Many IT pros that are using virtualization agree that main issue of that technology is lack of single management console. Using one console is crucial to have an good inside look at whole infrastructure. But sometimes that need to be divided to two places, which isn’t that easy to manage. Therefore many companies are not looking at features while choosing virtualization platform, instead they are looking at how easy it is to manage.


Source:
http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3931371/Virtualization-Management-Systems-Cant-Keep-Up.htm

iStorage Server have only one management console that allow you to get easy and convenient access to all features and options. Except that it can be use in almost any Windows based system, therefore you won’t have any troubles when it comes to compatibility.
You can download FREE trial of iStorage here:

http://www.kernsafe.com/download.aspx

Not that long time ago The Wall Street Journal informed unofficially that Samsung plans to leave from hard disk market, and now that information has been confirmed. All Samsung's department that deals with those devices, will be bought by Seagate.

Seagate will need to pay 1,37 billion dollars to Samsung. Half of it will be Seagate's stocks. That means Samsung hard drives will soon disappear from market. All taken over factories will be controlled by Seagate, which will produce those devices for notebooks, personal computers etc.

Additionally both parties are expanding deals. Samsung will be providing Seagate NAND flash chips.

Source:
http://seagate.transactionannouncement.com

Many users have a difficult task of choosing if they want to continue using 32-bit Operating System or switch to 64-bit OS. Main issue was not compatible drivers for external devices (like printers or scanners) with x64. But now this isn’t a problem, so why not switch to 64-bit now?

Main advantage of using 64-bit OS is maximum memory. In Windows 7 x64 you can use up to 192GB of memory, while in x86 only 4GB (actual maximum amount is smaller).
Windows 7 32-bit can use only up to 4GB of memory. Real amount is usually much smaller regarding to the graphic cards. You are asking yourself now what graphic card has anything to do with RAM memory in PC? Well the answer to that is in your graphic drivers. They are just designed in a way that need to reserve some RAM memory. In real life, when you have 4GB of memory, you may be actually using only 3GB. Therefore while using 64-bit system you are not limited by that.

Other advantages, but not that significant, are:

-Some programs may run faster
-Increased maximum memory each program can use
-Is slightly more secure

iStorage Server have native 32 and 64-bit versions. So no matter what OS you are using currently, you can use version especially designed for it.
You can download FREE trial version and test it by yourself here:

http://www.kernsafe.com/download.aspx


Source:
ArsTechnica

Nowadays Virtual Machines (VM's) are just like a clean slate that is prepared for something, something good. In this is VM's are just prepared for applications that will be installed there.

Server App-V is Microsoft server application virtualization technology. Thank to that we can deploy virtualized applications to our private server that will be using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). It can be tested in newest beta 2 release of SCVMM 2012.

Source

Another interesting technology is iSCSI that allow you to connect to devices (like hard drives, DVD-ROMS, Printers, tape devices etc.) trough Ethernet cable. While it is comparable with Fibre Wire (since usually bottleneck is IO of disk, not the network bandwidth itself) it is much cheaper.

You can test iSCSI target software like iStorage Server here for free:
http://www.kernsafe.com/product/istorage-server.aspx

Recently we can read more and more about The Cloud but the truth is if you didn’t move 'to the cloud' already you probably won't do it anyway and go towards virtualization.

In past years it was normal to have 2-4 VM's per physical server, but nowadays 6-8 VM's is a normal thing. That number will continue to grow every year.

High availability (HA) is the implementation of technology so that if a component fails, another can take over for it. By using highly available platforms, the downtime for a system can be reduced, and, in many cases, it can be reduced to a short enough time that the users of the system do not see the failure.

With use of this technology less people are afraid to use VM's for more important tasks.

Sometimes though creating HA clusters may be difficult and lack of good management tools may make it an even more challenging task. Therefore you may use a free Trial version of iStorage Server for 20 days, and see how easy it is to create a HA clusters with all benefits of iSCSI.

You may read more about iStorage Server itself here:
http://www.kernsafe.com/product/istorage-server.aspx

More about creating HA clusters on different system in our White Paper library:
http://www.kernsafe.com/white-papers.aspx