A database (DB) management system is vital for any infrastructure. To control your data and protect it, you need to keep it organized. However, having a tool doesn't mean knowing how to use it, so find out how to structure originally unstructured data using SQL Server FILESTREAM feature.

Read the article by Mikhail Rodionov, an IT engineer, to find out how to use SQL Server FILESTREAM feature and why.

Non-volatile storages are lifebuoys for any company in case of power cycling. In running business having untouchable memory storage is vital. That's why any novel software or hardware must support non-volatile memory with no problems. Time to learn how to go with the times and configure NVDIMM-N on one of the latest Dell PowerEdge Servers with Windows NT most recent software solution!

Read the article by Didier Van Hoye, an IT specialist, to learn how to configure NVDIMM-N on a DELL PowerEdge R740 with Windows Server 2019.

Are you a Windows Server user or system administrator constantly monitoring Windows operating system updates and looking for innovative solutions for your IT infrastructure? We want to help you gain insight into new storage capabilities in Windows Server 2019. What is Storage Migration Service and what improvements have been added to Storage Spaces Direct and Storage Replica? How can you store up to 10 times more data on the same volume with data deduplication and compression for the ReFS filesystem?

Learn from the upcoming webinar about all updates in storage in Windows Server 2019 and decide for yourself “to be, or not to be” with Windows Server 2019.

Admins love hyperconvergence because it allows conjoining compute, storage, and networking resources that makes the environment cheaper and easier to manage. Experienced users can build an infrastructure in different ways using any parts. For instance, you can grab some servers from Dell and install an industry-standard hypervisor (Hyper-V, KVM, ESXi, whatever) on top of them. If you do not know that much about hyperconvergence though, consider buying an appliance.

Learn useful tips on building a breathtaking hyperconverged environment in the full article by Artem Gaevoy, a System Engineer.

Azure Firewall is a security service designed for Azure virtual network protection. Presented in 2018, the Firewall, as its name implies, helps to control inbound and outbound network traffic. With a feature-rich service like that, keeping your Azure network this secure has never been that easy!

Find out how to set up and deploy Azure Firewall from the recent article by Nicolas Prigent, a Microsoft MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management.

Storage controllers are virtual environment tools essential for locating and accessing both block-based devices and SCSI devices. Storage controllers in VMware vSphere virtualization platform can operate with different storage controllers, varying in types, purposes, and usages. A wide range of functional capacities allows you to establish storage controller compatibility, choose configurations, and process SCSI emulation and paravirtualization. Use a storage controller as best suited for your preferred OS!

Read the article by Andrea Mauro, virtualization expert, to find out how to manage different storage controllers in VMware vSphere.

Olin Corporation, a U.S. company specializing in chemical production and manufacturing, had a non-clustered virtual environment with two virtual machines. Such an infrastructure ginned up a number of failures: the risk of hardware and software failure, the inability of disaster recovery and the preservation of company data. In that context, there’s no way for high availability and fault tolerance. StarWind made it possible to achieve dynamic backup processes and provided fault tolerance with zero downtime on VMs.

Find out how Olin Corporation created a clustered virtual environment and ensured high availability and fault tolerance of IT infrastructure with StarWind.

Azure Virtual Machine Extensions are small applications that provide post-deployment configuration and simplify the management of VMs. This feature uses Windows and Linux Azure agents that are automatically installed during the provisioning process. If your VM requires the installation of software, anti-virus protection or running a script inside of it, feel free to use VM extensions. Configure your VMs quickly and easily, automate your critical tasks, and save time with Azure VM extensions!

Read the article by Nicolas Prigent, a System Engineer, to find out how to install Azure VM extensions at the following link

Are you a system administrator or network engineer who wants to build a Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) connection between hosts and get the maximum performance of this connection? We’ll help you to become buddy-buddy with RDMA technology. What is RDMA, how it works, what are its pros and cons, where it can be used, what are its most common implementations, what is needed to use and configure an RDMA connection, how to test it and what problems can be encountered during testing - these are not all aspects raised in the video. The plot thickens: how does StarWind rPerf, all-in-one free Performance Benchmarking Tool, do all this work for you on measuring both latency and bandwidth for RDMA connections between Windows- and Linux-based operating systems? You got to admit it, there are too many questions that need to be answered.

Watch this video and be on a first-name basis with RDMA technology.

Cygnus, Inc., a U.S. company operating in the field of aerospace sheet metal fabrication, experienced a server failure. Their data recovery (DR) solution was in place and worked well. Still, the long system restoring was unacceptable.

Learn from this case study how Cygnus, Inc. achieves full-scale high availability for a small budget with StarWind.

Jaco IT-Solutions, a Belgian ICT solutions provider, had non-redundant single physical server solutions. The entire infrastructure was compromised with a single point of failure. The company was seeking for a method to ensure redundancy with a good performance-price ratio.

Find out how Jaco IT-Solutions achieves high availability (HA) reducing IT TCO with StarWind.

Kellstrom Defense Aerospace, a U.S. Medium Business that deals with the distribution of military airplane components had clustered storage organized in a computer and storage separated scenario. This architecture was already aging and hard to manage. Much hardware was underutilized.

Learn from this case study how StarWind helped Kellstrom Defense Aerospace to optimize their infrastructure based on existing hardware.

Upgrading VMware vSphere infrastructure may seem a boring, tedious, and sometimes even difficult process. But that’s not true at all if you know about three steps you need to follow in order to avoid difficulties in updating. These steps are called pre-upgrade, upgrade, post -pgrade phases. What should be done at the pre-upgrade stage? How to choose the most appropriate upgrade scenario for your infrastructure and architecture? What steps should be taken after completing the infrastructure upgrade?

Read the article by Vladan Seget, IT and Virtualization consultant, to find answers to all these questions and learn about the easiest way to upgrade your VMware vSphere infrastructure at the following link

How to keep data always secure with a stretched cluster? Watch StarWind video

Are you a VMware or Hyper-V user, or maybe a system administrator who wants to deploy a stretched cluster in your IT environment? Do you experience any difficulties in this process or want to keep your data secure under any unforeseen circumstances, including hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes? We will answer all your questions and tell tips and tricks on how to build the cluster between different separate geographical locations and do not lose the mission-critical data. A stretched cluster allows combining servers into a single system, providing high availability (HA) and load balancing. With its help, you can easily migrate your VMs from one place to another and make sure of the safety of your data even during an earthquake of 10.0 scores on the Richter scale!

Learn from the video about a stretched cluster differentiation, replication options for it, different deployment scenarios, ways to secure data and prevent split brain.

Azure Migrate is an Azure tool that helps to plan the transition from VMware to Azure. Are you considering the possibility of lift-and-shift migrations? Or maybe are you at an early stage of migration assessment? The Azure Migrate service will help you assess whether your on-premises machines are suitable for working in Azure, get size recommendations for VMs, and estimate the cost of running on-premises machines in Azure. Do you have any doubts?

Read the article by Romain Serre, a Senior Consultant, to find out how to migrate from VMware to Azure with Azure Migrate, discover on-prem assets, and create an assessment at the following link

"Object with reference <vmname> was not found in the hierarchy cache." Have you ever met such an error message during replacing the vCenter Server configured in Veeam Backup & Replication? Or maybe in the case of an inventory change in the vCenter? A similar message pops up when a Virtual Machine's MoRef changes. To complete backup jobs successfully, you need to re-map the MoRef ID of protected VMs, namely to keep same MoRef IDs for all protected virtual machines. How should that be done?

Read the article by Paolo Valsecchi, a System Engineer, to find out how to remap MoRef ID of protected VMs, avoid backup jobs failure, and replace the vCenter Server safely.

Have you ever heard of the possibility to run containers without a need to manage servers or clusters? Containers allow packing application code, configurations, and dependencies into a single object. Standardly for their run, it’s necessary to select, configure, and scale clusters of VMs. Now imagine that you don’t need to do all this. You don’t have to choose server types and optimize cluster packing. AWS Fargate is a computer engine for Amazon ECS that makes your work with containers as easy as possible. With AWS Fargate, you don’t interact with servers or clusters, but simply concentrate on designing and building your applications, and not on managing the infrastructure that supports them. Not bad, right?

Read the article by Gary Williams, a virtualization, storage, and Windows systems administrator, to find out how to get and run AWS Fargate containers at the following link

Are you a system administrator or network engineer who wants to build a Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) connection between hosts and get the maximum performance of this connection? We’ll help you to become buddy-buddy with RDMA technology. What is RDMA, how it works, what are its pros and cons, where it can be used, what is needed to use and configure an RDMA connection, how to test it and what problems can be encountered during testing - these are not all aspects we will touch on the upcoming webinar. The plot thickens: how does StarWind rPerf, all-in-one free Performance Benchmarking Tool, do all this work for you on measuring both latency and bandwidth for RDMA connections between Windows- and Linux-based operating systems? You got to admit it, there are too many questions that need to be answered.

Visit the upcoming free webinar and be on a first-name basis with RDMA technology.

Each virtual machine (VM) is a collection of resources provided by the infrastructure layer, usually organized in a pool of resources and assigned dynamically (or in some case statically) to each VM. VMs “see” a subset of physical resources in a form of virtual hardware components defined usually by the certain minimum elements. Adding hardware components can be useful in some cases, or they can be necessary for performing some basic operations, like, for example, installing the guest OS where a video driver, a keyboard and a mouse device are needed to use the remote console. That is why you should be aware of which hardware resources can be hot-add and which hot-remove.

Read the article by Andrea Mauro, a virtualization expert and architect, to find out how to change hardware resources on a running VM at the following link

VMware Horizon View is a VMware product that aims to improve the infrastructure of the virtual desktop as well as support bring your own device (BYOD) programs. Most administrators back up virtual desktops, but very few pay enough attention to backing up the Horizon View configurations. At the same time, a backup of a VMware Horizon View environment configuration is a critical part of the work of your virtual desktop infrastructure that guarantees its integrity. Moreover, if you any have problems with a large View Manager configuration that can last from several hours to several days, your Horizon View configurations need a safe harbor badly. So, don’t wait for a second!

Read the article by Alex Samoylenko, a Virtualization technology professional, to find out about backup and recovery of VMware Horizon View 7.x. configurations at the following link.