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ISN’s technical consultants have put their heads together and come up with some practical advice for IT teams considering introducing virtualisation.

1 - Start small and work up

So that you and your team can familiarise yourselves with the concepts and issues around virtualisation, start with free or inexpensive tools like #Citrix #XenServer, #VMware ESX3i or VMware Workstation.

Try For your first production systems try running simple server workloads like Blackberry Enterprise Server, DHCP or secondary domain controllers.

2 - Take a phased approach

Don’t try to do everything all at once. Trying to do too much in one step is a recipe for downtime and disaster. Specialist consultancies can provide the tools and expertise to help you plan the best way to get to your desired end results.

3 - Don’t expect to be able to virtualise all of your systems

Sometimes you are better off with physical servers. Direct attached storage in the form of RAID arrays on an intelligent caching disk controllers will often give better performance for high throughput databases than virtual machines accessing shared iSCSI storage.

4 - Check compatibility of existing software applications

Confirm with vendors that their applications are supported on virtual machines and consider their recommendations when looking at server, network and backup options.

5 - Don’t forget about licensing

Remember OEM licenses are tied to the hardware they were bought with, so that you can’t simply convert a machine running OEM software and stay compliant. Each virtual Windows server or desktop would need its own operating system license - either volume or retail box.

6 - Think about backup and recovery up front

Although it is easier to back up and restore, a production virtual machine needs a proper rigorous backup regime in place to allow quick recovery from data loss. Choose products which are designed for virtual systems such as those from Vizioncore or Symantec.

7 - Upgrade hardware warranty

When you are running multiple production virtual machines on one physical server system, this become vital as any downtime is compounded. For HP servers ISN recommend 24/7 6 hour Call-to-repair or 4 hour response Carepack warranty extensions. Dell too offer a “4 hour Mission Critical” response add-on to their basic warranty.

8 - Build a solid foundation for the future

Don’t try to skimp and put your first production virtual machines on a low-end system as this will generally become your production environment before you know it. Hardware is cheap compared to the cost, disruption and inconvenience of rebuilding. There is also a cost to eroding users’ confidence in new systems by providing it on under-powered hardware. Choose reliable, fast server hardware with redundancy built in.

9 - Use shared storage for more flexibility

For non critical server workloads with very little data it is feasible to keep the data within the virtual machine. To get the most out of a virtual environment, realising the full benefits of disaster recovery, resilience, flexibility and performance, it is best to separate critical production data and locate it on a shared Storage Area Network (SAN) or high end Network Attached Storage (NAS) device.

10 - Plan network capacity for best performance

ISN use iSCSI or fibre channel accelerators in servers attached to a separate storage LAN with a dedicated switch fabric to guarantee fastest data access times and throughput between servers, shared storage and users. If your server uses the same LAN for iSCSI access to a SAN as it does to serve data to users, problems can arise.

11 - Use outside expertise to give you a head start

It can save a lot of time and money to use an experienced consultancy to get you started on your virtualisation project. ISN’s qualified consultants can help you get results fast and transfer practical skills to your own IT team.

If you have any questions about virtualisation or how it might work in your business, please leave a comment or call me at ISN on 020 7313 9900.

This involves taking a snapshot image of a whole server (or desktop PC or laptop). If the server fails, the image can be used to recreate it the server on any hardware – doesn’t have to be identical - long as it has enough disk space and memory.

 What results will image backup give you? Read more »

People often ask us for ways to share files with suppliers, partners and remote workers when those files are too big to be sent as email attachments. After testing a few different approaches we’ve found the easiest way to do it.

One solution has been to set up an FTP site but that can be cumbersome for non-IT people. If hosted on your internal network, it could swamp your internet connection, or even provide a way in for hackers.

Having evaluated various sharing websites, we have found what seems to be the perfect solution in a new service called ShareFile. You can even brand it to look like your web site.

It ticks all the boxes for what we needed:

• Data stored externally
• Secure and encrypted data storage and transfer
• Easy to use for anyone, specialist or not
• Easy to control access for different recipients
• Low cost

ShareFile offer a free trial on www.sharefile.com. If you want to try it out for 30 days without having to submit a credit card, please call me at ISN on 020 7313 9900.

Many business need to send out regular information to their clients and email is the easiest and cheapest way to do it. The wrong approach is to create an email message, attach a document and send it out to 1000 of your contacts. This could cripple your mail server for hours and maybe even get you blacklisted as a spammer.

Here are the two most important tips for creating your own mailshots: Read more »

How do you acheive your business goals without spending more?

Cutting costs ruthlessly is easy but to damage your productivity will lose you revenue

Over the past 10 years ISN Solutions have helped hundreds of businesses and organisations of all kinds get the most from their IT spend. We’d like to hear from you about the IT challenges you face in your work - we think we can help.

In the meantime, here are three ways our current clients are getting more from their IT investment:

1 - Reduce the number of servers you run

This London web publishing company made savings in power, office space, IT support and gave better service to their customers.
Find out more >>

2 - Allow your staff to work from anywhere

An easy route to savings in office space while increasing productivity and business flexibility. Here’s how a financial recruitment specialist benefited during the recent snow
Find out more >>

3 - Network rationalisation

Get more out of existing Internet and WAN links and faster data access. This property company got £20k pa value from a one off £7k spend
Find out more >>

If you are interested in exploring what we can do to help, you can contact me on 020 7313 9900 or add a comment to this post.

I hear of occasions all the time where more than one person needs to work an a spreadsheet at the same time. Since Office 2003, Microsoft have included this functionality in Excel. To share a Workbook, simply follow the steps below:

• Office 2003: Tools - Share Workbook
• Office 2007: Review Tab - Share Workbook

Then click the “Allow changes by more than one user…” checkbox and save the document. Now a whole group of people can update the same document and see each other’s changes every time they press the Save button.

What’s your favourite Office tip?

My partner, IT Manager for an insurance company, told me that the best Office tip she ever heard was to use  “the paintbrush” or, to give it its proper name: Format Painter. When I asked around, I found that many people, even senior IT people who use Excel and Word all day, had never heard of it. It works in nearly all Office applications. Read more »

There is much more to Microsoft Office Outlook than just email, beneath the surface there are lots of useful features to make your day-to-day life easier and more organised. Here are some tips which could save you some frustration. Read more »

Microsoft Windows XP and Vista have an “offline folders” facility which allows you to take copies of files away from the office network on your laptop so that you can work with them on the move. All great in theory but we advise you to steer clear.
Read more »

A Blackberry is great for staying in touch but it is easy to become an addict and let it drive you to distraction. At worst you can end up reacting every time you get an email and not getting on with the work that grows your business/career/pay packet.

Here are some ideas I used for claiming my own life back. Read more »