CONSOLIDATION & VIRTUALISATION
Disk, iSCSI, SAN & NAS
Storage consolidation and virtualisation can offer significant benefits but it is important that the complexities are understood. SAN and NAS consolidation has, in some instances, led to islands of networked storage where the promise of improved utilisation and efficiency has not been delivered.
Union works with customers to ensure that business services and applications receive the service levels that are required in the most efficient and cost effective manner possible through the effective use of consolidated and virtualised storage.
Backup & Recovery Consolidation
Tape consolidation, backup to disk, virtual tape and data de-duplication technologies have received rapid market acceptance owing to the immediate benefits that are normally derived. An ROI of less than 12 months is common, and the significant service improvements brought on as a result mean that this is often a project near the top of a customer’s to do list. Union is able to assist in all aspects of a backup and recovery consolidation project.
Server Consolidation & Virtualisation
Server virtualisation provides the abstraction layer that de-couples the physical hardware from the operating system. This enables server consolidation and significant improvements in efficiency, whilst eliminating downtime and improving service availability. Union works with customers to design and implement consolidated and virtualised server environments that effectively integrate with data storage and recovery services.
Clustered File Systems (File System Virtualisation)
Shared data technology virtualises servers' connections to storage and network resources, allowing any server to see and access all the data within a SAN. This data clustering allows many database or file servers to be aggregated as one large pool of compute and storage. It also virtualises client connections to servers, eliminating the need for manual reconfiguration of servers or storage when applications or data are moved to new platforms.
All database data can be accessed by all servers, therefore database instances can be moved easily between servers, eliminating the need to copy data in order to move a database instance from one server to another.
Union can assist customers when evaluating and implementing clustered file systems for high performance computing.
Branch Office & Remote Site Consolidation
Wide-area Data Services
The development of Wide-area Data Services (WDS) solutions enables organisations to optimise WAN performance, enabling Wide Area File Services (WAFS) and Wide Area Application Services (WAAS).
The ability to provide users with LAN like performance over a WAN allows organisations to consolidate branch office applications, email and file serving. The result is significant cost savings, reduced operational risk and improved service delivery.
Remote Site Backup and Recovery
The development of data de-duplication technology integrated with data replication provides the capability to backup data across existing WAN links. The result is improved DR, reduced risk, improved efficiency and cost savings.
Data Centre Consolidation and Migration
The development of WDS solutions (see Wide-area Data Services) and decreasing bandwidth costs continues to facilitate the move towards consolidated data centres.
Union provides structured cabling systems; consolidated and virtualised storage and server infrastructures; backup and recovery systems; data migration tools and services; business and IT service management tools to improve, monitor and measure service performance.
If you would like to know more about any of our Consolidation & Virtualisation solution packages please call us on 08445 611678 or email info@unionsolutions.co.uk
