Microsoft Azure users have no problem with connecting their VMs, except that its protection prospects in terms of public IP use could have been better, so the use of VPN is strongly advised, if not required. All this hussle ends with Azure Bastion, new Azure feature allowing to create RDP or SSH session from the Azure Portal, thereby relieving the users from the need to use a public IP address.

Read the article by Romain Serre, a Microsoft Expert, to find out how to exploit new Azure Bastion feature from the preview Azure Portal.

H&R Reit, a Canadian property developer and management company, had a single-server infrastructure for its Microsoft Exchange Server. The environment lacked redundancy, resulting in an inappropriate amount of recovery time. The company was to look for a solution that used existing hardware resources even if they were dissimilar to avoid costly options of replacing them. StarWind helped H&R Reit to move to hyperconvergence using existing hardware resources, create a failover cluster ensuring applications uptime, and eliminate the risk of a single point of failure (SPOF).

Find out how H&R Reit provided applications uptime and redundancy for its Microsoft Exchange Server at a reasonable cost with StarWind.

The Newcastle High School for Girls faced problems with low resilience and limited performance and needed a shared storage cluster to fix them. They were looking for a cost-efficient virtual SAN solution suitable for Hyper-V. The Newcastle High School for Girls united all of their servers in one cluster, introducing RDS to their infrastructure.

Find out how the NHSG built a fault-tolerant cluster with StarWind and increased their performance.

It is not enough to build a functioning hyperconverged infrastructure because any IT environment needs to be constantly in check. Testing cluster performance is a necessity that requires the most serious approach. Hot news for VMware vSAN users is that they do not have to spend all that time and effort anymore since this efficient utility allows automating testing process carried out with such benchmark tools as VDbench or Fio.

Read the article by Alex Samoylenko, a virtualization expert, to find out how to get maximum performance for VMware vSAN cluster using HCIBench utility.

Microsoft Hyper-V 2019 Free version release can come off as deja vu because it would appear that this product has already been released and there is nothing new for you to hear about. There is a truth to it, but the previous version was taken down, so this is the new one. Therefore, both the prior users and those who want to try it might want to take a look at its features, pros and cons, and handy tips!

Read the article by Vladan Seget, a Virtualization consultant, to find out about Microsoft Hyper-V 2019 Free version release and how to download it.

If your business is in finance, you already know that to manage time, money, and resources, you need to keep your applications highly available and performing at the required level. Scalability, high availability, performance, fault tolerance, disaster recovery, and data backup policy are vital in the financial industry, so don't miss your chance to keep them alive and well.

Read our rubric Finance to learn how exactly we can help you or find out how your problem can be solved.

DevMecca, an American custom software development, application hosting, and big data analysis company, intended to expand their existing hardware to virtualize the entire environment. Storage Spaces Direct option did not work out, so DevMecca turned to StarWind in order to virtualize their environment with fully redundant Supermicro servers.

Learn from the success story how StarWind helps DevMecca to setup and configure their new hardware for complete redundancy.

PAD Technologies Inc., an American IT consulting company, used to work with Microsoft Windows cluster on VMware. The company required high availability (HA) at the voice server level for their voice traffic to remain seamless under any circumstances to provide excellent service for their clients.

Find out how PAD Technologies Inc. ensures replication in HA cluster environment and redundancy with StarWind.

Lake Erie College, a US higher education institution, had multiple hosts with VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V. The college could not provide the protection and safety of its academic data due to the lack of replication and redundancy. Besides, there was a problem with the replacement of outdated hardware. Thanks to StarWind, Lake Erie College replaces outdated hardware, gains reliable backup, and ensures Hyper-V live migration, at the same time minimizing downtime.

Find out how Lake Erie College increases redundancy and failover capabilities, getting highly available (HA) IT environment at an incredibly competitive price with StarWind.

Today, not only digital technology evolves exponentially, but it also requires less and less hardware. For example, Azure users now get a chance to experience Infrastructure as a Code (IaC) applied in their environment, deploying infrastructure with already configured Windows Server virtual machine (VM) and code. You can give it a test run and make sure it is easy to manage whether you are a specialist or not!

Read the article by Florent Appointaire, a Microsoft Engineer, to find out how to deploy a test environment on Azure via Terraform.

An IT infrastructure of a healthcare organization relies heavily on its equipment, for many reasons. This equipment, in turn, requires high quality standards to keep such environment up and running. Electronic medical record (EMR) contain patients' medical information, CT scanners perform medical imaging, and it all needs high availability, fault tolerance, and storage cost-efficiency. Now you have a possibility to improve your IT infrastructure at a reasonable cost!

Read our rubric Healthcare to learn how exactly we can help you or find out how your problem can be solved.

One of the primary benefits of operating in a virtualized environment is granting remote access to distant users. However, in the age of digital crime being on the rise, it is not as safe as we would want it to be. Luckily, Azure users don't have to lose sleep over security issue anymore. With Just in Time VM Access, you can automatize configuring the NSGs to allow inbound traffic to the requested port.

Read the article by Nicolas Prigent, a System Engineer, to find out how to lock down your virtual machines (VMs) in the network level by blocking inbound traffic.

CollectionCenter, Inc., a U.S. accounts receivables management services provider, required the truly redundant and cost-efficient hyperconverged cluster solution to achieve high availability (HA) and fault tolerance (FT). The company had an IT infrastructure with multiple single hosts and different versions of hypervisors from Citrix, VMware, and Microsoft. Critical problems were associated with aging hardware and the lack of redundancy. With StarWind, CollectionCenter, Inc., got rid of outdated hardware and numerous hypervisors, received reliability, safety, and constant protection of customer data, and almost halved overall equipment costs.

Find out how CollectionCenter, Inc. created a single hyperconverged HA Hyper-V cluster with additional redundancy that works flawlessly with StarWind.

Are you intrigued by recent hype around Docker? Then you will find it interesting to learn about an alternative to VMs - application containers. We can help you to find out what it is, how and when to use it, and what use cases are on a need-to-know basis.

Learn from this video when containers are better than VMs and that Docker is not the only container type there is!

Mr.T Carting, a U.S. waste management company, had standalone Microsoft Hyper-V hosts with a lack of redundancy. This layout was extremely vulnerable to failure. Thanks to StarWind, Mr.T Carting created a high availability (HA) failover cluster using existing hardware with the much-needed redundancy.

Find out from this success story how Mr.T Carting receives supreme performance and desired HA for its applications with StarWind.

Nobody knows what is needed for an IT infrastructure better than IT companies. Although one may find it odd that in such conditions said companies still seek IT services, it makes perfect sense. IT industry is oriented explicitly at their clientele and meeting their needs at maximum effort is the industry's top priority. Find out how to make sure that your feet don't fail you!

Read our rubric Information Technology to learn how exactly we can help you or find out how your problem can be solved.

If your organization is working with a cloud-only environment, there is hardly a necessity to tell you about managed domains and their benefits for an IT infrastructure. However, what can get your attention, is a possibility to deploy a managed domain without a need to deploy virtual machines (VMs) first, which is precisely what Azure offers with a new server role in Active Directory!

Read the article by Nicolas Prigent, a System Engineer, to find out how to deploy Azure Active Directory Domain Services (AADDS) in a dedicated subnet within virtual network.

In times of need, a web framework comes really in hand, since it allows automating web applications running processes as much as it is possible, but there is always a fly in the ointment. In this case, it is an amount of resource required to access re-usable modules which any web site may need. However, unlike a lot of its counterparts, Django web framework provides you with connection and enabling these modules on as needed basis!

Read the article by Mikhail Rodionov, an IT engineer, to find out how to get started with installing Django on Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS.

Hillis-Carnes Engineering Associates, an American company specializing in geotechnical and geostructural engineering, needed highly available IT infrastructure because of the constant risk of losing production due to hardware failure. To ensure the desired redundancy the company needed 2 SANs, but, after looking into numbers, though, the company decided to deploy an additional node. With StarWind HyperConverged Appliance deployment, the company increased data resiliency and ensured the highest possible production uptime with hardware fault tolerance (FT).

Find out how Hillis-Carnes Engineering Associates received a reliable highly available infrastructure with StarWind.

Even the least experienced users know a few things vital for an undisrupted working process if they are dealing with VMware vSphere infrastructure, one of those things being patching. Back in the good old days, risks of cyber threats were something that happens to people in the movies, but today you won't go very far without security patches. Keep your environment up to date with patching VMware vCenter Server Appliance!

Read the article by Vladan Seget, a Virtualization consultant, to find out how to manually patch VMware vCenter server Appliance (VCSA).