Virtually Indispensable
Ten years ago this October, Envision Technology Advisors was incorporated. Our first client hired us to replace an aging Novell network that was crashing multiple times each day. Their Internet access was a 56k (fast at the time) dialup connection that was shared among the 20 users with a little piece of equipment called a “webramp”. Their “email server” was running on an old laptop and it checked for new email twice a day.
I clearly remember replacing that network and how great it was to add a second dialup to their internet access. Everyone marveled at the speed that two dialups delivered! It was so fast that we changed the mail server to check four times a day and patted ourselves on the back as our new Windows NT 4.0 server ran the network.
Technology has changed a lot since then. Windows NT hasn’t been supported for years now, and I would bet that there are people that will read this who have never used a dialup Internet connection. The one constant though is the aggravation that I feel after I roll out some new technology in one place and then have to work in other networks that don’t have it yet.
The reality is that not everyone can afford to be on the leading edge. However, as a consultant, it sucks to know what the available technologies are capable of and to not have those resources at your disposal. If you can imagine how it would feel to watch a client ride to work on a donkey everyday when lots of your other customers just bought BMW’s then you can start to catch my meaning.
Today the BMW is virtalization and centralized storage, and the donkey is pretty much everything else. With a well designed virtualization and storage platform, a computer network can deliver high availability that was previously reserved for fortune 500 companies.
Just last night, one of our engineers started a vendor mandated upgrade on a database application for a customer that has this technology in-place. The upgrade crashed the server. In a conventional network, we would have had to work all night to put that back together. However, for this client, we clicked the mouse about 5 times and the entire server was recovered to the state it was in moments before we had started the upgrade. It was as if nothing ever happened. There was no downtime, and our engineers were on their way home 15 minutes later.
Aside from the disaster recovery and uptime benefits, virtualization also reduces long-term IT costs. In fact, if the customer from last night didn’t have this technology in-place there would have been a huge bill for the all-nighter we would have had to pull to recover their systems. In that one moment, the storage platform saved that company about $1,500 in operational expenses. It only has to do that a handful of times for it to pay for itself.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, these technologies are a great way to jump on the “Green” bandwagon. The point of this technology is to do more with less. A virtualized environment typically employs significantly fewer servers. This means less waste, less electricity, and less heat generation which means less air conditioning. All the way around, these technologies reduce your carbon footprint and make mother earth smile!
Is it hard to get started with Virtualization? NO! All you need is a desire to save money, have better uptime, and to do the right thing for the planet. That is why Envision is focused on these technologies. It’s a great feeling to sell something that is such an easy win for everyone involved.
So why do some companies try to ride that donkey until it drops dead? The most likely reason is that no-one has ever told them not to. According to VMWare, 96% of small businesses run on conventional computing technology and have not yet switched to virtualization. Their IT people may fear change, or it could be that their IT company isn’t trained in these technologies so they are keeping their clients in the dark.
Whatever the reason, my advice is that you should ask your IT people or your consultants about virtualization. If you don’t know what questions to ask, feel free to email me at Todd@envisionsuccess.net or call at 401-272-6688 and ask for Todd Knapp. Any of our engineers will be happy to spend some time talking to you about how you can leverage these solutions to streamline your business and at the same time give the planet a helping hand.
I guess I should get back to work now. I am very busy watching a server in its fourth hour of a data transfer. This would have taken about 3-5 minutes if the client had centralized storage. [sigh]
I clearly remember replacing that network and how great it was to add a second dialup to their internet access. Everyone marveled at the speed that two dialups delivered! It was so fast that we changed the mail server to check four times a day and patted ourselves on the back as our new Windows NT 4.0 server ran the network.
Technology has changed a lot since then. Windows NT hasn’t been supported for years now, and I would bet that there are people that will read this who have never used a dialup Internet connection. The one constant though is the aggravation that I feel after I roll out some new technology in one place and then have to work in other networks that don’t have it yet.
The reality is that not everyone can afford to be on the leading edge. However, as a consultant, it sucks to know what the available technologies are capable of and to not have those resources at your disposal. If you can imagine how it would feel to watch a client ride to work on a donkey everyday when lots of your other customers just bought BMW’s then you can start to catch my meaning.
Today the BMW is virtalization and centralized storage, and the donkey is pretty much everything else. With a well designed virtualization and storage platform, a computer network can deliver high availability that was previously reserved for fortune 500 companies.
Just last night, one of our engineers started a vendor mandated upgrade on a database application for a customer that has this technology in-place. The upgrade crashed the server. In a conventional network, we would have had to work all night to put that back together. However, for this client, we clicked the mouse about 5 times and the entire server was recovered to the state it was in moments before we had started the upgrade. It was as if nothing ever happened. There was no downtime, and our engineers were on their way home 15 minutes later.
Aside from the disaster recovery and uptime benefits, virtualization also reduces long-term IT costs. In fact, if the customer from last night didn’t have this technology in-place there would have been a huge bill for the all-nighter we would have had to pull to recover their systems. In that one moment, the storage platform saved that company about $1,500 in operational expenses. It only has to do that a handful of times for it to pay for itself.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, these technologies are a great way to jump on the “Green” bandwagon. The point of this technology is to do more with less. A virtualized environment typically employs significantly fewer servers. This means less waste, less electricity, and less heat generation which means less air conditioning. All the way around, these technologies reduce your carbon footprint and make mother earth smile!
Is it hard to get started with Virtualization? NO! All you need is a desire to save money, have better uptime, and to do the right thing for the planet. That is why Envision is focused on these technologies. It’s a great feeling to sell something that is such an easy win for everyone involved.
So why do some companies try to ride that donkey until it drops dead? The most likely reason is that no-one has ever told them not to. According to VMWare, 96% of small businesses run on conventional computing technology and have not yet switched to virtualization. Their IT people may fear change, or it could be that their IT company isn’t trained in these technologies so they are keeping their clients in the dark.
Whatever the reason, my advice is that you should ask your IT people or your consultants about virtualization. If you don’t know what questions to ask, feel free to email me at Todd@envisionsuccess.net or call at 401-272-6688 and ask for Todd Knapp. Any of our engineers will be happy to spend some time talking to you about how you can leverage these solutions to streamline your business and at the same time give the planet a helping hand.
I guess I should get back to work now. I am very busy watching a server in its fourth hour of a data transfer. This would have taken about 3-5 minutes if the client had centralized storage. [sigh]
posted by Todd @ 11:59 AM
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