Virtualisation is a key trend in the server market, since it's the best way to get the most from a given set of resources in a data centre or server environment.
And Dell's new vStart technology makes it easier than ever before to roll out virtual machines.
"It offers a single racked and packed solution that is up and running within days of delivery, rather than months," says Othelo Vieira, Dell enterprise product manager at Tarsus Technologies.
Instead of manually configuring both a machine and software, Vieira says vStart offers three configurations of pre-built, self-contained and ready-to-run solutions.
"This allows customers a choice of Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere virtualisation technologies, which are in turn able to meet individual needs and scalability requirements," he says.
Additionally, he says, everything is pre-built and configured, and pre-validated too.
"It means valuable time-saving, something that's veritable gold dust in an IT market with ever-shrinking budgets," he adds.
A vStart system includes virtualisation clusters powered by PowerEdge servers, while additional storage can be added through the optional EqualLogic iSCSI storage arrays.
"Both SAN and LAN traffic are handled by PowerConnect switches, and everything is monitored and controlled through one of Dell's PowerEdge management servers. In each of the three configurations, the arrangement of hardware is scaled according to requirements," Vieira explains.
He adds that all vStart systems have no single point of failure, including redundant hardware across all components - including power supply, with redundant power supplies and optional integrated UPS systems.
"There's also physical separation of traffic between LAN and the iSCSI SAN, and logical separation of LAN traffic over virtual interfaces. vStart servers can be configured with software redundancy, with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V High Availability, which enables failover clustering, and the same applies to the VMware solution," he says.
Allowing IT departments to stay on top of their game, Vieira says that management servers on vStart systems give access to the entire resource pool, allowing administrators to control the hosts, and individual VMs.
"Performance monitoring and storage management are also enabled by the management server, and it's also possible to control out-of-band systems through iDRAC7, depending on the vStart configuration," he says.
Dell's vStart systems offer validated configurations that help speed up deployment of these cloud services, and more.
"A simple, yet immensely powerful virtualisation solution can save your company and employees both time and money. And the best part is, this solution is already available through Tarsus Technologies' Dell team.
"We believe this is a great addition to the current Dell line-up and we're convinced it will resonate well with the resellers in our base," he concludes.
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