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Virtualization

Virtualization has proven it’s self as a game changing technology. TSG Consulting can help you leverage virtualization to seamlessly move existing applications to new hardware and reduce your future hardware needs. Virtualization promises to reduce present and future hardware and support costs while increasing application availability.  

Virtualization does this by removing the connection between hardware and software. Applications can be moved as needed without needing to be redeployed. TSG Consulting can help you create a strategy for your company depending on your needs.

Solutions created for our customer include.

  1. Hardware upgrades, getting your application off outdated and unreliable hardware.
  2. Server consolidation, reducing your costs by running underutilized application on a shared physical server while keeping the applications separate.
  3. Increased application availability, Leveraging tools to move applications to new hardware in the case of a system failure or maintenance.
  4. Improved flexibility, allowing application to be moved as needed for better performance or hardware maintenance.
  5. Testing platform and rollback. Virtualization allows testing on real duplicates of production systems as well a rolling back to pre-change conditions during upgrades.
  6. Disaster recovery, real hot site capability or application recoverability without the dependence on duplicate hardware.

Hardware Upgrades

Time takes a toll on hardware, but the cost of migrating to new hardware is prohibitive because of the cost to reinstall the software as well as the hardware costs. With VMware you have the option of using VMware Converter™ to migrate your application without reinstalling. In many cases a reinstall may be needed, but in the case of custom or complex installations this is a powerful feature. TSG Consulting has helped customers migrate to the VMware platform while minimizing the impact to users.

Once installed on to the VMware platform you no longer need to be concerned about the hardware as the connection has been removed. VMware guests can be migrated to new hardware as business needs change. If VMware’s Vmotion is configure this can be done live, without an outage.

Server Consolidation

Server consolidation is the hallmark of the VMware product. Most applications are underutilized and can capitalize on the flexibility of the VMware platform. The amount of consolidation depends on the application and Host server configuration but 10 to 1 server to hardware consolidation is quite reasonable. TSG Consulting has the experience needed to make the right selections when configuring your VMware platform. We can help you get your applications and staff up to speed quickly. TSGCI prides it’s self with knowledge transfer and training so your staff is ready to support the new platform.

Increased Application Availability

Downtime is lost time. VMware’s High Availability option will bring a VMware guest back up on working hardware in the case of a hardware failure in minutes. In most cases before you knew there had been a failure. TSG Consulting will help you configure this solution so you can say goodbye to downtime. 

Availability is also increased by the flexibility of Vmotion. If hardware maintenance is needed you no longer need to wait for and outage window. The servers can be moved off to another system live during the day. The work can be done and the servers moved back after the work is done and the system is tested. No more testing in production. Your systems are up and running 24/7.

Improved Flexibility

The connection between hardware and software is removed by running on top of VMware. Servers can be moved between hardware depending on the need, even dynamically, using Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS). VMware can tune your systems as your needs change. For example; you are closing the books for the month and your reporting server needs extra resources, DRS will detect this and move system to free up resources dynamically or according to a schedule you have determined. 

If applications are needed rarely they can be paused or taken offline. Hardware is not tied up but the application is ready at a moment's notice.

Real Testing Platform

Every software vendor recommends you need to test before installing in production. But who has the time or resources to maintain a test system? By combining the networking and cloning capabilities of VMware TSG Consulting can help you create a real test environment to test your upgrade, patches, etc. Because the test environment has little or no load it can be run on the same hardware as production idling or in a sleep mode until it is needed. This minimizes surprises by really testing your changes on a clone of your production system. VMware can even be setup to roll back the change in seconds, if required. Even in production the snapshot function can be used to roll back change if thing do not work out.

If you require a full lab environment, VMware Lab Manager is designed for this. It can provide complex environments involving multiple servers and networks as stored configurations that can be deployed in the same way you deploy a single server using VMware, totally automated as quickly as the images can be written to disk.

Disaster Recovery

TSG Consulting can help you with several disaster recovery solutions. We have implemented hot site capability for our customers with hot switch over for testing. Using VMware we have achieved application recoverability without the dependence on duplicate hardware. VMware removes the connection between the hardware and the software giving you the capability to move you applications offsite or recover your applications to new hardware at a DR site. VMware’s backup solution can give you a true snapshot of a system with out taking the application down to back it up. These solutions can lead to a verifiable DR solution that will satisfy your auditors and investors.