Infinitely Virtual Newsletter

New Site

2010-12-02T22:46:00.001-08:00

Please visit our new newsletter blog at http://infinitelyvirtual.com/blog/newsletter.

Make Your Business Universally Accessible with QuickBooks on a Virtual Terminal Server

2010-11-08T09:55:00.000-08:00

More than 85,000 companies have chosen QuickBooks Solutions. Thousands more use different editions of QuickBooks because of its flexibility. The company says its share of business accounting has reached just over 94 percent. As businesses grow and expand to multiple locations, they may now choose to run QuickBooks on a hosted virtual terminal server (VTS).

A virtual terminal server is a virtual dedicated server with Windows Server 2008 and Remote Desktop Session Host enabled. This configuration allows the system to be used by multiple users simultaneously, sharing applications and data with users anywhere there is an Internet connection. Businesses can “rent” these VTS plans from service providers for as little as $19.99 per month. Running Quickbooks on a VTS has many benefits, including universal accessibility, low cost, less complexity, and data protection.

How is a Hosted VTS Universally Accessible?

You can use a virtual terminal server anywhere there is an internet connection. Using a web browser or a program called remote desktop connection, users can access their applications and share data with coworkers regardless of where they are. With this technology you can easily establish branch offices and support teleworkers. Travelers will especially like the ability to work from hotel business centers, airports, cafés or anywhere they can get a 3G or 4G data connection.

Lower Your Costs with Hosted Virtual Terminal Servers

With a VTS plan, you can eliminate capital expense associated with your company’s network infrastructure. Instead of purchasing and replacing servers, their operating systems, applications and backup software every 3 to 5 years, you can “rent” processing power and costly Microsoft licensing. Additionally, there is no need for skilled engineers to configure and manage your servers. With a hosted virtual terminal server, you can virtually eliminate IT labor costs.

Sleep Better Knowing that Your System is Protected

Every IT person knows that the most vulnerable aspect of any network is its data backup and business continuity solution. If your network is like most, it doesn’t have a backup, the backup media doesn’t go offsite, there is only one backup set at any given time, or the backup has never been tested. That should make any business person cringe.

With the right solution provider, your data can be backed up nightly, replicated offsite, and retained for weeks or months. This level of protection is costly when you attempt to implement it on a small scale, but if you select the right partner, it is free.

Hosting your own server is risky in other ways too. You are always just one hardware or software problem away from being unable to function. Here are just some of the things that can stop your business cold:

Server hardware failure
- Requires components to be replaced
- Simple failures require hours or even a day to get parts and replace

System board or hard disk failures may lead to days of downtime

Disk corruption affecting the server’s operating system
- Likely requires complete reinstallation of OS and reconfiguration of the server
- Downtime is likely to be a day minimum

Malware gets onto the server

Power outage

Network component failures
- Including switches & routers

If you have a hosted virtual terminal server, you are protected from all of these and many more. The right service provider has redundant everything:

clustered servers

clustered storage

clustered firewalls

redundant power

generator backup

redundant switches

redundant routers

redundant Internet connectivity

Instant restore of entire servers to previous evening snapshot

More for Less

For as little as $10/month per user you can share Quickbooks and many more applications with your users no matter where they are, and you can do it knowing your data and business operations are secure.

To learn about how to leverage hosted Virtual Terminal Server with QuickBooks or any other applications, call Infinitely Virtual at (866) 257-8455 or request more information from the website: www.InfinitelyVirtual.com

Choose a Virtual Dedicated Server Hosting Company that Supports Uploading Your Own Virtual Machine

2010-10-15T13:59:00.000-07:00

Virtual dedicated server companies that allow customers to upload virtual machines offer tremendous benefits over those who require their users to use the hosting company’s templates or server images. Uploading a virtual machine allows you to convert a physical server to a virtual one, use an existing virtual server image, upload server files to a virtual hosting company, or have a hosting company put the virtual server in their environment for you.

Uploading a virtual machine is a great option if you already have a perfect server or don't have access to your server's original installation media. VM upload also lets you implement a development environment for your physical or alternate virtual infrastructure, or use a hosted solution for disaster recovery or business continuity.

Prevent Downtime in Your Production Environment

By uploading a virtual server, all you need to safely update your operating system is to take a snapshot of your hosted virtual environment, load it on a local workstation or a development VM, install all the desired updates, and test it thoroughly before adding the updated server.

Save Time and Customize Your Server

Before virtualization, loading similar applications or operating systems on identical hardware required tedious installation and removal of each variation on the same physical box. Uploading a disk image to a virtual machine gives you the ability to create parallel test environments, saving you time.

Building a custom server or operating system from scratch is also time-consuming, even with excellent configuration management tools, but with a VM upload, you can create and duplicate a disk image that can then be uploaded easily—and quickly. VM upload also lets you build identical, reproducible machines, so that your web site runs smoothly and predictably, with no loss of data, and no downtime. Additionally, you can take an old or misbehaving web server off-line and replace it instantly.

If your development team needs access to your legacy system, VM upload allows you to keep your necessary system as an image locally and put it into an active testing environment only when you need it.

Save Money with a Flexible, Efficient Testing and Production Environment

As businesses grow, so does the need for more virtual servers. Virtualization gives you the flexibility to have as many servers as you need, immediately, and VM upload gives you the ability to take advantage of that flexibility. You'll save money by avoiding the costly turnaround time for bringing physical servers online.

Customization without the High Cost from Infinitely Virtual

Infinitely Virtual’s VM upload supports image import from all major virtualization vendors and offers virtual dedicated servers with the revolutionary Enterprise Virtualization Environment (E.V.E.), including features like NetApp SAN with RAID-DP, VMware HA clustering, clustered enterprise firewalls, guarantees 100% uptime, and nightly server backup. To learn more about uploading your own VM to an Infinitely Virtual virtual server, call Infinitely Virtual at (866) 257-8455 or request more information at www.InfinitelyVirtual.com.

Upgrade to Microsoft Project 2010; Compelling Features Enhance Project Collaboration and Management

2010-10-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

The new Microsoft Project 2010 make projects easier. The Project family builds on critical changes made in Microsoft Office Project 2007 and provides pathways for more complex project portfolios as your company’s expertise evolves. New interfaces and menus make Microsoft Project 2010 easier to use. The new navigation adopts the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2010 applications, which allows discovery of new features. If users have learned Ribbon in other Office applications, they will be more familiar with Project.

There are three applications in the Project Office family: Project Standard 2010, Project Professional 2010 and Project Server 2010.

Project Standard 2010

• Use Excel-like features to create and manipulate the schedules and data. Office features such as auto-complete, add or delete columns, or rows and text wrap make it simple to learn and use Project Office.
• Timelines are visually enhanced with better graphics and expanded colors.

Project Professional 2010

• Create customized timelines. Timeline details are quick and easy to visualize and drill into with the enhanced graphical timelines.
• Scheduling projects is straightforward. User alerts warn you of potential problems so they can be dealt with immediately. You can also create “What-if?” scenarios using the active and inactive task feature.
• Complete reporting time by enabling Single Entry Mode. A consolidated approval center simplifies approval of timesheets and task status.
• Outlook and Exchange integrate with the software, no add-ins required. Microsoft Outlook Web allows you to immediately send updates to mobile devices.
• Enhanced resource planning lets you use a drag-and-drop to visually find a balance of resources.

The web interface carries over to the entire Project family. With built-in web access, teams in different geographic locations and time zones can instantly and effortlessly collaborate and monitor a project’s progress.

Project Server and SharePoint

Project Server expands the functionality and features of Project 2010 to include project portfolio management. This allows multiple projects to be accessed, resources reviewed, and tasks updated to maintain organizational control throughout the portfolio.

Project Server 2010 has built-in integration with SharePoint 2010. SharePoint houses all project documents in one location like a company intranet, letting users access the server via local networks or with Virtual Private Networks (VPN). SharePoint Services tasks lists can be converted to Project Professional 2010 to help with scheduling.

With SharePoint’s document control, procedures can be established for review and approval of documents required for the project. User access is controlled with permissions to limit document access and access control also prevents users from changing the wrong documents, or the wrong projects.
The content management system (CMS) controls in SharePoint can store multiple versions of documents for regulatory or compliance requirements.
With the latest edition of the Project family has:

• No support of Internet Explorer 6
• No support for ActiveX controls
• Project tasks in Outlook no longer requires a plug-in to work with Project Server

To Learn about upgrading to the Project family and other new Microsoft applications, call Infinitely Virtual at (866) 257-8455 or request more information from the website: www.InfinitelyVirtual.com.

Upgrade Your Office Applications Free with Infinitely Virtual and OpenOffice.org

2010-09-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

OpenOffice.org is the leading open-source office software for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. Recently acquired by Oracle, OpenOffice.org Productivity Suite is available for Linux, Windows, Unix, Sun Solaris, Apple Mac operating systems, and is completely free of charge for any use. While it shines as a productivity suite, it is probably best known for its compatibility with other applications, the ability to read files created by software such as Microsoft, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3, and save to those same formats.

One Download, One Product, Five Applications

OpenOffice.org was designed, developed, and implemented as a single piece of software with applications that work together as one product. OpenOffice.org is actively developed (with several releases every year) by a worldwide group who agree to make a tool that serves its purpose as efficiently and smoothly as possible. This means that the interface and user experience are consistent and easy to use, with the tools, such as menus, formulas, and context-sensitive help being usable in every application. You can even open any type of document—whether it’s a spreadsheet, html page, text document, database, presentation or drawing—from any one of OpenOffice.org’s applications.

With OpenOffice.org 3, you download a single installation package that provides Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, and Draw applications and includes .pdf file creation and the ability to add a growing variety of extensions.

The Applications Inside

Writer is a fully equipped word processor and desktop publisher with features like AutoCorrect, AutoComplete, AutoFormat, Styles and Formatting (a feature shared by all of the OpenOffice.org applications), Text Frames and Linking, Tables of Contents, Indexing, Bibliographical References, Illustrations, and Tables. While Writer maintains simplicity, so tasks like creating a list isn’t a chore, it is also powerful and stable enough to assemble image-heavy and complex books and brochures.

Calc is intuitive and easy to learn for beginners, but experts will also appreciate features that include Advanced DataPilot technology, Natural language formulas, an Intelligent Sum Button, a range of advanced functions, Styles and Formatting, and a Scenario Manager.

Impress uses 2D and 3D clip art, special effects, animation, drawing tools, and a multi-pane view to offer a creative palette for your high-impact presentations. With Impress, you can even share your presentation in .pdf, HTML, and Flash.

Base is the database tool that enables you to create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports, either using your own database or Base's own built-in HSQL database engine. Base offers Wizards, Design Views, or SQL Views for beginning to advanced users.

Draw gives you the tools to make graphics, freehand drawings, flowcharts, and network diagrams. With Draw, you can manipulate objects, rotate in two or three dimensions, use rendering to create photorealistic images, and use Smart connectors.

Compatibility Equals Capability without Licensing Worries

Your business can work with OpenOffice.org. Not only does it compare favorably to the most competitive commercial software on the market, it interacts easily with all of them, giving you the ability to open, modify, and save in the formats used by all the major office productivity suites.

Free and open source software means that you can offer your employees and your customers professional-grade applications at no cost, and with no licensing fees or time-consuming relicensing. This gives you the opportunity to pre-install it on your system, offer it in your marketing literature, and even ship it with your own materials, without mentioning OpenOffice.org at all.

OpenOffice.org Plus Virtual Terminal Server from Infinitely Virtual Means Business

When you purchase a Virtual Terminal Server from Infinitely Virtual, OpenOffice.org is pre-installed. With Virtual Terminal Server and OpenOffice.org, you get a system ready to work, combining a built-in productivity suite with the benefits of Terminal Server and virtualization—no hardware, no server administration—and get RAID-DP storage, six daily backups, a firewall, and antivirus protection.

To learn more about OpenOffice.org and virtual terminal server, call Infinitely Virtual at (866) 257-8455 or request more information at www.InfinitelyVirtual.com.

Protect Your Hosted Servers with Juniper’s Perimeter Antivirus by Kaspersky Labs

2010-08-31T14:50:00.000-07:00

Antivirus protection prevents, detects, and removes malicious software, also called malware. Malware includes threats such as viruses, worms, Trojan horses, adware, and spyware. Antivirus protection can be installed anywhere in the network, but is most efficient when implemented at both the perimeter firewall and the endpoints, such as desktop and laptop computers.

Security at the Firewall

Having antivirus protection at the perimeter firewall, rather than just on servers or endpoints using software-based solutions, is good for both saving costs and maintaining security. You can rely on perimeter antivirus on the firewall to protect your network and save money by keeping your bandwidth use down.

Integrated Security from Computer Protection Experts

A firewall performs many necessary security functions: intrusion detection, stateful packet inspection, network address translation, policy enforcement, and VPN tunneling. Though independent of antivirus protection, these jobs are consistent with the security you need from antivirus protection. Firewall manufacturers work with the best antivirus companies to bring you integrated, seamless security against viruses, worms, and other malware. This suite of protection—firewall and antivirus together—is referred to as Unified Threat Management.

Efficient Security Increases Network Performance

Perimeter antivirus stands as a central signature and heuristics engine that allows hourly updates, as well as streamlined installation and update management. It also gives IT a tool for creating and enforcing policies at the most basic level, making antivirus effective, yet invisible to end users. This takes the load off your servers by providing bandwidth-saving, centralized updating and variable scanning. All this is controlled by experts in security who understand how to balance risk against system performance. The hourly updates also provide an added security bonus—faster updates reduce the window of vulnerability to emerging threats.

What is the Best Way to Implement Antivirus Protection?

Antivirus software protects using two different basic methods: signature-based detection and heuristic detection.

Signature-based detection identifies viruses and other malware by comparing the contents of a file to a list of signatures. Good signature detection searches inside files to look at embedded files. This method can only be used on known threats, and requires frequent updates to remain viable.

Heuristic detection can be used to identify unknown viruses, sometimes called zero-day threats. File emulation is an approach that executes a suspected program in a virtual environment and logs what actions the program performs.

The only way to properly implement antivirus protection is to protect both the entry point to your network, the firewall, and your endpoints, such as servers, computers, and laptops with protection that defends you by deeply searching all inbound traffic via a firewall-based antivirus solution, and maintaining a complimentary (but not identical) solution locally. This is especially important when using laptops and other computers that travel outside your protected network.

How Infinitely Virtual, Juniper Networks, and Kaspersky Labs Protect Your Business

Infinitely Virtual chose Juniper Networks and its firewall-based antivirus solution from Kaspersky Labs to provide the best protection without sacrificing virtual server performance. Your virtual servers are protected from intrusion, viruses, and malware from the outside. This includes that carried over email and web traffic, the most common malware attack vectors, all without slowing down or crowding out the traffic you need to do business on your virtual servers.

Infinitely Virtual’s Perimeter Antivirus Will Work for Your Business

Perimeter antivirus works for your business, providing cost effective security without sacrificing preformance. To find out more about perimeter antivirus, IV's firewall implementation, and how you can protect your company from threats when using a virtual server, call Infinitely Virtual at (866) 257-8455 or request more information at www.InfinitelyVirtual.com.

Build a Better Business with SharePoint 2010

2010-08-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Microsoft released SharePoint 2010 in May. The software provides better integration with products such as Microsoft Office and supplies flexible deployment and centralized administration, giving you the efficient and secure working environment you need.

SharePoint 2007 offered site production and management, document sharing, and basic collaboration through alerts and document protection. In addition to many improvements in these applications, the new version expands SharePoint significantly in two categories: Community, which provides an array of social networking tools, and Insights, which allows you access to information in databases, reports, and business applications for business intelligence and analysis.

Staying Connected

When members of a team work in different offices, cities, or even countries, keeping in touch with co-workers and employees is critical. SharePoint 2010 supports that with profiles that show what users are working on, particular competencies, and who they work with, blogs and wikis to share and exchange information and experience, and SharePoint 2010 Communities where information of interest is the focus. Content tagging and personal sites offer even more ways of sharing information, and integration with Outlook enables users to see when this information is updated from one always-on application.

Managing Websites

Whether your company uses SharePoint only for document sharing, for running your entire intranet, or even for your public website, the improved Web CMS features in SharePoint 2010 Sites will help you do it better and easier. Microsoft's goal is to make SharePoint more like other Office applications, and to that end, they have updated the user interface to function more like Word and Excel, including adding the Ribbon and the new Backstage View. Other updates include cross-browser support, improved search capabilities, and the addition of web analytics.

Generating Custom Applications

With SharePoint 2010 Composites, you can work with data from external systems and databases as if it was in SharePoint, creating custom sites and no-programming application solutions. You can even centralize Access databases and Excel workbooks and deploy safe sandboxes where new ideas can be tested without risk to the platform.

Offering Business Intelligence

Analysis, web-based reports, and dashboards are available for the SharePoint 2010 Insights user. These tools produce graphical reports and heads-up displays that employees and managers can use to stay up to date on key performance indicators and make good business decisions.

Managing Content

In SharePoint 2010 Content, Microsoft offers the ability to designate a stored item as a record. This freezes the information for compliance or regulatory purposes, preventing any change. Document management also directly integrates with MS Office, allowing you to work on your documents in a familiar environment, improving document access control mechanisms and categorizing them for easier searches.

Increasing Operational Insight

SharePoint 2010 gives you deeper insight into operations with an easy-to-use central administration web site, PowerShell support, and extensible architecture to add third-party services. SharePoint Health Analyzer allows you to locate potential problems and automatically fix common configuration and performance problems automatically. Plus, Visual Upgrade enables you to upgrade to SharePoint 2010 but keep the SharePoint 2007 interface until you’re ready to change.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and the Technology to Support It

Learn more about upgrading to SharePoint 2010 and all the new Microsoft applications by calling Infinitely Virtual at (866) 257-8455 or requesting more information at www.InfinitelyVirtual.com.

Benefits of a Virtual Appliance

2010-07-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

A virtual appliance is a software solution that combines an operating system and an application in one easy to install, virtual package. Unlike a hardware appliance, a virtual appliance doesn't require shipping, rack space, high cost, or lots of maintenance. Compared to traditionally delivered software, it eliminates installation, configuration, and maintenance costs.

A virtual appliance provides compatibility, isolation, and hardware independence, just like a virtual machine. The difference is that a virtual machine is simply a software container made up of CPU, RAM, storage and networking resources, while a virtual appliance also contains an optimized, pre-installed, and pre-configured operating system and application.

The virtual appliance is quickly becoming the top choice for installation and deployment, and the list of applications available to install is growing. Available applications include WordPress, MediaWiki, Drupal, Joomla, LAMP Stack, MySQL, Ruby on Rails, and PostgreSQL. Many of these applications are available as free downloads from sites such as VMware and Turnkey Linux.

The Advantages of Going Virtual

Save time and money with improvements in application development, distribution, deployment, management, and utilization efficiency. Virtual appliances are built on an optimized operating system, such as JeOS (Just enough Operating System). This allows for a much smaller package, speeding up delivery and decreasing the appliance’s footprint.

Development and distribution become easier for the vendor; development for multiple operating systems or physical packaging or shipping is not required. This decreases time to market and reduces costs, benefitting the end user. Deployment is simple with virtual appliances. Applications and operating systems are pre-installed and are ready to run. Companies can easily deploy new and updated applications to remote offices. Software can be installed immediately, anywhere in the world, and is instantly available. Increased security is another advantage of using virtual appliances. A low-profile operating system presents a reduced attack surface, enhancing security without effort.

With virtual appliances, there is no need for additional in-house expertise for deployment and maintenance. Patches and upgrades are provided directly by the appliance provider. This eliminates incompatibility issues and related requirements for testing. Administrators, when running production-ready VMware virtual appliances, can use VMware vMotion, High Availability, vCenter Server, Distributed Resource Scheduler, and Consolidated Backup to streamline deployment and maintenance tasks even further.

Your Software Solution

Virtual appliances are pre-built, pre-configured, ready-to-run application solutions that offer the exact software you need and nothing more. They are packaged with an optimized operating system, and distributed and deployed using a downloadable image. Virtual appliances help a company deploy, install, and maintain many different software environments. With virtual appliances, companies save money and stay productive.

Virtual Appliances, VMware and Infinitely Virtual

Learn more about how your company can use virtual appliances to run the software you need by calling Infinitely Virtual at (866) 257-8455 or by requesting more information at www.infinitelyvirtual.com

Microsoft Office 2010 Offers Virtual Hosting Customers the Right Features

2010-07-16T13:52:00.001-07:00

The new Microsoft Office 2010 productivity suite, released in June, includes a broad selection of new and upgraded features. Primarily targeted at the business market, the updated version includes new ways to create, enhance, and co-author documents in PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and OneNote, connect with contacts and keep track of events in Outlook, and deliver presentations using the Web. Improvements to the core environment, such as the new Backstage View and additional file format support, round out the suite’s new features.

The important additions for virtual hosting customers are the revised user interface and improvements to Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Professional Plus users will benefit from improved SharePoint integration and additional Outlook features.

Become Social Media Savvy with Outlook and the Social Connector

Integration with social networks, including LinkedIn and SharePoint, are included in the new version of Outlook, with Facebook coming soon. The Outlook Social Connector imports social network data into your contact list, displaying the online activity of business associates and friends. If e-mail recipients or meeting attendees have recently blogged on a subject or posted a link that’s important to users on Facebook or SharePoint, users will be able to access that information right away. In addition, advanced e-mail management and calendar features make planning easier than ever.

Create and Collaborate with Word 2010

Word offers an array of improved editing and picture tools, including picture correction, background removal, picture layout options, and artistic effects.
Word 2010 also supports concurrent editing by multiple users for .docx files located on SharePoint Server 2010 or a cobalt-enabled server. Collaboration features include automatic highlighting of new material, color-coded author bar with initials, version support, and near real-time synchronization speeds.

PowerPoint Broadcast Slideshow, Co-authoring, Brings New Portability.

An Interesting new feature to PowerPoint is its remote slideshow capability. This enables users to present a slideshow over the Web or a network connection to virtual and live attendees simultaneously. Broadcast Slideshow allows users to present sales material one-on-one to a potential client, or offer an educational seminar to employees located remotely.

Simultaneous editing enables users to create presentations in collaboration with a team, or from a home or office without closing the document. Features include automatically highlighted new content; color-coded author bar with initials; version support; and faster synchronization, enabling changes to be displayed in near real-time.

New features in PowerPoint also include video and audio editing, new photo effects, and help and translation tools.

Excel Power Users Get Macro, HPC and Business Intelligence Support

Many of the improvements to Excel will apply to business intelligence users. The new Excel features are as follows. Sparklines: cell-sized, information-dense graphics used to increase reader comprehension by showing trends in a series of values. Slicers: visual controls that allow users to quickly and easily filter data in an interactive way, floating above the grid and acting as report filters, hooking to PivotTables, PivotCharts, or CUBE functions. PowerPivot: a data analysis add-in that allows users to quickly model and analyze large amounts of data.

Excel also offers additional macro support. This includes recording support for chart elements and the ability to complete migration of Excel macros to VBA, while retaining the ability to create, edit, and execute Excel 4 macros.

In addition, Excel can now solve computationally intensive problems using multiple computers by offloading the evaluation of certain user-defined functions to a compatible High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster.

OneNote Provides Improved Access to Your Information

OneNote, Microsoft Office’s notebook application, allows users to create notebook files at work, home, or on the road. OneNote changes include the ability to create Outlook tasks, add links to create wiki-style notebooks, support for math equations, translation support, the ability to dock the application, and an improved search.

OneNote can sync to Windows Live, providing instant access from any location. Using the new Web app, users can update notebooks using a limited version of OneNote from a Web browser. A compact version of OneNote is also available on a Windows Mobile-based smartphone.

Additionally, OneNote supports simultaneous editing, versioning, and collaboration features.

Flexibility and Usability Get a Lift from Additional File Formats

Microsoft Office 2010 includes new and updated file format support, containing Office Open XML (OOXML), ISO/IEC 29500:2008; support for ECMA-376, ISO/IEC 29500, and OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1.

Web Apps Extend Functionality to Casual Users

The online companions to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote enable users to perform lightweight editing of Office documents when away from the desktop. Web apps preserve the look and feel of Office documents, but provide limited functionality. An appropriate device and supported browser are required. Some functions may require Office Mobile 2010.

Get Office Standard or Office Professional with Your Virtual Server

With a Virtual Terminal Server, Infinitely Virtual provides a choice of Microsoft Office 2010 Standard or Professional Plus. Both services offer Word, Excel, Publisher, OneNote, PowerPoint and Excel, and Outlook. Professional Plus users also get SharePoint Workspace, Communicator, Access, and InfoPath, in addition to full access to information management and policy capabilities, business and social networking, unified instant messaging, presence and voice, integrated enterprise content management, and managed e-mail folders.

Infinitely Virtual Offers Everything You’re Looking for in Virtual Hosting

To learn more about Virtual Terminal Server and Microsoft Office 2010 and how they can help keep your business connected to customers and co-workers, contact Infinitely Virtual at (866) 257-8455 or go to www.InfinitelyVirtual.com. We can show you how Virtual Terminal Server and its options can increase your company’s productivity while saving you money.

Better Remote Access with Windows 2008 Terminal Services

2010-02-16T09:54:00.000-08:00

Terminal Services have been greatly enhanced in Windows 2008 from Windows 2003, adding functionality for single sign-on, better remote display options, reduced administrative complexity, web access, and plug-n-play device redirection. These services allow both hosting companies and their clients to more easily regulate remote services and offer remote users a smoother experience by increasing speed, reducing the need for multiple sign-ons, and providing a cleaner display.

Remote Access from Anywhere

Windows 2008 allows Windows users better access to standard Windows-based programs from virtually anywhere using RemoteApp and the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC). RemoteApp allows users to work with applications just as if they were operating in person on the remote computer, while maintaining a presence on the computer they access from–they can minimize and maximize the remote window. RemoteApp reduces complexity and administrative overhead. Branch offices, hoteling employees, support personnel, and multiple version application deployments can all benefit from this functionality.

A Better Display

Windows 2008 Terminal Services adds support for higher resolution ratios, up to 4096 x 2048, providing support for the latest displays. It also provides the ability to use multiple monitors, spanning one display over multiple monitors using a remote connection. Font smoothing is another aspect of the improved display. Windows 2008 supports ClearType, a technology that creates a more seamless experience for the remote user, allowing fonts to appear more clearly, especially on an LCD monitor. Most importantly, Windows 2008 Terminal Server has implemented display data prioritization, which automatically gives priority to the remote user's display, keyboard and mouse controls over other traffic, such as printing and files transfers, which do not require continuous bandwidth to provide a good user experience.

Reducing Log-in Time

Instead of logging on multiple times with multiple log-ins, as previously required, Windows 2008 offers an authentication method that allows a remote user with a domain account to log on once using one password.

Web Access to the Remote Desktop

Terminal Services Web Access enables users to connect from a Web browser to the remote desktop of any server or client, rather than by first starting the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) client. With Web Access, users can visit an Internet or intranet Web site to access a list of RemoteApp programs. The benefits of Web Access include reduced administrative overhead, centralized program deployment, minimal configuration, and easier maintenance because programs run on the terminal server and not on the remote client computer.

Remote Access to Plug-N-Play Devices

Windows Server 2008 has expanded redirection, enhancing remote access to plug and play devices, specifically media players based on the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) and digital cameras based on the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP), providing rich remote experiences. Using Windows 2008 Terminal Services, applications can access PnP devices seamlessly, whether they run locally or remotely.

Better Remote Connections with Windows 2008 and Infinitely Virtual

To learn more about Windows 2008 Terminal Services and how they can help connect your remote and mobile users, contact Infinitely Virtual at (866) 257-8455 or go to www.InfinitelyVirtual.com. We can show you how enhanced Terminal Services can reduce your administrative costs while making work by remote access more productive.

Higher Productivity and Security with Windows 2008 Hosting

2010-02-03T13:26:00.000-08:00

The upgrade to Windows 2008 from Windows 2003 can bring a hosting customer multiple benefits, including power savings, better remote access, higher security, and the capacity to deliver streaming media, in addition to comprehensive disaster recovery, versatile operating system support, and new administration tools.

Power Savings Offer Lower Hosting Costs

A hosting company that offers Windows 2008 will be able to offer more processing power for less based on lower power consumption. Tests show Windows Server 2008 using less power than Windows Server 2003 when running on the same hardware at comparable levels of throughput, achieving power savings of up to 10 percent. This is achieved partly through the power management policy in Windows Server 2008 that automatically reduces the performance levels during periods of reduced demand for processor resources.

Disaster Recovery with Enhanced Backup Capabilities

Get faster backup technology and better disaster protection with Windows Server Backup in Windows 2008, using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and block-level backup technology. This new technology offers faster backups, simplified restoration and recovery, ability to recover applications, and improved scheduling, while retaining support for manual backups. It also provides for the offsite removal of backups for disaster protection, remote administration, automatic disk usage management, extensive command-line support, and support for optical media drives and removable media.

Increased Security with a Low-profile Server Core Installation

If you have dedicated servers that aren't run through a GUI, or that require higher security, the Server Core installation option could serve your needs. The Server Core installation is a minimal installation (1 GB of disk space) for Windows 2008 server in which only the items required for the specified server roles are installed. That reduces software maintenance, management, and attack surface on the server. The Server Core installation provides an environment for server roles including Active Directory Domain Services, Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services, DHCP Server, DNS Server, File Services, Print Server, and Streaming Media Services. (Windows Server Backup is not available with Server Core installation.)

Rich Communications with Streaming Media Services

Streaming Media Services allow you to deploy a Windows Media server, a platform for streaming live and on-demand digital media content over networks. If your company manages network resources to deliver rich communications for online learning, marketing, and sales, Streaming Media Services can provide the platform you need to deliver the material efficiently, robustly, and at a reasonable cost. Other uses include wireless broadband entertainment, Internet broadcasting, secure audio and video content, and high-quality IPTV over LANs.

Improved Remote Access and Services through New Terminal Services Functionality

The upgrade from Window 2003 to 2008 will improve all aspects of your remote access service using Terminal Services. Windows 2008 includes improved functionality for core functionality and for Terminal Services RemoteApp, Web Access, Printing, Licensing, and Gateway.

Terminal Services core functionality has been greatly enhanced by the addition of services such as Remote Desktop Connection, monitor spanning, which displays a remote desktop session across multiple monitors, and display data prioritization to improve screen performance by giving display, keyboard, and mouse data priority over traffic like printing or file transfers.

RemoteApp and Web Access provide access to Windows programs from virtually any location through a company-provided installation using a remote desktop client or website.

Other enhanced Terminal Services include Printing, Licensing, and Gateway. Printing has been enhanced with the Terminal Services Easy Print driver. This feature enables users to reliably print from a RemoteApp program or from a terminal server desktop session to the correct printer on their client computer. Licensing simplifies Client Access License (CAL) management and helps ensure that you don't purchase more licenses than you need. Gateway enables users to connect to internal network resources over the Internet using a secure encrypted connection without the need to configure a VPN connection.

DNS Server Functionality, NFS Services and PowerShell

The DNS Server for Windows 2008 has been enhanced with several tools, including background zone loading to allow the DNS server to respond to requests while the Active Directory Domain Services zones are loading in separate threads, and support for IPv6 addresses to support present and future DNS clients designed to take advantage of the benefits of IPv6 addressing.

Services for Network File System (NFS) provide a file sharing solution for mixed Windows and UNIX environments. Support has been added for Active Directory Lookup, 64-bit version support, enhanced server performance, UNIX special device (the mknod function) support, and enhanced UNIX support, including Sun Microsystems Solaris version 9, Red Hat Linux version 9, IBM AIX version 5L 5.2, and Hewlett Packard HP-UX version 11i.

Windows 2008 has also added a new tool for system administrators called PowerShell. This command-line shell and scripting language can help your company achieve greater productivity with more than 130 command-line tools to enable easier administration and automation.

Upgrade to Windows 2008 Hosting with Infinitely Virtual

If you’d like to find out more about how Windows 2008 can improve your hosting service, call (866) 257-8455 or go to www.InfinitelyVirtual.com. We can show you how Windows 2008 can increase server security while enhancing your company’s productivity.

The Virtual Office Network

2010-01-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

Your office network needs to provide access to mission critical applications and data, enable users to share information and work together, and be available 24 hours a day to users both local and remote. When working properly, the network should operate transparently.

Unfortunately, maintaining an office network requires up-to-date hardware and software, security, space and power, installation, deployment, and support from IT personnel available 24 hours a day. All this means that even the most well-designed network is far from invisible.

The Virtual Office

A virtual office network (VON) is a computing environment that can be accessed any time and from any place through an Internet connection. Taking your office network virtual offers many benefits, which includes giving users complete access to compute resources regardless of their location. A VON un-tethers workers from the office, enabling you to space and time shift your personnel; your users can work from homes or offices literally around the globe, whether the office is open or closed. This leads to both increased flexibility and lower fixed costs. Close down or reduce office space. Add a surge capacity by hiring consultants. Or utilize experts from anywhere in the world.

Creating a virtual office can unleash your company’s potential, but installing and managing a virtual network will compound your infrastructure and personnel requirements. The costs could outweigh the benefits.

Hosted VON

A hosted VON service allows you to eliminate the costs associated with going virtual, and in many cases, of having an office network in the first place. Hosted VON offers all of your users, regardless of location, connectivity to your organization’s applications and data without the burden of maintaining your own IT infrastructure. With the service provider taking care of installation, upgrades, maintenance, security, and resource management, your network can operate at peak efficiency 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—giving all your employees, remote and local, the ability to work efficiently.

With hosted VON, you can increase your company’s scheduling and hiring flexibility, eliminate downtime due to network issues, and eliminate the cost of obsolete equipment and software.

Looking for a Solid Deal in the Virtual World

Small and medium businesses need all the compute resources that a Fortune 500 company does, but they do not have the financial resources or in-house talent required to install and maintain them. A company may have a seasoned IT department, but the advent of remote and mobile workers increases the burden on those resources unduly. Businesses with multiple offices, including those whose offices move regularly, like construction firms, may have issues with continual network setup and breakdown and a lack of standardization.

If any of these describe your company, a hosted VON from Infinitely Virtual could be your answer.

Get Your Virtual Office Network with Infinitely Virtual

Infinitely Virtual offers inexpensive, all-inclusive VON Standard and VON Premium plans featuring Microsoft Windows 2008 technologies and includes Microsoft Windows Terminal Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. Plans scale from 3 to 1000 users. Add technologies like IPSec VPN, and IV will integrate a VON with your existing office network, giving you seamless access to resources both in and out of the cloud.

If you’d like to find out more about getting your own virtual office network, call (866) 257-8455 or go to www.InfinitelyVirtual.com. We can show you how a hosted VON can help your company go virtual.

Flexible Hosting with vSphere

2009-12-22T12:16:00.000-08:00

Hosting companies are famous for offering rock bottom deals—loads of space for next to nothing. But often, those “deals” come at a high price, requiring a cookie-cutter approach that doesn’t work for today’s high energy, fast-reaction time companies.

With VMware’s vSphere, virtual hosting companies can offer additional operating systems, more than any other hypervisor, and the opportunity to use the latest cloud computing concepts like chargeback applications and Open Virtualization Format vApp to make your environments as versatile as your company needs to be.

Operating System Choices and vSphere

By using vSphere as your virtualization platform, you get fewer restrictions on host and client operating systems. The latest VMware-supported operating systems include Asianux, Debian, CentOS, FreeBSD, OS/2 Warp, Windows 7, Open Enterprise Server, and Solaris 10, adding to others that have been supported by VMware for years, such as Ubuntu, Red Hat, SuSE and NetWare.

À la Carte Billing with Chargeback Applications

A true cloud computing platform, vSphere supports the use of chargeback applications. Using a chargeback, a customer can pay just for the processing power, RAM, storage space, and networking they consume. That means that as the customer, you can slice the pie a little bit thinner when it comes to operating expenses, adding to the capital expenditure savings realized through virtualization. And if you are hosting applications for your customers, you have a new way to evaluate, measure and charge your customers for exactly what they use—no more choked applications during a sudden spike or punitive after-the-fact billing. You and your customers can both see exactly how much was used and when, reducing billing hassles. Conversely, your customers will be pleased to be charged less when their demand goes down.

And chargeback can help allocate resources and promote visibility into the costs of doing business within your own company, as well, by showing who’s using virtualization resources.

Maintain Policies and Service Levels with vApp

Run your applications securely with vApp, which enables the control of multiple virtual machine interactions, and even virtual machine creation at your own site, using the industry-standard Open Virtualization Format. OVF specifies and encapsulates all components of a multi-tier application, maintaining operational policies and service levels across the application. In the same way that a UPC bar code signifies all the information about a product, vApp contains all the policy standards defined by application owners, which the cloud operating system can automatically interpret and execute.

More Operating Systems and True Cloud Computing with Infinitely Virtual

To learn more about how VMware and the vSphere platform can offer you OS flexibility, versatile policy management, and chargeback billing, call (866) 257-8455 or go to www.InfinitelyVirtual.com. Let us help you create a custom-fit virtual network.

Save Money on Virtual Dedicated Server Hosting with vSphere

2009-11-28T15:12:00.000-08:00

Virtualization helps server hosting companies save money by allowing server functions to live on fewer physical machines, saving space, power, maintenance, and up front acquisition costs. VMware takes virtualization further; its bare metal hypervisor runs more efficiently than OS-based virtualization, allows more processes to run with less operating system overhead, and offers many operating system choices for virtual machine users.

Now, with the introduction of vSphere 4, VMware’s newest datacenter virtualization platform, VMware offers big savings for both virtual server hosting companies—and their customers—though higher server consolidation, reduced power consumption, denser storage, and lower maintenance requirements, all while supporting more virtual machines.

Doing More of What Virtualization Does

vSphere offers more of VMware’s money-saving features to lower the costs per virtual server and reduce environmental impact through more efficient server consolidation, dynamic power scaling, and higher bandwidth networking.

vSphere supports hardware equipped with up to 64 logical processing cores, 256 virtual CPUs and one terabyte of RAM per host, so more virtual machines can be operated in less physical server space. In addition, support for AMD Rapid Virtualization and Intel Extended Page Tables allows consolidation rates to be increased. With the ability to increase substantially the number of VMs on each physical server, hosting companies achieve economies of scale more quickly, leading to lower costs, and in many cases, lower prices.

Direct savings also result from lower power consumption and reduced infrastructure. Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling reduce power costs, and by implementing 10 gbps Ethernet and vNetwork Distributed vSwitch, hosting companies can drastically reduce network complexity. This reduction in complexity leads both to lower equipment acquisistion costs and a reduction in staff the required to install and maintain the network. This allows the VMware based hosting company to operate more cost-effectively, which in turn can be used to offer better service for less money. Finally, vStorage Thin Provisioning allows your hosting company to increase storage density, resulting in lower cost per GB of storage.

With competitve pressures, a VMware-based server hosting company can pass the savings achieved with vSphere on to its customers. If you’re looking for dedicated server hosting, a hosting company using vSphere can achieve higher consolidation ratios through support of higher density hardware per host, enabling it to pass the savings on to its customers in the form of lower rates for each virtual machine.

Get Cost-Conscious with Infinitely Virtual

If your Enterprise business is looking for dedicated server hosting that offers both low price and unique features like a choice of operating systems, evaluate a VMware vSphere host. Learn more about how VMware and the vSphere platform can lower your costs with sacrificing performance, call (866) 257-8455 or go to http://www.infinitelyvirtual.com. Talk to us about how Infinitely Virtual can create the network environment you want, with a financial investment that’s just the size your company needs to make.

For Hosting Customers - VMware's vSphere Delivers - Performance

2009-10-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

VMware's virtual server and data center products, from their enterprise computing inspired VMware Infrastructure to their free bare-metal hypervisor ESXi, are known for providing reliable, flexible, and cost-effective platforms for creating, managing and running virtual machines on physical servers. For hosting customers, VMware ESX version 3 offered better performance than other virtual server hosting platforms, allowing the creation of more virtual servers per physical server than other environments.

While VMware Infrastructure took over the enterprise, hosting customers hesitated in virtualizing their largest application servers. To address their performance concerns, VMware rebuilt ESX for version 4, giving it the ability to process more and communicate faster, optimizing it for business applications, and increasing its speed and capacity for iSCSI storage operations. The result is vSphere.

vSphere is for Application Servers

With vSphere, hosting customers get more for their money compared to non-VMware-based hosting and even ESX 3 hosts. They get up to 8-way virtual SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) and 255 gigabytes of RAM; 8,900 database transactions per second, 200,000 I/O operations per second, and up to 16,000 Exchange mailboxes per host; increased iSCSI capacity; and support for 10 gigabit per second Ethernet.

The numbers are impressive, but what matters is what it can do for application server performance, storage performance, server responsiveness, and messaging speed.

vSphere Features 8-way SMP

vSphere allows a single virtual machine to use up to eight physical processor cores simultaneously, enabling the virtualization of CPU-intensive applications like databases, ERP, and CRM. For you, that means your company’s hosted virtual server can be used with your most demanding applications, the ones you thought would always be the source of either extremely costly server investments or slowdowns and user frustration.

vSphere is optimized to support business-critical applications, including Oracle databases, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Exchange. Applications you thought would always need to be run in-house can now be hosted remotely, so that you can get on with your own business, instead of getting bogged down in IT.

Increased iSCSI I/O

vSphere increases iSCSI input/output performance through optimized SCSI drivers and VMkernel-level storage stack optimizations. Optimized iSCSI allows messaging applications and databases to access data more rapidly. This can improve everything from your company’s internal communications to customer response times.

10 Gbps Ethernet

By adding support for 10 gbps Ethernet, hosts running vSphere can connect to storage over redundant 10 gbps links instead of link-aggregated 1 gbps Ethernet. This enables higher performance access to NFS and iSCSI storage, giving hosted servers increased application performance. And for those customers with multi-server deployments, intra server communication is now many times faster than before.

Where It Counts

VMware’s vSphere offers performance features to hosted companies that allow faster access, better communication among applications running on multiple virtual machines, and faster response times. Together, these features result in increased productivity, higher ROI, and more customer satisfaction—the kind of numbers your company is looking for.

vSphere Performance with Infinitely Virtual

To learn more about how VMware and the vSphere platform can increase productivity, ROI, and customer satisfaction through better performance, call (866) 257-8455 or go to www.InfinitelyVirtual.com. Let us show you how hosting with Infinitely Virtual can help you make your applications faster and your databases more responsive.

Be a Part of the Virtual Dedicated Server Revolution - Become an Infinitely Virtual Reseller

2009-09-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in enhancing your portfolio of products and services, increasing your sales revenue, and you think that server virtualization is the wave of the future, you should consider becoming an Infinitely Virtual Partner.

As a partner with Infinitely Virtual, your company can tap into a whole new revenue stream, just by doing what you do already. With no start-up costs and high margins, any company can begin making money immediately, while larger VARs and hardware resellers can use IV’s services to offer existing customers a unique set of services, as well as attracting new business.

Three Partner Levels

We have three programs designed to fit your organization. If you are looking to enhance your sales portfolio, one of our partner programs is a perfect fit.

IVVAR

You’ve got a list of products and services, a well-oiled billing department, and an experienced technical support staff. You can enhance your service offering by adding Infinitely Virtual’s services to your own as a value-added reseller.

As an independent IVVAR Partner, you’ll offer products and services built on the foundation of the Infinitely Virtual platform. You’ll be able to take advantage of discounted plans and have deep access to our virtualization infrastructure and your customer’s virtual machines in order to serve their unique requirements. In addition, you’ll be able to purchase CPU reservations, RAM, and monthly transfer in bulk, and allocate your selected resources among your customers.

You’ll be able to set your rates and bill your own customers, and we’ll bill you, at a discount, for the products and services you sell. Your company will provide all support to your customers. As an IVVAR Partner, you’ll be required to provide a value-added service or product to our platform.

IVOEM

Your company has the technical know-how and the staff for billing and support, but you’re looking for services to fill out your portfolio. Infinitely Virtual’s OEM partner program allows you to sell and rebrand our services as your own.

The IVOEM partner program is designed for companies that wish to privately label products and services. As an OEM partner, you’ll be entitled to discounted plans, and you’ll have enhanced access to the Infinitely Virtual platform so that you can manage your customer’s virtual machines directly. You’ll also be able to buy CPU reservation, RAM and monthly transfer in bulk so that you can allocate those resources to your best advantage.

As an OEM partner, you’ll set your own rates and bill your customers, and we’ll bill you, at a discount, for the products and services you use. In addition, your company will provide all post-sales technical support.

IV Reseller

Your company is lean and your resources are focused on sales, so you don’t have the time to bill or support additional customers, or an interest in creating your own server farm. Your company is the perfect fit for the Infinitely Virtual Reseller program.

The IV Reseller program is designed for companies that wish to sell Infinitely Virtual products and services under the IV brand. Increase sales immediately, with each transaction resulting in increased monthly revenue. All billing and post-sales support is provided by Infinitely Virtual, so you can do what you do best—make sales. And we just send you a check every month.

Offer Your Customers Great Products

With Infinitely Virtual, you’ll be able to offer your customer products that stand out in the hosting industry, including Privately Hosted Exchange (PHE) with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Outlook 2007, Virtual Terminal Server (VTS) with Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 Terminal Server, and Virtual Dedicated Servers (VDS) with either Windows or Linux operating systems. Your customers can take advantage of great options like daily backups, hardware firewalls and built-in antivirus protection.

Give Your Company an Edge with Hardware-based Virtual Servers

As an IV Reseller, you’ll be able to offer a wide array of products without incurring the upfront costs required to build an enterprise data center. You’ll also be able to choose the level at which you want to support your customers after the sale. Your company will have unique access to an innovative, hardware-based virtual infrastructure that allows you or your customers to access virtual machines over the web using our Virtual KVM; the ability to reboot virtual servers; and access to performance charts based on server statistics.

Join the Revolution

As a reseller or partner with Infinitely Virtual, you get a shopping list of benefits: continuous revenue stream, more servers for less money, unique reseller and customer features that help you sell more, and a great partner to help you win new business. And the future will be even brighter: Infinitely Virtual continues to innovate, searching for new ways to consolidate servers, increase server utilization, and reduce costs.

To become an IV Reseller, IVVAR or IVOEM partner, submit an application, or learn more about our unique offering at InfinitelyVirtual.com.

Energy Efficiency in the Data Center

2009-08-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

Hardware, licenses, applications, remote hands, even the expense of redundancy—none of it compares to the price of power in the data center; and power needs are increasing exponentially as processing intensifies and demand for rack space rises.

More Power Equals More Heat

Data center power is partly to keep physical servers running, but it’s also to keep them cool enough to run: as servers increase in processing power, so does heat generation. A rack that five years ago produced about five kilowatts of heat may today produce as much as 28 kilowatts. To give some idea of how much heat that is: 28 kilowatts equals 95,000 BTU or roughly 8 tons of air conditioning. A typical house air conditioner is three tons, 10 kilowatts, or 34,000 BTU. That means that it takes as much power to cool a high density rack as it would to cool about three single family homes—if it was high noon in that equatorial neighborhood 24 hours a day.

Sources of Inefficiency

Data centers have traditionally been inefficient environmentally. Compared to other costs, power has been cheap, and computing precious—if a little power was wasted, the result was incredible amounts of information analyzed, communicated and stored. The world seemed to have plenty of power, and a data center from the 70s or even the 80s would only be a blip on the power grid.

These days, data centers are much more prevalent: the Data Center Map, a free web service linking data center providers and customers, lists 1,297 colocation data centers in 59 countries. In addition, power has become more expensive and less available. However, data centers still use power like it’s cheap: a McKinsey & Company report on data center efficiency, released in 2008, says that on average, only six percent of server capacity is being used, and the data center facilities run at no more than about 56 percent capacity.

Three Ways to Cool Down the Data Center—and Save Money

Virtualization, resource management and physical server consolidation are three methods your hosting company and you can use to increase data center efficiency.

Virtualize Servers

One way to conserve power is to get every bit of computing power out of each piece of hardware. That’s where virtualization comes in. Virtualization allows you to consolidate your server requirements onto fewer physical machines, with the virtual machines consuming only about 1/50th the amount of power. Email servers, web servers and applications all act just as if they were running on individual boxes, but for a fraction of the cost, both in capital expense and power consumption.

According to many sources, including The Green Grid and the EPA, virtualization is one of the key ingredients of a more efficient, greener data center. In implementing virtualization, a product such as VMware provides some of the highest consolidation rates on a secure and reliable platform. With VMware, unused physical servers can even be powered off, and turned back on when needed.

Of course, virtual servers, especially VMware’s hardware-based virtualization, also offer increased application access for users, faster installation of new servers and better uptime. So not only will your virtual servers help reduce your carbon footprint and save you money, they’ll also improve your company’s competitiveness.

Allocate Resources with VMware DRS and DPM

Virtualization from VMware provides two additional technologies that help you reduce your costs through virtualization.

VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) allows a hosting company and its clients to continuously monitor utilization and intelligently assign resources as needed. With DRS, resources can be allocated to higher priority applications, according to your rules, ensuring that your mission critical activities always have what they need. It also provides dedicated infrastructure for business units, without letting resources stand idle.

Supporting DRS, Distributed Power Management (DPM) optimizes power consumption by continuously monitoring power usage and automatically consolidating workloads and powering down unneeded resources. During lower use periods, DPM moves virtual server workloads onto the optimum number of physical servers and turns off the others. When requirements increase, DPM brings physical servers back online—without impact on the virtual server or the customer.

Consolidate Servers with Blades

Blades help reduce the energy footprint of servers by allowing multiple physical servers to be consolidated on one chassis, with one management interface per blade, while adding more advanced management features. The ProLiant BL490c Virtualization Blade solution being adopted by Infinitely Virtual will more than triple the number of virtual machines hosted in the same energy footprint.

According to HP, the BL 490c blades offer several key performance and management advantages: eighteen DIMM slots allow more virtual machines to be housed on each blade; integrated dual-port 10 GbE server adapter with Flex-10 technology offer the ability to fine-tune network bandwidth; conserve power without performance impact with the built-in HP Power Regulator, and reclaim trapped power in your data center by safely limiting server power consumption with Dynamic Power Capping.

The Future of the Green Data Center

Projects and organizations are being formed all over the world to address the problems of power consumption and heat generation. Here are three:

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are working to reduce the portion of electricity used to cool data center equipment by as much as 15 percent. In a simulated data center, Georgia Tech scientists are trying to optimize cooling strategies and develop new heat transfer models.

The Green Grid is an organization created by many of the big names in computers, power conditioning and data centers, including HP, AMD and Intel. Together, they are developing standards to measure data center efficiency, with the goal of reducing power requirements, waste heat and carbon emissions.

In the future, waste heat like that in a data center could be recycled into energy. Engineers at Oregon State University are taking waste heat and using it to run a cooling system.

To Save Money (and Help Save the Planet), Think Infinitely Virtual

Contact Infinitely Virtual to find out how virtualization and data center efficiency affect your company’s bottom line. Let us show you how hosting with Infinitely Virtual can help you reduce your company’s server costs, while simultaneously making your applications faster, your data more secure, and your planet a little bit cooler.

Find out more about the power and cooling advantages of VMware, HP Blade servers and virtualization at InfinitelyVirtual.com.

The Truth About Hosting Virtual Servers on VMware vs Virtuozzo

2009-05-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

The difference between VMware and Virtuozzo Containers is more than just the name. Only hosting companies using VMware can offer complete flexibility, security and capacity, as well as options for high availability, load balancing and disaster recovery.

Operating System Flexibility

A basic difference between VMware and Virtuozzo is that VMware creates individual virtual servers directly on the hardware, at a bare metal level, while Virtuozzo’s containers run at the operating system (OS) level.

All container environments running on the same physical hardware must share the same host operating system. This means that while each environment can run its own client OS, the one you can run on your virtual environment will be limited to those that are compatible with the host. Virtuozzo is limited to Linux or Windows at both the host and client level, and can only run a client OS on a physical server that uses the same host OS; in other words, a Linux client on a Linux host, and a Windows client on a Windows host. Of course, limiting the operating system also limits your choice of software to that available for Linux and Windows.

Running at the hardware level, VMware accomplishes virtualization by using a physical machine’s hardware resources to serve multiple virtual servers, each of which can run an independent operating system. In this way, VMware virtualization supports many diverse operating systems on any server system. This allows VMware to support a variety of Windows versions and many different flavors of Linux, including Ubuntu, SuSE, and Red Hat, as well as non-Windows and Linux operating systems such as Solaris and Netware.

With Virtuozzo, because your virtual environment must run the same OS as the host, you don’t have the option to manage and modify your own operating system. The need for uniformity extends to updates—all environments must run at the same patch level. That means that if your virtual environment’s software has not been optimized for the latest Windows or Linux update, and your hosting company installs it (on the host system and across all virtual environments), your software may function poorly, or not at all.

With VMware, you can manage and modify your own operating system, as well as run different patch levels than the host system. This offers your company installation and update control on your virtual servers, and the freedom to use an extended range of software, software releases, and even multiple software flavors on the same OS, such as SQL Standard, Web and Express editions.

In Virtuozzo’s containers, when you need to reboot your virtual environment, such as during a test phase, you’ll have to wait for a scheduled system outage for the entire physical server, chaining you to your hosting company’s calendar. Using VMware, you can reboot your operating system when and as often as your situation requires.

Finally, a hardware-based virtual server like VMware offers something an OS-based virtual environment does not and cannot offer—virtual memory. Virtual memory, called swap in Unix or page file in Windows, allows your applications to use an assigned piece of disk space as working memory when necessary to avoid crashing. Because all container environments share an operating system core, containers don’t have independent access to swap. Using VMware, your hosting provider can give you swap space or a paging file as large as that available on a physical server.

Security

Virtual environments that all run the same operating system are more vulnerable to both security breaches and simultaneous code faults. If the virtual servers on a hosting physical server are all running one operating system, and any of the operating systems are hacked, then they all are; if the host operating system experiences a failure due to a bug in the software, then they all do. This is not the kind of virtual server environment you can depend on to failover gracefully or recover quickly.

In a Virtuozzo environment, security is complicated by the need for OS patches to be certified by the company. That means that when a critical operating system patch is released, the patch must go through another layer of complexity and time before it is applied—time in which your virtual server could be vulnerable. If your servers are hosted on VMware, you can apply patches as soon as they are released.

On-Demand Capacity

Because a VMware virtual server can operate on any physical server in the network, and because VMware supports live migration or vMotion, your whole virtual server can be moved as needed to another piece of hardware—with no downtime. This saves your company data and time, and it could save you customers and money. It also means that when your hosting company needs to take a physical server down for maintenance or replacement, you never need to know. Unlike in an OS virtual environment, live migration will allow your virtual server to continue running on the hosting company’s other servers. This is a feature that Virtuozzo still does not have.

High Availability, Load Balancing and Disaster Recovery Options

VMware virtual server lets your hosting company offer high availability, load balancing, and disaster recovery, unlike OS virtual environments. With VMware, your hosting company can offer load balancing, so your workload can run on the physical server that suits your needs during peak times.

With an OS-level environment, it might be impossible to move live data from one server to another. Even with compatible operating systems, the server might require a reboot.

When You’re Looking for Virtual Server Hosting, Think Infinitely Virtual

Virtual Server platforms aren’t all the same, and your hosting company needs to use the most flexible, secure and available virtualization technology. VMware, which runs virtual servers at the hardware level, is that technology.

Find out more about Virtual Servers, VMware, and options for load balancing and high availability at InfinitelyVirtual.com.

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Where does Virtual Terminal Server fit in your IT infrastructure?

2009-02-23T19:15:00.000-08:00

A virtual terminal server can help your company get all the advantages of centrally deploying applications much less expensively, and without any of the costs or headaches of deploying dedicated terminal servers.

What is a Virtual Terminal Server?

Terminal Server is a Windows platform that allows you and your company to access all your applications from anywhere. That means your employees can access critical applications at home, on the road, at a branch office, or anywhere.

Virtualization, which consolidates servers onto fewer physical boxes, allows email servers, storage servers, application servers, and web servers to be run with lower costs, less administration and more flexibility, without loss of functionality.

What else does Virtual Terminal Server do?

Virtual Terminal Server lowers capital expenses and licensing costs. Using existing desktops, buying less powerful new computers or thin clients, and using fewer software licenses can reduce expenses. Meanwhile, it increases employee access to high-cost applications; employees who need access to an application can get it, without incurring increased subscription costs.

With Virtual Terminal Server, you can also increase security, keeping your data safe with FIPS encryption support, the ability prevent unauthorized access and server attacks, and restricting software access through group policies. But more security doesn’t mean more work for your system administrator. With remote desktop management, policy setup, and remote server management, system administrators can get more work done in less time.

Centralizing your applications and data, especially using server virtualization, helps decrease network load. With Virtual Terminal Server, load is balanced between multiple servers, reducing points of failure and allowing users to get the application features and speed they need using lower bandwidth.

Virtual Terminal Server enhances data protection. When data is stored to and retrieved from one location, it’s easy to guard it, back it up and access it; and with remote data storage and centralized backup, your company’s critical information can be restored after a local failure.

Finally, Virtual Terminal Server makes application deployment more efficient. With applications installed in one remote location, your help desk staff won’t spend hours installing applications for new employees, providing updates or adding new programs.

Hosted Terminal Server Using Virtualization

If you get Virtual Terminal Server from a company like Infinitely Virtual, you can combine the benefits of Terminal Server with the advantages of virtualization, without having to buy a single piece of hardware, administer any servers, or lease space in a datacenter. And with Virtual Terminal Server from Infinitely Virtual, you also get RAID-DP storage; six daily backups; a firewall; antivirus protection; and OpenOffice.org Suite installed, including applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases.

With Virtual Terminal Server, you can also add Virtual Server Clustering, an implementation of VMware’s High Availability. It provides automatic detection of server failures, automatic restart of virtual machines, virtual machine failure monitoring, proactive monitoring and health checks, and resource capacity checks.
Find out more about Virtual Terminal Server and Virtual Server Clustering at InfinitelyVirtual.com.

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How do you want to host Microsoft Exchange Server?

2008-12-15T15:00:00.000-08:00

If you are familiar with the benefits of Microsoft Exchange Server, and you are considering deploying this robust messaging & collaboration platform, you should become familiar with your installation options. They include:

• Self hosted
• Shared hosted
• Privately hosted

Many large companies and organizations have made the investment in hosting their own Microsoft Exchange Server environments. What they have found is that the costs associated with purchasing equipment and licensing, installing the messaging system, and maintaining it over the years can be prohibitively expensive. That doesn’t mean that self-hosting is always a bad option: if you have a large, well-trained IT staff and your users are highly centralized, you may find that self-hosting is the best choice for you.

Why is Self-Hosted Exchange so Expensive?

A properly configured Microsoft Exchange environment requires two dedicated Active Directory Domain Controllers and at least one dedicated Exchange Server. All three servers must be licensed for Microsoft Windows Server 2003, and the mail server must be licensed for Microsoft Exchange. Additionally, you must license each user for both Windows Server and Exchange Server. So before you even consider hardware and implementation, a 20 user system costs between $4000 & $5000 in licensing alone. Even if you decide to get the least expensive hardware available, it is hard to conceive you could get the entire system installed for less than $6000.

The system described above is just the basic building blocks of your messaging system. There are several important components missing from the configuration, including:

• Data Backup
• Anti-virus / Anti-Spam
• Internet connectivity
• Ongoing support and maintenance

A more realistic price for installing this state-of-the-art messaging & collaboration system is roughly $10,000.

So why would any organization install Exchange Server?

Large companies get the benefit of economies of scale. The incremental cost of adding a single user to this environment is around $100. This means that systems with hundreds of email accounts can spread the equipment and licensing costs among a larger pool of users. Also, they tend to have IT staffs equipped to handle the day-to-day management of a sophisticated email system.

What is Shared Hosted Exchange

A number of companies have sprung up on the web that have created large Microsoft Exchange Server infrastructures capable of supporting thousands of users. They offer a simple solution for single users or small companies to host Exchange email. They generally offer their customers a flat fee per user. Their plans include a specific amount of storage for each user account, and they charge a nominal fee per user per month.

There are many benefits to a shared hosted Exchange Server environment. The most obvious is cost. A small organization immediately takes advantage of the economies of scale only large enterprises enjoy. And since the monthly fees are fixed, there are no surprises. In addition to having access to all the features and capabilities of Microsoft Exchange Server, most hosting companies offer access to services like Blackberry Enterprise Server and Good Link Server.

Shared Hosted Exchange has its share of drawbacks. Email accounts for your users are hosted in large cumbersome information stores, commingled with users from all over the world. Many times your users’ accounts can be spread among many different servers, leading to long delivery delays.

These systems are a one-size-fits-all approach, meaning that your organization has no control over how the massaging system is configured. If you find a great piece of software that integrates with Exchange Server, you can forget installing it. If you want to enable a protocol or integrate with a great anti-spam solution, there is no way to do it.

Management of your email system is limited to cumbersome, web control panels. System administrators prefer to have the flexibility of using Active Directory Users & Computers, System Manager, and other integrated management tools. Plus there are hundreds of specialized management utilities available for Exchange and Active Directory, all of which are off limits to shared hosted customers.

Single Sign-on is another great feature of Exchange server that is unavailable to shared hosted customers. In a traditional Exchange Server environment, users login using their Active Directory user account, and this account is also used to access their email system. That means that a single login, a single password, gives them access to all of their applications and data. This level of integration is not possible with Shared Hosted Exchange. So for companies that are public or thinking of going public, or those that are subject to IT audits, this service is not even a possibility.

Privately Hosted Exchange: Get the benefits of Shared & Self Hosted

Privately Hosted Exchange by Infinitely Virtual overcomes all the shortcomings of both Shared & Self Hosted Exchange environments. Using our state-of-the-art virtual server hosting environment, we create for every PHE customer a complete messaging system, including two dedicated Active Directory Servers and a dedicated Exchange server. And we do this for a flat monthly fee per user.

Customer designated users have access to management utilities. Every feature of Active Directory and Exchange Server may be customized to meet your organization’s needs. All third-party applications are supported.

You can add VPN to any PHE plan, and with that we support single sign-on. We can establish a trust with an existing Active Directory or you can join your servers to your Active Directory in our datacenter. Either way, you can enjoy all the benefits of an enterprise AD environment without having to design and implement it.

If any of this sounds complicated, you don’t have to worry. Our engineers provide free user account management, free implementation plans, and of course we can provide professional services to integrate your email system with the rest of your network.

How we protect your organization and your data

Every virtual server is hosted in our Enterprise VMware Virtual Infrastructure environment. Servers are clustered using VMwareHA technology, ensuring that hardware failures won’t lead to significant down time. All data is stored on our clustered SAN and connected to the Internet over our redundant switching fabric. We take six snapshots of your data per day. And every server in our environment is an HP Proliant with redundant power supplies, connected to our fully redundant power system, backed up by uninterruptible power Supplies and generators.

Find out more about guaranteed reliability for your organization’s MS Exchange Server at InfinitelyVirtual.com.

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The Facts About Hosted Virtual Dedicated Servers

2008-10-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

Server prices may be dropping, but the purchase price is just a small part of the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Server budgets expand rapidly once you factor in the cost of maintenance, as well as cabling, cards, rack space, adapters, switches, operating systems and other software licensing costs. Additionally, each new deployed server decreases server room cooling efficiency, which runs the electricity bill up another notch.

On top of the hardware costs, there’s the cost of hiring and training staff to operate and maintain the servers. The costs and complexity of managing a server are often beyond the financial and technical abilities of smaller companies which often do not have in-house I.T. staff.

Economies of scale, which generally dictate that costs drop as the purchase quantity of a particular product increases, do not work in the server world.

And all of that is what is making virtual dedicated servers so attractive.

You are probably becoming familiar with the concept of a virtual server. Many organizations are beginning to deploy products like VMware Infrastructure to create multiple virtual servers inside of one physical server. But the concept of a hosted virtual dedicated server is relatively new.

Essentially, you are renting resources on a remotely-hosted server. However, unlike the typical shared-server environment, such as a web server, you’re not sharing any of the server’s operating system with other users.

Virtual dedicated servers, for all intents and purposes, function exactly as if your applications were running on a dedicated box. The server hosting company deploys a VMware Infrastructure, partitioning physical servers into multiple virtual machines. Each machine functions exactly as if it were a single server. It has its own instances of the operating system, application software, virtual processors, virtual memory, networking, storage devices and even its own virtual BIOS.

In fact, the only real difference between using a virtual dedicated server and your own dedicated server, is a reduction in TOC that is difficult to realize using other solutions.

The cost savings begin not having to make capital expenditures to acquire the server. Costs are spread out monthly and are not carried on the organization’s balance sheet. That fact may not impress the I.T. folks, but it will get the CFO’s attention.

But the real cost-savings come into play when you start looking at what else you don’t have to buy. Most popular operating system software is included, so there goes the licensing fees. Most common server application software, such as Exchange Server, can also be included, which further reduces costs.

So for short money, you can deploy a hefty server, configured to your exact specifications, with a minimum amount of ramp-up time.

Ongoing benefits include the fact that the server hosting company takes care of maintenance and support, so replacement part costs disappear was well.

There’s really no downside, and you can look good to all those people with “C’s” in their title. Find out more about virtual hosted dedicated server technology at InfinitelyVirtual.com.

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This is the first in a series of articles by Lisa Gecko.