Servers and Routers

About 1817 days ago Servers and Routers

Server Snafus: Pitfalls to Avoid

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Buying a new server or servers means making decisions about storage and processing power, applications to install, where the server will be located, and how it will be powered. Get it right, and you’ll provide infrastructure to help your company grow and thrive. Get it wrong, and you can wind up spending thousands on technology that creates more problems than it solves. Here are five mistakes small businesses often make when purchasing servers: 1. Thinking short-term “The number-one thing we see companies do all the time is underestimate capacity and buy too small,” says Cameron Niles, principal, Syzygy 3 an IT consulting and integration firm. “They get into a situation where the configuration meets their initial needs, but in a year or a year and a half, they’re constrained.” How do you buy now for future needs? Begin by considering the technology’s life cycle — that is, how long do you want to be able to use it before it needs replacing? “For small and medium-sized companies, that’s usually three to six years,” Niles says. Of course, every company is different. But, Niles says, “As a general rule, a smart thing to do is to for storage needs to double every year.” This doesn’t mean you have to buy everything today that you’ll need for the next six years, he says. “You don’t need to build the Death Star right out of the gate,” Niles says. “But you do need to have a strategic plan that takes future growth into account. That’s where a lot of small businesses go wrong — they just look for the cheapest way to get it done now.” 2. Thinking you can plug it in and walk away “Sometimes people don’t give a lot of thought to what people, processes, and tools they will need to keep a system running,” Niles says. For instance, you should ask not only what an application can do, but who will support it in your area. If severs will be in geographically spread out locations, how will your IT staff effect repairs? Will they have to travel to the other locations, or will they be able to log on to the server and restart it remotely? Another common mistake, he says, is for businesses to buy one server that contains a tape drive so they can back their vital data up to tape. “No one ever thinks, ‘What will I do with the tapes if the server breaks?” Instead, Niles recommends a multi-disk backup system that triggers an automatic alert if any disk malfunctions. “With a good alerting procedure you can see that and get it swapped out before you lose any data.” 3. Putting too much essential data on one server “People try to save by combining features and applications on one server,” Niles notes. While some combining is okay, he says, “Put too many different processes on too few servers, and an outage can take out e-mail, accounting systems and files, instead of just one of those.” On the same principle Nile recommends creating at least two partitions on each server, giving the operating system its own partition. That’s because, when servers crash, some fixes require wiping and reinstalling the operating system. A separate partition can save your data and applications from getting wiped as well. 4. Not knowing your servers’ power needs. “A lot of folks today don’t know how much power their servers are pulling,” says C.C. Fridlin, vice president of product management for Avocent Corp., which provides IT infrastructure. Replacing an old server with a newer one can triple its power needs, he says. “You could wind up repeatedly tripping a circuit breaker, and not know why.” Larger data centers typically use an uninterruptible power source (UPS) to provide adequate power for each server, manage power spikes and dips, and provide battery power if the electricity goes off. If you have applications that simply can’t go down, then a UPS might be a worthwhile investment, especially if your company is in an area where electric storms or other factors cause frequent power interruptions. 5. Not knowing your servers’ environmental needs “Small companies sometimes put servers in a janitor’s closet,” Fridlin notes. “There’s a drain at the bottom with running water underneath, and mops — lots of humidity. There’s no ventilation — it can feel like 120 degrees in there. Then they wonder why their equipment breaks.” Servers need to take in air no warmer than 70 or 75 degrees, generally speaking. But it’s important to note where: most servers take in air at the front and blow it out the back. So it’s obviously a bad idea to have the back of one server facing the front of another. In fact, Fridlin says, if you have empty spaces in a server rack, it’s smart to install blanking panels — metal plates provided by the rack manufacturer — to discourage air flow between the front and the back of the rack. You should also avoid over-cooling your work area. “Some companies cool it down to 58 degrees to protect their equipment,” Fridlin says. Chill temperatures won’t hurt servers, but may have other drawbacks. “Obviously it’ll drive your power costs up,” he notes. “And, if the servers don’t have a dedicated air conditioning unit, your employees will complain about how cold it is. They may start plugging in space heaters under their desks.” That can create a fire hazard, among other problems. There are many challenges in buying servers, and of course this list can’t cover all of them. But avoiding these sadly common mistakes is a good place to start.

About 1817 days ago Servers and Routers

Five Reasons to Virtualize Servers — Now

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According to Gartner, roughly two thirds of all servers sold are shipped with Microsoft’s server software. Each generation is more powerful and sophisticated in what it can handle, the latest being the highly anticipated release of Microsoft Server 2008 that came out in February of this year. For the smaller business, prices start around $1,000 for the standard version and just under $500 for the no frills Web-only server application. Depending on the company’s size and budget, those Windows-based servers can be a major expense. It probably wouldn’t please the average business owner to know those servers, for all that sophistication and computing power, are likely running at less than 20 percent utilization. In other words, imagine a rack of five servers totaling over $5,000 in software and collectively they are running at the full capacity of just one of those servers, while the power of four servers sits idle and unused. “Windows servers have become more powerful over the years. Most applications just don’t require all that extra power,” says Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics based in Irvine, Calif. Scavo points to Unix and Linux servers as more efficient running at about 50 percent utilization — significantly better than Microsoft, but still woefully under used as a resource. The much-talked about trend, virtualization, is one way to get more bang out of your server bucks. But there are more reasons to virtualize, as you’ll see below. Virtualization 101 Traditionally, IT departments organize their servers by task. Typically there’s an e-mail server, a file server, perhaps an accounting server, and even a server for all the printing. With virtualization, tasks are handled across multiple machines and even platforms, instead of the one task, one box approach. “Think about it at the desktop level. The more applications that are open, the more likely it’s going to freeze up and crash. You don’t need that on your servers,” says Scavo. To the end user, the alternative is a seamless experience. Virtualization happens on the backend. It’s the ability to integrate resources, leverage them together to handle a single functionality, and all but eliminate down time since one server covers for another if there’s a problem. A company might use multiple servers to replicate a backup data base off site or handle more complex applications. These days, virtualization is often mentioned in the same breath as cloud computing. To make a distinction between the two, cloud computing is a data grid of perhaps thousands of computing devices used as needed by outside users and organizations. It’s a nimble way to scale up and down with user demands. Virtualization is the programming that handles the mechanics of that. Virtualization is not limited to cloud computing, which is virtualization on a grand scale. Smaller organizations can take advantage of this strategy on a much smaller scale with as little as only a few servers involved on site. Whether its through a subscription based service with a cloud computing provider, like Amazon.com’s new Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service, or implementing some virtual machine software (VMWare) on site, virtualization is quickly becoming a very attractive option for businesses and organizations of all sizes. Here’s why: Increase server utilization. As highlighted by Scavo, this is the heart and soul of virtualization. Getting the most out of your available computing power to accomplish whatever the task may be, whether it’s creating redundancies or enabling the network to handle more complex applications by allowing them to multi task across multiple appliances. Decrease spending. Virtualization saves money by requiring fewer servers to do more. “Through virtualization, companies can consolidate their server population on average by 25 percent. I know of one company that went from 18 servers to three and saved $90,000,” says James Browning, a vice president of research at Gartner Conserve energy. Servers and computers generate a lot of heat and at the same time easily break down if they aren’t kept almost refrigerator cool at all times. There’s a reason why IT professionals tend to wear long sleeves year round. The data room is typically chillier than football in November. With the rising costs of utility bills as a factor for every business right now, virtualization can be a fast track to big savings. That same company noted by Browning that saved $90,000 by reducing its number of servers; saved another $10,000 annually in utility bills. Safeguard data. Archiving data and replicating the network off site through virtualization is a recipe for an all but bullet-proof disaster recovery plan. Plus, it’s competitively priced compared to some of the other popular backup choices for small to midsize companies, like using a storage area network (SAN) or disc to disc backup. Increased flexibility. As mentioned already, by automating computing tasks across multiple sources, the likelihood of downtime is almost non-existent. If one source fails, another picks up the slack. Additionally, the IT department no longer has to be married to one single platform. “With virtual servers, you can run multiple operating systems, like Windows and Linux, on the same physical server,” points out Scavo. SIDEBAR: Getting started Every company’s computing needs are different and no one understands those unique needs better than the IT staff or consultant already managing the network. Business owners should encourage them to research virtualization, looking at case studies of what it’s done for organizations of similar size and corporate mission. Scavo highly recommends laying out the investment for a little training, as well. Send your IT manager to a conference or have a client representative from one of the VMWare vendors, like EMC, come on site to demonstrate what their product can do. As for Microsoft and those Windows servers running at 20 percent capacity, those days might soon be over with the release of Hyper-V when it comes out later in 2008. Hyper-V technology, designed to partition virtual functions away from the processor, is Microsoft’s VMWare solution to get more out of their servers. At a thousand dollars a pop for entry level versions of Server 2008, that’s a good thing.

About 1878 days ago Servers and Routers

When to Fix a Server In-House

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If you’re a small or mid-sized business owner, one of the things you quickly come to realize is that support is expensive. Either you pay through the nose for a support contract for your hardware and software, hoping that it’ll come to the rescue when you need it, or you take a chance and go without support, hoping that something doesn’t break that will incur a high one-time cost for time and materials. Hardware and software manufacturers understand this, which is why they’re giving their customers more self-service options than ever before. They’re also making their product more self-serviceable, allowing the customer to make fixes without having to call in a field technician. But, at the same time, environments are getting more complicated, leading customers to go down more blind alleys than ever before. As complicated as all this sounds, however, the decision on whether to call in support comes down to one major factor: how much downtime your company can tolerate. How long you can be down “Many times, it comes down to a cost equation, and that cost includes cost of downtime,” says Flynn Maloy, worldwide marketing manager of HP’s technology services division. Their goal is to provide complete support solutions to customers, whether they’ve bought HP servers or not. “Even with our small customers, we have a conversation: ‘What does it cost you to go down for an hour? What is the uptime you’re looking for?’” Server manufacturers like HP have all made it easier for customers to service their own hardware. Hot-swappable fans, hard drives, and other modules are designed to be easily removed and replaced while the server is still online. Monitoring tools, such as HP’s Insight Manager, and remote operation boards, such as the company’s Lights-Out management package, allow customers to have more control of what they’re seeing. Customers seek self-service options Thanks to the Internet, customers have more self-diagnosis options than they had even a few years ago. In a 2007 study of small businesses, New York City-based Jupiter Research found that, when searching for customer and technical support, FAQs and self-service searches were adopted at nearly the same rate (over 90 percent of those surveyed) as more traditional phone and e-mail support. But satisfaction levels were lower for those methods: 41 percent for FAQ and 45 percent for search versus 58 percent for e-mail and 57 percent for phone. Text chat and community forums were being used less than FAQ and search, but yielded similar satisfaction statistics. “People do like to be in control. They like to go online and figure the problem out before they get on the phone,” says Sonal Gandhi, the main analyst on the Jupiter report. “The only reason people turn to the phone is that they can’t find the answer they’re looking for or it’s more complicated than what they can find online.” Managed solutions for complex environments Indeed, environments have gotten so complicated that customers sometimes go down the wrong path, blaming the hardware when it could be the software or network that’s to blame. Maloy quoted an internal HP survey conducted in 2006 that showed that only 20 percent of total system downtime could be attributed to hardware failures. The other 80 percent were attributable to what he called “people and process” factors such as software failures, human error, network problems, security breaches, and other issues. These wild-goose chases end up taking time, and even in a small business, downtime can potentially cost a business a lot of money. “There are certainly customers out there that roll the dice more,” and go without a support contract, says Maloy. “Once things get a little out of hand to the people who are running it, then they seek coverage.” That’s where companies such as HP step in, offering managed support of entire environments. The service arms of global companies like HP and IBM have groups that are dedicated to providing services for small and mid-sized businesses, with service packages that are scaled and priced to fit the needs of smaller shops. Solutions range from hosting software on shared servers managed by the outsourcing company to having people on-site on a full-time basis. Some companies, says Gandhi, are using a “hybrid” model, where the management of only new applications and environments are outsourced, and the current environment is still taken care of in house. “It really depends on how crucial the application is for running the business,” she says.

About 1909 days ago Servers and Routers

Router-mania: Best Draft N Buys

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The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has yet to sit down and formally ratify standard 802.11n, but that hasn’t stopped a flood of “Draft N” routers from hitting the market. Should you wait for the IEEE to formally bless the standard before you go out and buy equipment? Probably not. Most observers agree that the Institute’s blessing is merely a formality at this point. After all, many of the companies rolling out Draft N routers are on the IEEE. Draft N complications But here’s a more likely complication: You install Draft N routers, which are purported to be about six times faster than the previous “Wireless G” iteration (which maxed out at 54 Mbps under laboratory conditions) and find that they perform pretty much the same. That’s likely because although you have Draft N routers, the equipment on your PCs is still old school. Unless you bought a PC equipped with Intel’s Centrino technology after August or so, your PCs won’t clock an uptick in speeds. “The biggest potential for disappointment is not having client hardware in sync with the router,” says Chris Silva, an analyst with Forrester Research, of Cambridge, Mass. Indeed, when Austin Smith, the owner of Digital Son I.T. Services, an Atlanta value-added reseller (VAR), pitches Draft N upgrades to small business clients, he stresses that they are not likely to see an immediate improvement. “I basically have to sell it on the features they’ll be gaining when the standard’s completed,” he says. Though PCs are beginning to sport Draft N compatibility (and Apple’s MacBooks are already up to speed), other hardware, like digital cameras, have yet to catch up. Backwards compatible hardware Nevertheless, unlike previously updated equipment, most Draft N hardware is backwards-compatible, which means at least while customers are waiting for the IEEE to make its decision (likely in the third quarter of 2008), customers can still use their legacy equipment. Proponents of Draft N say it’s worth the wait. Not only is it much faster, but the wireless coverage is noticeably better, says Ivor Diedricks, senior product manager for Linksys, of Irvine, Calif. Before Draft N, users might lose their connection if they moved their laptop over two feet or so, but “in the case of [Draft N] you don’t have dead spots.” In the meantime, though, a Draft N upgrade is likely to be anticlimactic. That was the case with CornerStore Entertainment, a nine-person Atlanta firm that manages musical acts (including crunk artist YoungBloodZ). Jeffrey Joseph, president of CornerStore, says so far it’s hard to get excited about the upgrade: “We decided to buy the [Draft N] router thinking it would be six- to ten-times faster only to find that the devices we need aren’t available yet.” SIDEBAR: Best Buys in Draft N Routers If you’re interested in starting the draft N upgrade process, here are some small business-targeted routers: • Linksys offers a full line of Draft N routers including the WRT350N, which starts at around $150. •  D-Link also offers the DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Route, which starts at $115. • Belkin’s N1 Wireless Router starts at $99. • Netgear’s WNR834B RangeMax Net Router starts at around $90.

About 1938 days ago Servers and Routers

Tech Talk: Virtualization

Elizabeth Wasserman: Why did you start looking at server virtualization? Jonathan Bryce: We run about 30,000 websites and applications right now and 10,000 databases. We have a lot of customers and a lot of traffic we manage for our customers each month. We take a lot of the headaches off their plate by putting the headaches on our plate. We have hundreds of servers and many networks we have to manage. As we started to scale up over the last year, we were having problems managing everything on separate physical servers. That is why we started looking at virtualization. The great thing about virtualization is it separates all the stuff that’s installed on the computer — the operating system and all the software — from the actual physical computer. We can basically make an image of a server and move it around between different hardware. If a server needs more capacity, we can take what was running on one physical box and see if we can move it to another physical box that has more capacity. The same thing is true if a server fails; we can take what was running on that server and move it to another server without a problem. Wasserman: How has this helped business? Bryce: A lot of places are adopting virtualization for testing environments and server consolidation. They want to take 50 servers all on different boxes and virtualize them down to five physical boxes for cost savings, and save power and more room in their data centers. That’s not really the benefit we were looking for. We wanted to be able to virtualize our environment to help us to manage it better. We have grown almost three times this year in size in terms of the infrastructure we manage and resources we run for customers. Having a server is like having a car. Having 300 servers is like having 300 cars. There’s always one that has a flat tire or needs an oil change. There is always something wrong with one of them. Being able to separate the server software and everything running on a server from the actual physical hardware, it really helps with the management side of things.

About 1938 days ago Servers and Routers

Tech Talk: Upgrading an Aging Infrastructure

Pentel, a 60-year-old manufacturer of writing instruments and art materials, had aging technology infrastructure that would sometimes result in IT outages at its U.S. headquarters in Torrance, Calif. The computing platform also was costly to maintain. Matthew Staver, Pentel’s information technology manager, tells Inc. Technology Editor Elizabeth Wasserman how the company invested in a more scalable architecture and reduced costs. Elizabeth Wasserman: Why did you replace your aging infrastructure? Matthew Staver: We were having issues with failures that would take us down for any number of hours. We were also facing rising maintenance costs. So it was costing us more money to keep this equipment under support from the manufacturers. We decided that we needed some new equipment. We started looking at what technology was out there, where the trends were going, and what seemed to make sense for our company. We had been using an ERP system that was on a Unix system. It was somewhat hard to find people to repair it. We decided to look at a platform that would support Linux. We ended up looking at blade servers from HP and virtualization. Wasserman: What kind of results have you seen? Staver: We started out with five racks of equipment in our data center. We’ve already gotten rid of one whole rack and we’re getting ready to get rid of another rack of equipment. When we’re done, we’ll be down to one rack. From 5 to 1. We’re going to see significant power savings because we’ve turned off so many machines. We don’t have all these different servers, of different ages, and different hardware. We have one platform.

About 1969 days ago Servers and Routers

Business Benefits of Virtualization

Nearly every critical operation these days is dependent on one or more computer applications that typically run on servers.  As businesses grow, many have to increase investments in new servers proportionally to host databases, electronic commerce applications, and financial reporting programs.  What is growing out of proportion, however, is the increased complexity associated with managing and maintaining these expanding technology infrastructures. This management challenge is pinching profits. Enter Virtualization. Virtualization allows multiple applications and operating systems to operate on a single server — or box.  This has been a major tool for managing IT complexity and cost in large enterprises, and it is catching on with small and medium-sized businesses.    Moreover, organizations are quickly realizing that virtualization can do more than simply consolidate server investments. This technology allows small and mid-sized businesses to save on power consumption and enables better disaster recovery. Help with backup and disaster recovery The number one pain point for growing businesses in their IT infrastructure is backup and disaster recovery, says Ben Matheson, director for small and mid-sized businesses at VMware. Virtualization helps in disaster recovery in a number of ways. In the physical world, disaster recovery is complicated and expensive. A good disaster recovery plan requires twice as much hardware resources to replicate their operating environment at a secondary site. Such is not the case in a virtual IT environment.  Backup sites can consolidate multiple applications on fewer pieces of hardware.  This value-proposition is finding a receptive audience among small and mid-sized businesses. According to a study conduced by AMI Partners, small and mid-sized business that are fully leveraging their networks by deploying solutions such as wide area networks, virtual private networks, and IP-based services, also report that technologies such as server virtualization and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) are top of mind as they seek ways to realize the most return out of their network investments. Cut costs by reducing servers VMware’s Matheson says the sweet spot for virtualization are companies that start at 10 servers or more. “Customers see an immediate ROI by investing in virtualization,” he says. As servers age and are replaced, virtualization enables companies to remove 10 old servers and simply buy one virtualized server. “Immediately they have a 90 percent reduction of capital costs that year,” he adds. Virtualization also lets end users scale more easily. As small and mid-sized businesses grow, they no longer need to add a new server each time they support a new application in the network.  It is an opportunity that vendors are flocking to pursue.  For example, Dell plans to introduce VESO, a virtualization optimized server that has been designed from the ground up with virtualization workloads in mind, says David Lord, a spokesperson for Dell. Virtualization is also creating demand for supporting applications.  For instance, Ennio Carboni, vice president for Lexington, Mass.-based network monitoring firm Ipswtich, says he expects monitoring and management tools for virtualized machines to grow rapidly. He also predicts that small and mid-sized businesses will be more likely to support virtualization technology on desktop applications as opposed to larger companies, which are primarily using virtualization in LAN environments and for storage consolidation.

About 2000 days ago Servers and Routers

Storage that’s Scalable: Capacity Grows for Data

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Most small businesses don’t plan to remain small forever, and part of the growth process means that as the business grows so will its technology needs. One area where growth can’t be stopped regardless of the size of a company is data storage. Every day new files are created, reports are generated, and other information is processed — and much of this needs to be retained. This is why scaleable storage is so vital for small and mid-sized businesses. “The term speaks for itself,” says Natalya Yezhkova, research manager for storage systems for IDC, the Framingham, Mass. IT research firm. “Scalable storage lets an [small to mid-sized business] or any kind of user start small and grow as they need.” While starting storage capacity can be determined by business needs and limitations on a start-up budget, scalable storage offers the big advantage of being flexible. It allows the storage capacity to grow as the business scales. Advantages to scalable storage Determining what is the right type of scalable storage means looking at the pros and cons offered by each. Krishna Chander, storage specialist for iSuppli Corp., a market research firm, says that the biggest advantage of scalability is the flexibility offered to small and mid-sized businesses. He explains that there are three primary means for scalable storage growth: The first way is simply to increase your footprint. “You can buy more equipment and add on it to,” Chander says. A business “can grow from 1TB of storage to 2TB by simply adding a second TB drive.” The second way is to replace older hardware. While this might require replacing each hard drive, and this can become a laborious task, it can pay off in ways that weren’t originally considered. “Everything should run faster, and is now replaced with improved technology,” Chander says. “There are some costs with adding extra features, but no additional space is taken. More importantly this is newer technology and newer warranties are in place.” The third method is to off load the data. This could be to a secondary storage system, where files that aren’t needed can be backed up, to external drives or even archived to CD-ROM. This can generally be the most cost effective, but on the downside back-ups can be lost or even stolen. Disadvantages for going with scalable storage Simply adding extra equipment might not even be an option if space is also an issue. “That means you’re taking more space,” says Chander. “Are you adding more racks? And with more capacity there is might need to be someone to manage the extra storage?” There is also the issue of cost. This is one of the immediate disadvantages of scalable software. “More storage could mean extra software licenses, and some of this might not be obvious from the beginning,” says Yezhkova, adding that you should consider whether there are limits to how much you can expand, and the costs involved. “You need to consider the cost structure upfront so that the [business] doesn’t pay more in the long run.” Andrew Fischer, administrator of ITForum.com, says that he prefers network appliances to PC workstation for storage. “Employees can still do everything that they need to do while using a network appliance, but restrictions can easily be set in place to monitor employee activity, keep employees out of areas they don’t need to be, and minimize distractions,” Fischer says. “Network appliances provide an excellent solution to keeping many projects on task. They are also more secure as outside data cannot be easily inserted into the intranet.” The disadvantages of network appliances are primarily the fact that employees will generally be unable to save or load any files to or from a portable or local device. But for many IT professionals, that could actually be seen as good thing. How to decide on your business storage needs Here are some questions you need to ask about your business to determine which type of storage best meets your business needs. How integrated is the current IT staff with the business? Will increased storage mean more integration with IT? Will the business need additional storage expertise? Will a manager be able to control the growth? Does the current office situation allow for growth? Is there room for additional rack storage? Does the company have compliance or regulatory issues, and must they comply with data protection requirements to safeguard client information? The best way to plan ahead, Fischer says, is by comparing past growth trends with future projections, making sure to scale facilities, hardware, staff, etc. in accordance with not only your business goals, but — more importantly — your business trends. The biggest thing to keep in mind, says Fischer, is that unless data is being truncated periodically, it will be growing in size infinitely over time. This means keeping a frequent eye on storage use, and planning ahead. “Running out of storage, or failing to keep up-to-date backups of all important data can very quickly lead any business to a halt,” Fischer says. SIDEBAR: Storage Vendors Protecting the data of small and mid-sized businesses is actually big business. Traditional storage vendors have been catering to the small business market, says Krishna Chander, storage specialist for iSuppli. Several established hardware makers are offering systems designed for small and mid-sized business needs: The Dell/EMC CX3-10c Disk Storage Array is highly flexible in the face of unforeseen growth and can support up to 64 servers and 60 drives in the storage array. The HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array 1000 Small Business SAN Kit is a scalable solution that can manage up to 42 drives and offers up to 12.8 terabytes of data storage without the complexities of operating a storage area network. The IBM System Storage DS3000 promises to help your business go from 0 to 3.6 terabytes of data storage “in no time flat.” It scales up to 48 hard disk drives.

About 2122 days ago Servers and Routers

Routers for Small Business: No More “Mickey Mouse” Gear

There was a time when small and mid-size businesses had to pay through the nose for high-end corporate networking gear made for large enterprises if they wanted to get any kind of decent performance out of their business systems. That, of course, assumed that you could schedule an appointment with a sales rep who was more interested in hunting big game clients. But times have changed. With the large enterprise market now saturated with technology, today many networking vendors are developing, packaging, and selling products specifically for small and mid-size businesses. The small business market is now seen as a hot, high-growth target of opportunity. While this is undoubtedly good news for small and mid-size businesses, buyers need to careful. Price and packaging is important in providing access to technologies once the exclusive domain of the Forbes Global 2000.  But it is also important to ensure that smaller businesses get access to the support and maintenance services that are critical to business continuity and ongoing operations.  Large vendors that have typically done business with big firms can easily fall short of making these key ancillary services available to their mid-market clients. This is because they primarily sell through channel partners who don’t have the resources and know-how to offer these support services. Price is no longer the only issue “Affordability is not the issue anymore,” says Amir Hartman, co-founder of consulting firm Mainstay Partners, based in San Mateo, Calif. “It’s the post sale service and support that small and mid-size businesses have to be aware of.” Large vendors see a huge untapped market in this space, Hartman says. Take Dell, which earlier this month announced its Vostro line of notebook PC computers designed for small businesses that have 1-25 employees. Dell has cut out unwanted applications that normally ship with new computers, and it has streamlined the process and time it takes for a customer with no IT experience to set up the machines down to 6 minutes. Dell says it’s dedicating 6,500 of its customer service workers to be available for 24-hour access. IBM, meanwhile, introduced a BladeCenter system for small businesses; blade servers were previously sold exclusively to mid-size and large businesses.   Cisco, earlier this year introduced the Smart Business Communications Center (SBCS), a product specifically built for companies with fewer than 250 users, which supports new hardware products, a unified communications applications and offers basic systems-management tools. The product provides routing, switching security and wireless support, which can be turned on and off independently, at a customer’s own pace, says Ed Kudey, senior manager of solutions development for the Global Small and Medium-Sized Business group at Cisco. More products let you pick and choose Hartman notes that small and mid size companies should expect to see more products that give users the flexibility to pick and chose the feature and functions they want to activate when necessary. Kudey says that Cisco has been supporting this market for eight years and is gratified to see that it continues to grow. Small (250 users or less) and medium (251-1,000 users) businesses now account for just over 25 percent of the company’s business. Like many vendors, Cisco supports this market through value-added resellers. “We spend a good amount of time educating our partners on our direction so they can help us establish a strong eco-system” for small and mid-size businesses, says Kudey. Just as Cisco will spend time consulting with the IT staffs of large enterprise customers, he says they do the same with smaller partners. While Hartman concedes that using established vendors like Cisco, Dell and IBM can offer small and mid-size companies some assurances in product stability and reliability, he argues that users should be clear with both vendors and resellers about support and service expectations. Although support is usually available, some vendors may charge extra to receive that support, he warns. As always, getting the facts before buying is critical. 

About 2153 days ago Servers and Routers

Server Wars: How to Pick the Right Servers

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The major server computer manufacturers have set their sights on selling to you. The small and mid-size business market has become the new battlefield because small businesses, which in the past relied on individual computers for individual tasks, now want to consolidate these functions into servers. “The competition is definitely is very high, and it’s been growing, mainly because the small and medium-sized business market for technology is growing,” says Gary Chen, senior analyst at the Yankee Group in Boston. “All of these vendors are interested in getting a piece of it.” Small and mid-size businesses are turning to servers as prices fall and their businesses require centralization, such as sharing files, print applications, data backup, hosting email and websites, and securing a network. Types of servers Businesses rely on three types of servers: tower, rack-mounted, and blade. According to IDC, the Framingham, Mass. research firm, about 40 percent of U.S. small and mid-size businesses have Dell servers, nearly a quarter have HP, and no other vendor has more than 5 percent of the market. Server manufacturers offer dozens of products and a range of prices. Choosing the right server for your business will require a fair amount of research. “One size doesn’t always fit all. You can’t have a rack that fits everybody’s needs, you can’t have a tower that meets everyone’s needs, and you definitely can’t have a blade that meets everybody’s needs,” says Scott Tease, worldwide project manager for IBM’s BladeCenter.   These are brief descriptions of servers: Tower servers are the most basic servers, and their sizes and costs are about the same as a desktop. Towers may be good choices for small businesses that do not have space concerns. According to IDC, about half of small and mid-size businesses in the United States have desktop servers and nearly 40 percent use a pedestal/tower. Rack-mounted servers, also called pizza boxes because their shapes are similar, and are stacked in racks. They are good for saving space, particularly for companies that use data centers, Chen says. Rack-mounted servers are “probably geared toward the more IT-savvy small and medium-sized businesses,” says Diana Morrow, marketing manager for industry standard servers at HP. HP says its ProLiant DL 380 is the world’s best-selling server.   Blade servers are small — each server is a thin “blade.” You could fit about 10 blade servers in two feet of space, according to Chen. In mid-June, IBM announced its BladeCenter “S,” which caters to small and mid-size businesses. The system can sit on a desktop and holds up to six blade servers. Because they’re compact, blade servers are still pricey for small and mid-size businesses, but IBM cited an IDC study that said the blade server market would grow from $3 billion in 2005 to $11 billion in 2010. Tips for Businesses Servers, particularly blade servers, can use a lot of energy. Look for greener models that can save you money, analysts advise. Virtualization makes servers more flexible and better utilizes server space, analysts say. Ask about virtualization if you shop for servers. Don’t buy the latest-and-greatest servers if they offer more capabilities than your business needs, says Steve Duplessie, founder of the Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass. “Staying one generation behind, because a generation now is like three months, can save a lot of money,” Duplessie says.