TVP Category Archives

SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments, Part II: The call to duty, SSD endurance

Let’s continue by taking a look at endurance for storing and retaining data using nand flash SSD. The importance of the first part of this series is to understand the basics of nand flash based SSD in order to make informed decisions on what is the best for your virtual or physical environment. In addition to SLC (high cost, improved duty cycles) and MLC (higher capacity, lower cost), there is also EMLC or Enterprise MLC which is striving for a balance between SLC and MLC characteristics.

Mitel and VMware combine technologies to Bring VDI to the Call Center

While desktop virtualization may never achieve the desktop dominance that was foretold by many analysts, new technologies continue to appear that both reduce costs and increase deployment opportunities. This week, Unified Communications (UC) vendor Mitel Networks announced its first foray into the virtual workspace market by announcing support for the VMware View UC APIs within its Contact Center Solution to offer contact center employees access to cloud-based unified desktop and communications services wherever they may be.

When to use a Virtual Firewall

The 2/9 Virtualization Security Podcast was a discussion on when would one use a virtual firewall. This was in response to being told that there are some people that would never use a virtual firewall for anything, and that got me thinking. Outside of the politics involved with using virtual vs physical firewalls, when would you use one? What are the cut offs, and best practices around using virtual firewalls. We were joined by Rob Randell of VMware to discuss this point.

Hyper-V: Is it there yet?

For a good portion of the time I have been working in the virtualization space, there has been plenty of hype about how it is just a matter of time before Microsoft “leapfrogs” ahead of VMware in the area of virtualization and with the massive upgraded version of Hyper-V 3.0 that will ship with Windows Server 8, there is thought that Microsoft might just pull off that upset. So in classic Microsoft style, let’s take a look and compare VMware today (ESX/vSphere5) with what Microsoft will have with Hyper-V 3.0 sometime possibly in the “Fall” of 2012.

SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments: Part I Spinning up to speed on SSD

Solid-state devices (SSDs) are data storage memory (Figure 1) mediums that utilize semiconductor based memoires as opposed to magnetic media found in hard disk drives (HDDs) or magnetic tape. Semiconductor memories include ultra fast volatile dynamic random access memory (DRAM) commonly found as main memory (e.g. RAM) in servers along with and non-volatile memory (NVM) typically NAND flash. Nand flash based SSDs can be found in cameras (as SD cards), cell phones, iPods, and PDAs, as well as in notebooks, net books, laptops, tablets, and workstations. SSDs are also appearing in larger servers, appliances, and storage systems from consumer to enterprise level.