Virtualization Software
Virtualization technology enables the partitioning of computational resources on a physical server or computer. Each of these virtual machine partitions is completely encapsulated and isolated. Virtual machines are hardware-independent, allowing migration between physical host computers.

Solution Topics: Server consolidation, green-computing, infrastructure provisioning, reduced hardware maintenance, business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR)
Vendors: Citrix Systems, Microsoft, VMware

Desktop Virtualization
From virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs) to terminal services, applying the concepts of virtualization to the desktop can exponentially increase the benefits of a virtualization strategy.

Solution Topics: Security, machine consolidation, green-computing, business- continuity and the
desktop, streamlined/simplified desktop maintenance, lower management and support costs

Vendors: Citrix Systems, Microsoft, VMware

Virtual Infrastructure
The foundation of any virtual environment is the hosting hardware. Having qualified hardware for your implementation ensures a smooth transition to a virtual solution.

Servers and Blades Servers: Robust servers or blade servers are required to host your virtualization solution. A blade-server solution accommodates further consolidation of deployment hardware and space needs.

Vendors: AMD, HP, IBM, Intel

Storage for Virtual Environments
Whether it’s iSCSI Fibre or NAS, shared storage is required to share virtual machines among multiple hosts. This ensures critical-application business continuity.

Vendors: Adaptec, Data Domain, EMC, Emulex, Equallogic, Hitachi, HP, IBM, LeftHand Networks

Thin Clients: Thin clients offer a secure, low-power path to accessing virtualized desktop solutions.

Vendors: HP, Planar Systems, Wyse Technology

Backup, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for Virtual Environments
Virtualization can help alleviate the stress and cost of setting up a business-continuity/disaster recovery plan. The vendors in this category integrate and automate the process of protecting virtual machines and their data, even in worst-case scenarios.

Solution Topics: Consolidated backups, site-to-site replication, backup to tape/disk, off-site backup, continuous data protection, physical machine/virtualized backup

Vendors: CA, HP, Marathon Technologies, PlateSpin, Symantec, Vizioncore

Security in a Virtual World
Applying the concepts of a secure environment to the virtualized infrastructure is a key element of any virtualization implementation.

Vendors: McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro, Websense

Virtual Machine Management and Automation
A virtual environment represents a fundamentally different way of looking at an IT infrastructure. Applications in this category allow an administrator to effectively manage the resources in a virtualized environment.

Solution Topics: Infrastructure provisioning, centralized management, life-cycle automation

Vendors: Cisco, Citrix Systems, HP, Microsoft, Net IQ, Novell, PlateSpin, Symantec, Vizioncore, VMware

Conversion Software for Virtual Environments
Commonly called physical-to-virtual (P2V) software, conversion software allows for the migration of existing physical machines into a virtual environment with no reconfiguration. Many vendors of this software can enable reverse migration (V2P), conversion between dissimilar hardware (P2P), conversion between different virtualization platforms (V2V), as well as a backup to an image file format.

Solution Topics: Migration strategies, increased flexibility of compute environments, reduced implementation time, backup strategies

Vendors: PlateSpin, Symantec, Vizioncore, VMware

Design and Sizing Tools for Virtual Environments
Acquiring the right infrastructure for a large virtualized deployment can be difficult. These tools will aid in the proper sizing and growth for complex virtual environments.

Solution Topics: Infrastructure sizing, capacity planning

Vendors: PlateSpin, VMware

To learn more about Virtualization solutions and how they can help your business,
call Info Advantage now at: (585) 254-8710