Your Pathway To IT Advice and Support
IP Pathways Newsletter
Volume 1, Issue 2 Summer 2009
Upcoming Events
• IP Pathways will be holding a Peplink load balancing webinar in July. Look for details soon. • IP Pathways will be holding an email archival webinar in July. Look for details soon. • Look for IP Pathways at the upcoming Iowa CIO forum. • IP Pathways will be holding a VMware View seminar in August. Look for details soon.
IP Pathways’ VMware View Traveling Lab!
Desktop virtualization is becoming a quickly adopted and popular technology. Today's IT staff's are under pressure to do more with less. They are asked to roll new applications quickly, work with less staff, support more remote users and build more resilient infrastructures. Business is more dependent on technology than ever before, yet more frustrated by its inflexibility. With an increasing mobile and globally dispersed workforce using multiple devices on multiple platforms, they struggle to connect to their data and applications across a tangle of web, desktop, and server based solutions. IT struggles to retrofit and manage the tightly bound single purpose system of OS, applications, and hardware. And when a user breaks or misplaces a computer—productivity stops, security is breached, and intellectual property can be lost. Reconnecting is no easy task: days are lost bringing users back on line and weeks go by as IT tries to recoup lost information. The desktop of the future will not be a single physical device but a collection of different devices and environments. Applications and data may be located across a combination of locations for example: a virtual desktop running on a server, a home notebook computer and a webmail account. End users want the same view regardless of what device they use to connect to their desktop or where their applications and data are located – the user wants a universal client. IT organizations on the other hand want to simplify management and take control of desktops and applications cost effectively. Universal client is the next evolution in desktop computing including virtual desktop infrastructure.
IP Pathways has a traveling VMware View demo lab that we can bring to your site. Everyone talks about View but have they seen it live? Our traveling lab will show you a complete working VMware and View environment and can demonstrate the following:
Inside this issue:
Achieve 100% Internet Uptime
2
The Real Storage 2 & Virtualization Experts NetApp Data Deduplication Success Story IP Pathways Overview 3
• • • • •
Persistent Desktops Non-Persistent Desktops Thin App Composer Linked Clones
Schedule a Demonstration
4
IP Pathways’ Blog and Web Sites
IP Pathways has joined the social networking universe! We are finding it is now very important to keep in touch with customers and prospects via tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and blogging. Our website will be undergoing changes in the next 2 months to provide easy links to these sites and updates, but in the meantime, please follow us on the web through these various links: IP Pathways’ Facebook Page IP Pathway’s Twitter Page IP Pathways’ LinkedIn Page IP Pathways’ Blog To learn more about IP Pathways, contact us at (515) 4229300 or email us at sales@ippathways.com.
Featured IP Path- 4 ways’ Partners IP Pathways’ Cus- 4 tomer Referral $500 Offer
Page 2
IP Pathways Newsletter
Achieve 100% Internet Uptime - An IP Pathways’ Success
IP Pathways opened for business in November 2007. We immediately installed a T1 for our voice and data services. This T1 came with the standard SLA (service level agreement). Since 2007, IP Pathways had to deal with 3 outages of the T1, the shortest outage being over an hour. We were frustrated because during an outage, we couldn’t communicate with our customers via voice or email as our services were unavailable to the world. We started looking for link aggregation and redundancy solutions so that if another outage occurred, our data services would not be unavailable. We contacted Peplink (www.peplink.com) and learned about their Balance Series Routers. The Peplink Balance Series Routers allow for the aggregation and link redundancy for multiple Internet connections. We purchased a Peplink 210 for approximately $1,000 and had a secondary low-cost Internet connection installed. The Peplink Balance 210 allowed us to do the following:
“IP Pathways’ staff did not even realize there was an outage because all the data traffic (both outbound and inbound) failed over to the low-cost secondary connection. This was the best $1,000 we ever spent in the business!”
•
Aggregate the 2 connections so that we had more available bandwidth for downloads Achieve seamless link redundancy for all inbound traffic so that if either connection failed, all traffic was immediately routed through the other connection, allowing us to achieve 100% uptime. Achieve 100% uptime to all our applications when working remotely.
•
The solution was easy to install and was up and running within a couple of hours. In May, we experienced another outage on our primary T1. This outage took down voice and data services from the primary T1 provider. IP Pathways’ staff did not even realize there was an outage because all the data traffic (both outbound and inbound) failed over to the low-cost secondary connection. This was the best $1,000 we ever spent in the business! To learn more about Peplink’s link aggregation and redundancy solutions, please call us at (515) 422-9300 or email us at sales@ippathways.com.
•
“We have real world experience sizing and deploying these solutions and understand the pitfalls and what makes for a successful project”
The Real Storage & Virtualization Experts
It seems these days that everyone claims to be an expert in storage and virtualization, or so they claim. It is true that most any VAR (Value Added Reseller) can sign up with a NAS or SAN manufacturer and VMware or Microsoft to sell their solutions, but does that make them an expert? Likewise it is fairly easy to pass a sales certification training from a vendor, but does that make a company an expert? Virtualization and centralized storage (SAN/NAS) go hand-inhand and they are not simple. When you virtualize either servers or desktops, you are moving all the IOPs from multiple servers or desktops to the centralized storage. Most VARs look at the requirements for the centralized storage from a disk capacity perspective when really the goal is to maintain or increase performance so the sizing should be about IOPs. IP Pathways’ engineers have years of experience in enterprise environments as Admins and Sr. Architects. We have real world experiencing sizing and deploying these solutions and understand the pitfalls and what makes for a successful project. Engage with us and you will find that IP Pathways is THE REAL STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATION EXPERT - Wade Brower
Volume 1, Issue 2
Page 3
NetApp Customer Success Story - Data Deduplication
There is a lot written about data deduplication and quite a bit of confusion around the subject as well. When most technology providers talk about deduplication, they are typically referring to deduplication as it relates to backups. This is great and can save money on backup media, disk and can help shrink the backup data set so it can be replicated to a 2nd site more easily. This type of deduplication technology does not address primary storage. Primary storage is in most cases a larger expense than backup so technologies that can reduce the overall primary storage footprint can reduce initial costs but contain the long-term costs associated with adding future disk. NetApp has data deduplication technology that deduplicates data on the primary data storage. This is very useful and important in virtualized environments. NetApp’s deduplication technology is not at the file level, but at the block level so redundant data blocks are only stored once. In the case of VMware, if you had 10 Windows Server 2003 virtual machines, you would have 10 instances of the OS in traditional storage, with NetApp, those 10 instances only take up the space of 1. The savings are even more pronounced in VMware View (formerly VDI) deployments. In the case of a customer who has 100 XP Pro desktops, there would be 100 instances of the XP PRO OS residing on the storage. This could take up to TB’s of space on a traditional SAN. With NetApp’s deduplication technology, only 1 instance of the XP PRO is taking up space, so the customer realizes a dramatic savings in primary storage. To learn about NetApp’s deduplication technology, click here. IP Pathways recently worked with a local county hospital to virtualize their server and desktop environments. The customer had over 10 physical servers and 70 desktops and needed a more robust, portable and fault tolerant infrastructure. NetApp was selected as the central storage vendor, deploying a NetApp FAS3140A with 3 shelves of 144GB FC drives. NetApp was selected for its flexibility and deduplication technology. NetApp has the unique ability to deduplicate data on the primary store at the block level, which is very beneficial in virtualized environments as discussed above. After the deployment, the customer received an 88% reduction in the backup piece of their CIFS environment, reclaiming 8TB of space that could now be used. They also received over a 50% reduction in their VMware environment, reclaiming 1.3TB of space. In IP Pathways' deployments, we are seeing over 50% reductions in VMware environments and over 25% reductions in CIFS environments, reclaiming space that can be used by the customers and allowing them to achieve storage containment. NetApp recently announced a 50% storage savings on qualified virtual environments. To learn more about the NetApp 50% virtualization storage savings guarantee, click here. NetApp (www.netapp.com) is a provider of NAS and SAN storage that deduplicates data on the primary store at a block level. To learn more about VMware View, contact IP Pathways at (515) 422-9300 or email us at sales@ippathways.com.
"Show us how much data you need to store in your virtual environment. We guarantee that you will use 50% less storage with NetApp® compared to a baseline of traditional storage. You'll enjoy better protection and more flexibility, and you'll use less storage.”
IP Pathways Overview
IP Pathways
Your Pathway To IT Advice and Support
2550 73rd Street Urbandale, IA 50322 (515) 422-9300 sales@ippathways.com
IP Pathways provides IT advice and support to businesses throughout the Midwest. We are an engineering company at the core and provide valuable pre-sales, procurement, implementation and postimplementation support services focusing on centralized data storage, virtualization, Microsoft and disaster recovery planning. We represent only the leading technologies and manufacturers and have deep expertise and years of experience both in consulting and working in corporate IT environments. Advise Design Build Support
Featured IP Pathways’ Partners
www.ippathways.com
Centralized Data Storage
Software and Systems
Specialty
Special Offer To IP Pathways’ Customers: Refer a company to IP Pathways and if they become a customer, you will receive a voucher for $500 that can be applied to future purchases of products or services. Click Referral Link
NetApp is the leading provider of SAN and NAS solutions for the small and mid-tier enterprise. NetApp’s data deduplication technology provides storage savings previously unseen in the industry.
Microsoft’s mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their fullest potential.
F5 is the global leader in application delivery networking, enabling our customers to increase business efficiency by leveraging the power of virtualization throughout the enterprise.
Hitachi Data Systems leverages global R&D resources to develop storage solutions built on industry-leading technology with the performance, availability and scalability to maximize customers' ROI and minimize their risk.
VMware is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter.
Imprivata OneSign is an appliance-based authentication and access management solution that is changing the way organizations secure their networks, applications and integrated IT/ building access.
Overland Storage delivers robust data backup solutions .
Syncsort's products are used in more than 50 countries to speed data warehouse processing, improve database loads, improve query performance and back up and protect data in distributed environments.
ArcMail Technology is focused on providing simple, secure, and cost-effective email archive solutions to the small and medium sized business market.