Building a virtualised environment will require the implementation of several key technologies from multiple vendors. Powercube has partnered with world class vendors, carefully selecting a range of products and services to support effective virtualisation strategies. Vendors include Citrix, VMWare, Sun , HP, IBM and Symantec to provide virtualisation across Server, Storage, Application, Desktop and Network.

Powercube provides customers with a no-nonsense approach to evaluating the leading virtualisation technology ensuring that you, the customer are ideally placed to make those key IT decisions. Furthermore, Powercube provides a true end to end service including evaluation, configuration, pricing, delivery, installation & support.

Businesses are demanding a better return from their investment in computing systems, whilst still delivering secure and continuous business operations. Virtualisation technologies are being implemented across all layers of the system architecture. This enables the consolidation and sharing of IT resources through a single, easy to deploy management interface.

Server Virtualisation

Server virtualisation dramatically reduces the number of physical servers in an organisation by enabling multiple ‘virtual servers’ to be run on a single or reduced number of shared machines. Each virtual server has its own operating system, applications will run as normal, and users have access via the network as usual. Multiple servers are managed via a single management layer, or ‘hypervisor’

Storage Virtualisation

With storage virtualisation, storage capacity is removed from the individual user or server and is instead deployed in single or shared pools. Storage capacity is allocated to and accessed by the user or server via the network and can be adjusted to meet actual demand at any given time, disk space can be fully utilised without wastage. Capacity planning, data classification by importance, backup and restore and peak-time balancing all become easier.

Application Virtualisation

Application virtualisation dramatically reduces the number of physical servers and desktop PCs in an organisation by enabling multiple applications to be run on a single machine, or a reduced number of servers, contained within a dedicated server farm. Applications share system resources such as operating system, memory and processing power, with workloads balanced to
ensure optimum performance.

Desktop Virtualisation (VDI)

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) consolidates large estates of desktop PCs onto a centralised server farm where every user has their own ‘virtual’ PC. Instead of users having an expensive, dedicated, fully loaded PC on their desk, they all access a full version of their operating system (Windows, Linux, Unix...) environment, including desktop applications, located remotely on the server. They do this from much lower cost ‘thin client’ PCs or terminals.

Network Virtualisation

Through network virtualisation, a dedicated ‘acceleration appliance’ is deployed at each end of a network connection. This increases data transfer speed and the capacity of the connection without the expense of adding extra telecommunications bandwidth. Network acceleration underpins wider virtualisation strategies, enhances remote backup and disaster recovery performance whilst improving large file transfers and the overall user experience.