If you work with Azure close enough, you’ve probably have heard of Nested Virtualization. Yes, it is the feature allowing you to run Hyper-V inside an Azure VM. Why does one need that thing? Well, to build a perfect lab for demos, development, testing, whatever… without buying any extra hardware!

Read the article by Nicolas Prigent, a System Engineer, to find out how to deploy Hyper-V in Azure.

Connect it Networks, an innovative Canadian company providing premium quality communications solutions, had issues with their aging IT infrastructure performance and scalability. The servers they had were sufficient and well taken care of. But, with what they had, they could not use the whole scope of computing resources. Besides, it wasn’t that simple to upgrade. StarWind software-defined storage stack helped them make the best use of what they already had improving ROI overall.

Find out how Connect it Networks achieves better server hardware ROI with StarWind.

Schneider, a U.S. packaging machinery manufacturer had physical Dell servers that raised issues with heat level and maintenance costs. The company implements storage virtualization instead of purchasing a physical SAN. It chooses StarWind and consequently gets high performance and high availability with reduced IT TCO.

Find out how Schneider keeps IT costs low with virtualization stack provided by StarWind.

One, two, three ... Let's roll! StarWind presents an updated functionality of V2V Converter. The utility enables conversion of a physical machine into a virtual one (P2V) and other way around. For example, you have a server with Windows Server 2012R2 installed running some critical application. With physical-to-virtual (P2V) entire host or specific physical drive (or volume) can be migrated. What else? The pressure is on! Now your VMs can be migrated directly between Hyper-V and ESXi (and backwards). Moreover, StarWind V2V Converter offers bi-directional conversion between all the major VM formats: VMDK, VHD/VHDX (Windows Repair Mode aware), QCOW2, and StarWind native IMG.

Read the article by Alex Bykovskyi, StarWind Solutions Architect, to find out how to speed the process of hypervisor switch with StarWind V2V Converter and learn more about the P2V option.

Do you use VMware but don’t know how to guarantee the data safety, allow the virtual machines migration, enable continuous application availability, and eliminate any single point of failure within your IT environment? Consider taking advantage of the combination of VMware and Linux-based StarWind VSAN. VMware high availability (HA) ensures constant VMs operation, while StarWind is responsible for the storage fault tolerance.

Learn from the video how to configure high availability (HA) and fault tolerance (FT) VMware environment.

Innitec used to run tape-centric backup environment for years. There is actually nothing wrong with the physical tapes. But increasing data volumes caused a discrepancy. Storage became inefficient. Intervention was necessary. Virtualization technologies in the form of StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL) became a rescuer in the case.

Find out how Innitec attained simple management of backup environment with no changes and extra expenses on new hardware and licensing.

BLDD Architects, a U.S. company operating in the field of architectural and structural design, had aging EMC SAN infrastructure with VMware on top. Such an architecture entailed issues with poor performance, the difficulty of maintenance, and high financial costs. In this case, the viability of the IT infrastructure is out of the question. StarWind software-defined storage stack allowed to create maintenance-friendly and high-performance IT infrastructure.

Find out how BLDD Architects ensured the balanced and long-term development of its business processes with StarWind.

Do you know that not every solution requires high available storage? Sometimes there is a need in functionality that gives us the option not to leverage any OS caching. Precisely this UseWriteThrough option you can find in the New-SBMMapping commandlet in Windows Server 2019. It allows a user to disable caching with SMB mappings in certain scenarios thus giving a possibility to prefer reliability over performance in non-continuously available file share scenarios. So, always check “paper proof of concepts” and find the best options for your IT infrastructure and business development!

Read the article by Didier Van Hoye, Expert in Microsoft technologies, to find out how to use SMB Mapping Option UseWriteThrough and about its benefits.

Innotech Windows + Doors, a Canadian company manufacturing European-style windows and doors, used to run its production on individual Microsoft Hyper-V servers. Such an IT infrastructure did not allow any load balancing and automatic failover if one of the production servers went down. Also, standalone servers could not provide the required level of data redundancy. The traditional SAN could fix the issues, but couldn’t fit the bill, so this is where StarWind appeared.

Find out how Innotech Windows + Doors fixed their virtualization uptime & data redundancy issues with StarWind.

Geyma Sistemas de Informacion SL, a Spanish company that deals with virtualization, cloud, security and maintenance, chooses StarWind to replace their obsolete SAN. Before StarWind, the company had a Microsoft’s virtualization solution on top of Dell hardware. However, it no longer met company’s increased I/O and uptime requirements.

Find out how Geyma Sistemas de Informacion SL achieved high availability and better I/O performance with StarWind.

VPN connections provide remote access to the necessary data and you can get information about your company's assets at any time. The connection to Azure virtual networks is possible by configuring two types of VPN, namely Site-To-Site (S2S) and Point-To-Site (P2S). S2S VPN allows you to connect two networks and constantly maintain communication between them. P2S VPN is effective for connecting to a virtual network from a remote location if you have a small number of clients for whom such an access is needed. You’re asking how to establish a secure connection of individual clients running Windows 10 to the Azure Virtual Network?

Read the article by Nicolas Prigent, System Engineer, to find out how to create a VPN P2S tunnel between your laptop and your Azure Virtual Network hand over first at the link.

ProPortion Foods, a U.S. company providing retail and food services, had issues with expensive aging HPE MSA SAN maintenance and product updating. StarWind has become a “ready-to-go” deployment to all the company’s issues required. Using HPE servers running StarWind software defined storage stack allowed the company to reduce its warranty costs up to 80% and simplify product updating.

Find out how ProPortion Foods achieved high availability at a reasonable price with StarWind.

Do you use VMware but don’t know how to guarantee the data safety, allow the virtual machines migration, enable continuous application availability, and eliminate any single point of failure within your IT environment? Consider taking advantage of the combination of VMware and Linux-based StarWind VSAN. VMware high availability (HA) ensures constant VMs operation, while StarWind is responsible for the storage fault tolerance.

Learn from the upcoming free webinar how to configure high availability (HA) and fault tolerance (FT) VMware environment.

VMware vSphere 6 offers all new and new features including a new VMware vCenter management services architecture. vCenter 6.0 can be deployed in embedded and external options and separately as a Platform Services Controller (PSC) and as vCenter. If the Platform Services Controller (PSC) provides common infrastructure services for the data center, then the vCenter Server ensures the remainder of the vCenter Server functionality. But you’ll agree, it would be great to have a common platform that combines both solutions. This option would help reduce the number of VMs per sites without any load balanced dependencies and provide fault tolerance.

Read the article by Andrea Mauro, Virtualization expert and architect, to find out about vCenter deployment options and PSC topologies at the following link.

Migrating sites to the cloud can be quite troublesome. For such cases, Microsoft introduced the Windows Site Migration Tool. This is a program that can collect the necessary information about a website hosted on IIS, analyze it, and then automatically transfer all settings, files, and even the database directly to the Microsoft Azure cloud. Make sure that the migration of the sites is really easy and can be completed within a few minutes!

Read the article by Florent Appointaire, Microsoft Engineer, to find out how to migrate IIS websites to Azure SQL quickly and easily.

Do you rely solely on your on-site backups? Unfortunately this isn’t an option as it does not guarantee your data is safe & available after a catastrophic or even temporary loss of service affecting your primary “one and only” data center. It is incumbent to provide you with a hybrid cloud backup for ensuring superior disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC), close-to-100% uptime and zero data loss! StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL) enables users to back up their virtual machines with Veeam to both on-premises and / or cloud storage. Combination of Veeam, StarWind VTL, and Backblaze B2 cloud storage provides maximum security and rapid recovery when required. Save your time and money!

Read the article by Roderick Bauer, Content Director for Backblaze, to find out how to achieve economics, instant access, and faster recovery using Veeam, StarWind VTL, and Backblaze B2 cloud storage at the link.

StarWind & VMware vSphere users get unrestricted StarWind Virtual SAN features, storage capacity, and outstanding cost-efficiency. Using StarWind VSAN, the process of deploying VMs, providing fault-tolerant storage, connecting it to hypervisor, and creating highly available VMs becomes a “piece o’ cake!”. But what about software RAID configuration? How not to get lost in a variety of choices between the different RAID levels?

Read the full article by Alex Bykovskyi, StarWind Solutions Architect, to know about a software RAID configuration and find out how to configure it inside a StarWind VSAN at the link.

A Kemp LoadMaster appliance is a critical service for load balancing and application content delivery. Thanks to flexible deployment options for a wide range of hypervisors and cloud platforms, Kemp LoadMaster allows you to distribute user traffic and improve application performance in private and hybrid cloud systems intelligently and efficiently. At the same time, usually Kemp is in front of critical services such as E-mail, web applications, SharePoint and if you lose it, you’ll get service outage. Deploying an HA cluster will solve this problem and provide a high availability, especially for a physical appliance!

Read the article by Romain Serre, StarWind Senior Consultant, to find out how to deploy a Kemp LoadMaster HA cluster at the link

The latest technology allows moving as separate databases and log files and the entire system. In this context, speed, ease, and lack of downtime are critical factors for the success of this process. How to ensure them and not to get lost in a variety of options for migrating SQL Server databases to Azure?

Read the article by Florent Appointaire, Microsoft Engineer, to find out how to migrate SQL Server databases to Azure SQL with a reduced time of unavailability