher performance than SQL Server Basic Availability Groups (BAG).

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!