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Welcome to our quarterly newsletter which this time focuses on virtualisation. Much discussed in the industry at the moment, virtualisation brings old concepts back to life. The idea is to bring new flexibility to computer systems and data centres, delivering cuts in costs while improving utilisation and resistance to failure.
In this edition of InFocus we're looking at:
- Hardware trends
- When... and when you should not virtualise
- Virtualisation for disaster recovery
We look forward to helping you grow your business.
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| What's New at Trustco |
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| Ten Years At Trustco
Trustco PLC recently passed its tenth year in business. Over this time in the industry we've built an extensive depth of experience and a wide range of contacts. This enables us to provide our clients with detailed advice about the solutions that make sense while offering very competitive prices.
Contact us to pick our brains!
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Trustco Awarded DataCore Silver Status
Trustco is now officially approved as a DataCore SANvantage Silver Level Partner. This gives us the ability to provide you with access to the best pre- and post-sales support for Datacore's excellent storage virtualisation and SAN management solutions. DataCore information.
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| Hardware Trends |
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Chips with more cores, faster, cooler, and more efficient
Processor development is all about speed, and currently multi-core is the way to go. As we go through 2008 chips will develop from their current quad cores to six. The idea is that with more processor cores, servers can do more work at the same or greater speed. With virtualisation this can only be good news.
Blade servers
For some kinds of application virtualisation doesn't make sense. Blade servers are ideal for these, providing small, high performance systems that are much more energy-efficient than old-style servers. Of course, blades work equally well for virtualised environments too.
Intelligent storage
Many organisations have already moved away from direct-attached to network-attached storage and SANs. The next step is to virtualise storage. This approach increases flexibility and helps the IT department to react quickly to evolving business requirements.
The evolving desktop
Desktop systems are shrinking and getting mobile. As the overall market swings rapidly towards laptop sales, the desktop is being developed to quieter, cooler status with a smaller footprint. At the same time, desktop virtualisation enables the business to cut desktop costs further while increasing control and security.
Thin clients
With new corporate focus on cost control in every area, the thin client is an attractive proposition. These systems are now able to work seamlessly in the overall virtualised environment.
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| When... and When Not to Virtualise |
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 Virtualisation is near or at the top of the list for most IT departments at the moment. Many reasons drive the virtualisation of systems environments. For some the ability to consolidate servers, improve asset utilisation and save on energy costs is the key. For others it’s the ability to have a more flexible IT estate, with faster development and testing cycles – together with more flexible and cost effective business continuity arrangements.
Read more of this article to find out about
- the approach to use, and
- how to decide where virtualisation makes sense
Click here to read more about virtualisation from our website.
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| Data Centres Are Going Green |
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 According to VMware, going green is not just eco-friendly, it is best practice, and it can be achieved through virtualisation.
The financial costs associated with running a data centre have always been high on the IT agenda. However, particularly over the last twelve months, the environmental costs associated with these operations have also become a strategic business concern. Looking to the future, the cost of power and cooling are becoming a key part of data centre strategies for all companies, and the ‘Greener Computing’ movement is gathering momentum.
Click here for the rest of this article, which discusses cost as well as corporate social responsibility implications.
Read more about virtualisation
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| Virtualisation for Disaster Recovery |
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Few organisations make the move to virtualisation do so initially for disaster recovery reasons. Server
consolidation, data centre cooling and power cost savings are all more prevalent drivers, delivering tangible
cost savings.
 These drivers are compelling and their direct return back to the business' bottom line make virtualisation an excellent proposition. But they only tell part of the story. Once in place, the virtualisation infrastructure itself lends itself to efficient and lower cost disaster recovery.
Click here for the rest of this article, which discusses low cost approaches to DR.
Read more about virtualisation
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| Industry News |
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VMware ESXi now available for free
 Run all your production applications at near-native performance on VMware's next generation
OS-independent hypervisor, now available for free.
Click here for full details
Cutting data centre costs main driver for virtualisation
Nine out of 10 organisations that have adopted virtualisation technologies have done so to reduce data centre costs, according to research from IDC.
The survey claims that "virtualisation is mainstream and is becoming a standard deployment platform for applications in data centres around Europe", according to Chris Ingle, research director for IDC's European systems group. "Customers across the region are running core business applications, test and development and business continuity systems on virtual infrastructure."
Click here for the full story
Back to the future for enterprise desktops
Technologies such as virtual desktops and blade PCs are reviving the centralised computing model.
The benefits of server virtualisation are reasonably well understood in the enterprise, enabling firms to make optimal use of hardware resources, move workloads around and, if necessary, implement a failover policy that will let another system seamlessly step in and take over operations if a physical server should stop working.
On the client side, virtualisation has so far only seen sporadic adoption and is not so well understood. Nevertheless, vendors such as HP are now turning to client virtualisation as a way of providing enterprise customers with benefits such as increased data security, availability of applications and data almost anywhere, and a simpler way of managing end-user accounts...
Click here for the full story
VMware Infrastructure Wins Best of Tech Ed 2008 in Virtualisation Category
VMware announced that VMware Infrastructure 3, the industry-leading virtualisation and management suite, was named the winner of the Best of Tech Ed 2008 IT Professional Award in the virtualisation category by Penton Media’s Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine.
Click here for the full story
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| Techie Corner |
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Need Help quantifying the potential cost savings of using VMware?
This online calculator uses industry research and savings estimates to quantify the savings from deploying VMware. Click here.
Windows Server 2008 Features
- Windows Server 2008 introduces "low-maintenance server environment"... Server Core - a bare-bones installation of the server
- Active Directory gets a makeover in Windows Server 2008 ... including read-only domain controllers
- Hyper-V delivers server virtualisation
- Supporting Business Continuity for Demanding Workloads... High Availability Features
- Easing Administration, Management, and Automation... Server Manager and PowerShell
Click here for more details
Let us know if you've already implemented Widows Server 2008 or are planning to over the next six months. If you have, what issues did you have? What business drivers are pushing this upgrade? Are you considering Hyper V as part of the project?
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Got Any Tips To Share?
We'd love to hear any technical tips you have. If we publish your tips in a future edition of InFocus we'll send you a bottle of champagne! Reply to this email or write to info@trustco.co.uk with your suggestions.
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Not your copy of the InFocus Newsletter? Click here to register for your own copy.
For more information about Trustco or any of our technology solutions,
please contact us on 0870 160 1505 or visit this page for alternative contact details.
Trustco Plc is a leading provider of Servers, Storage, Communication & Security Solutions from the very best vendors. Our focus on dedicated specialist account management along with technical resources make us the supplier of choice for a wide variety of businesses across the UK. Our ability to traverse the direct, distribution & reseller channels enable us to retain our competitive price advantage and keep lead times down to a minimum without any compromise on quality of after sales care. Visit www.trustco.co.uk for further information.
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