Server virtualisation can help your network by reducing costs and simplifying configuration and management. But before you deploy, consider these issues. Read more »

Desktop virtualisation is the latest addition to the virtual menagerie. What is this technique and how can it help to tame the corporate desktop? Read more »

What does virtualisation do for your network and how does it do it? Read more »

Microsoft's virtualisation is cheap and, as of last week, VMware's hypervisor is free. What does this mean for the virtualisation market? Read more »

The rapid evolution of the virtualisation market just sped up again, as VMware used its VMworld conference to launch the concept of in-house computing clouds Read more »

One of the big barriers to virtualisation is licensing hassles, which Microsoft has started to address with new terms that allow for easier migration of virtual machines. Read more »

Virtualisation vendors plan to adopt the Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) to facilitate virtual appliance deployment. An expert discusses how VMware users can benefit from the new format. Read more »

An acquisition, a price cut and a more detailed roadmap from Redmond on virtualisation reveal more about its strategies. Read more »

As the booming server virtualisation market spawns new competitors to VMware, how virtual machines connect with storage is becoming a matter of contention among vendors. Read more »

Storage managers contemplating virtualisation now have open source hypervisors to conteplate, as well as their commercial cousins.

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Customers will migrate to Windows Server 2008 based on the needed workloads, regardless of missing Hyper-V pieces. Read more »

Learn how to virtualise the physical servers in your network in order to reduce hardware costs and ease network management in these step-by-step instructions. Read more »

Creating Linux Kernel-based virtual machines is easy. This tip outlines the simple steps to virtualising the Linux way and shows how to install Windows and Ubuntu as guest OSes. Read more »

How many virtual machines can you put on a server? Depends upon whether your hardware and virtualisation environment are well-matched. This tip offers four criteria for selecting the right servers for VMs. Read more »

High availability (HA) in virtual environments now demands tools like spare hardware provisioning and system health checks for rapid fault detection. Read more »

Learn how to operate Hyper-V's Authorization Manager (Azman) in this How-To guide. Read more »

If you plan the upgrade from Virtual Server to Hyper-V, here's how to get onto Microsoft's new virtualisation platform. Read more »

To improve virtual hard disk (VHD) performance, allocate virtual machines more efficiently, better distribute VHD I/O load and perform standard disk operations regularly. Read more »

This tip covers the different types of VHDs in Hyper-V and explains how to work with them using Management Console, virtual hard disk wizard and other Hyper-V tools. Read more »

This case study explores how to get ROI from storage consolidation. Read more »

If virtual desktops seem like a good idea for your organisation, make sure you have excellent licence management processes in place before you fall on the wrong side of the law. Read more »

VMware's performance trumps Hyper-V's price, writes David Davis. Read more »

Get faster and smaller, hypervisor-free virtual machines with container-based operating system virtualisation. Expert Greg Shields shows how to get greater VM performance in less physical space in this tip. Read more »

Would you ever migrate from virtual to physical servers? If you need to, George Crump explains the best way to conduct physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversions. Read more »

Want to know what your IT team is in for when they start to deploy virtualisation? Ian Yates reviews offerings from VMware, Microsoft and XenSource and finds just how frustrating virtualisation can become. Read more »

Thinking about storage for DR in a virtual environment? Think vendor support, storage architecture, replication options, deduplication and recovery options. Read more »

Expert Chris Wolf gives advice on managing backups in virtual environments. Read more »

Learn which factors storage administrators must take into account when putting together a disaster recovery strategy in a virtual server environment. Read more »

Microsoft's Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 now supports Hyper-V and VMware ESX, making it a tool capable of managing several virtualisation environments. Read more »

Microsoft has launched Hyper-V, its new virtualisation tool. But does it stand up to the competition? Read more »

Hyper-V is cheap and almost ready, but it might be best to wait out any bugs. Read more »

This week's networking podcast considers solid state drives and the traps of virtualisation. Read more »

The biggest impact of server virtualisation may be in disaster recovery, improving the recovery time of apps that you wouldn't dedicate a standby server to. Read more »

Gartner Analyst Ramesh Kumar offers his views on how CIOs can green their data centres. Read more »

Use of environmental criteria in IT purchasing has increased by 50% in six months, Forrester Research says. Read more »

Burton Group analyst Richard Jones explains the top DR budget wasters and how to avoid them. Read more »

Startup Pivot3 has a new idea: running application servers inside storage arrays. Read more »

Enterprises are increasingly considering iSCSI SANs for departmental applications, server workloads that aren't bandwidth-intensive, and virtual servers. In fact, the connection between shared storage and virtualised servers is changing the iSCSI SAN game. Read more »

DataCore's new software package allows users to build virtual SANs with HA features, replication and snapshots. Read more »

This tip explains how a 10 GbE card can get around the network I/O virtualisation problem of low bandwidth. Read more »

Virtualisation puts unique stresses on a network. Here's how to relieve those stresses and optimise performance. Read more »

Virtualisation can mean network managers need to develop an infrastructure for redirecting IP addresses across a WAN. Read more »

If your organisation is contemplating server virtualisation, you need to know how to get your network ready for new and unusual traffic loads. Here's how! Read more »

The networking industry's biggest shindig, Interop, kicks off in the USA this week. We've a team there bringing back stories already, such as this preview of likely moves in virtualisation and the network Read more »

When several servers combine as one, what does it do to the network? Read more »

Networking vendors are looking for ways to solve the configuration problems created by server virtualisation. Read more »

Server virtualisation and site consolidation bring concerns about the WAN developing latency issues as application servers' physical locations change. Read more »

In this chapter from "Network virtualization," authors Victor Moreno and Kumar Reddy explain why and how to virtualise the network. Read more »

A file sharing flaw in VMware can be exploited by an attacker to execute code and access sensitive files. Read more »

Three of today's most popular techs - web apps, virtualisation and social networks - will attract more attacks from online crims in 2008, according to AusCERT. Read more »

Virtualisation is now seen as a way to improve data security and make patch deployments more efficient. But analysts say there are security risks as well. Read more »

VMware plans to release application program interfaces as part of VMsafe so vendors can design software interoperable with its virtualisation technology. Read more »

With virtualization sweeping IT departments, startups and virtualization vendors are responding with new security tools. Read more »

IBM has created a project to develop new security techniques to protect the hypervisors that enable virtual computing.
Includes a video interview with IBM researchers. Read more »

A security researcher says there is so much work needed to secure a virtualised environment that it could undermine ROI for virtualisation. Read more »

Virtualisation is now seen as a way to improve data security and make patch deployments more efficient. But analysts say there are security risks as well. Read more »

Citrix and Akamai have teamed up to accelerate the WAN at almost every point imaginable! Read more »

Learn about the different virtualisation platforms enabled by Xen, how to install it and deploy the XenCenter management console. Read more »

Contemplating a marriage of VoIP and thin client? This extensive how-to explains how to hook up Cisco Communicator and HP thin clients. Read more »