LETN have designed many new infrastructure solutions for our clients that incorporate Disaster Recovery protection at a cost and speed of recovery that has not previously been possible, watch the below video to see how this works and download the white paper for more in depth detail.

Talk to us on 01189070070 to find out how using our Cloud Services in conjunction with the solution in the video can deliver the highest level of DR protection at a very competitive cost.

VMware Site Recovery Manager on NetApp Whitepaper

Site Recovery Manager on NetApp Demonstration Video

Key Business Benefits

• One Button Fail Over for your business servers to your DR site in under 30 minutes
• Don’t have a DR site? not a problem because you can Fail over to our Cloud Platform using our DR service.
• Leverage more value from your virtual environment
• Lower the cost of protecting your infrastructure with simple administration
• Introduce up to the minute DR protection for key business applications like SQL, Oracle, SAP & Exchange
• Enable board level control over the decision to failover between sites .
• Carry out regular non disruptive DR tests using Site Recovery Managers “Test” feature that requires zero downtime.

The Business Objective:

To protect the key business applications and information from being unavailable during a Disaster. To enable smooth failover of servers/data between Primary and DR sites with minimal technical envolvement to actual make the servers available via their new network.

Nice To Haves:

To be able to tailor the individual level of protection for different sections of infrastructure based on its criticality.
To empower a senior executive with the ability to decide when to failover and instigate this with just a few mouse clicks.
Protecting keys systems is ok, but if my building has burned down it would be good to also have the option of bringing the remaining less critical systems online within a few days.

Solution:

The question asked of many IT Departments in the current climate is:

“how quickly would we be up and running if the worst happened?”

An interesting question, but first of all you need to define what “the worst” means (or the word “Disaster” ) so that you can establish everyone is talking about the same situation. The goal however is usually the same which is to have a “ready to go” up to date copy of your critical systems at another site.

Secondly the question in reply is:

“how much will it cost us to be without our IT infrastructure?”

This cost is ultimately the way risk versus budget is calculated and consequently is how Disaster Recovery is costed.

The great news about disaster recovery is that, what was a nightmare question is now solved with a simple solution when using a blend of technology available from several Tier One vendors.

The base concept is that “it is great to virtualize!!” , but you have heard that already I’m sure?

One of the last features of virtualization ever mentioned is that the Virtual Server images are stored as flat files. These flat files behave like any other collection of files, they can for example be copied from one place to another and then restarted. It is this fantastic but underrated feature that makes Disaster Recovery so easy to conquer once you have virtualized your critical business infrastructure.

Using VM ware to run your infrastructure means that you typically need some shared storage, choosing the right vendor for this storage is critical because it is here that all your data and virtual server images will be stored. So for local business continuity reasons alone you need it to be reliable, flexible and easily managed. NetApp offer storage appliances that cover all of the aforementioned but also offer an important extra, the NetApp FAS appliances offer deduplication at block level which when combined with their market leading Snap Mirror site to site replication technology means that we can build an incredibly efficient site to site storage replication solution that is as light as possible on the amount of bandwidth it requires.

Ok so we’ve got replicated storage covered with NetApp Snap Mirror, but the next component is the part that makes the whole solution very efficient. VM ware Site Recovery Manager has a storage connector that links with Snap Mirror so that your Virtual Centre Management Server is storage aware. In the event that you need to fail over your Virtual Centre knows where all your replicated servers are and is able to execute a planned fail over making all the required addressing and local setting changes automatically. It is in fact possible to fail over with out having any technical resource to hand meaning your CEO/MD can make the decision and execute it.

Products Links

VM ware ESX
NetApp FAS Storage Appliances
NetApp Snap Mirror
VM ware Site Recovery Manager
NetApp SnapManager product suite

Efficiency Thru Utilization and Automation

- vSphere is the most efficient virtualization platform for cloud computing infrastructures. vSphere 4.1 transforms a traditional static, siloed IT infrastructure into a dynamic, highly elastic, on-demand cloud computing infrastructure.

Agility with Control

– vSphere 4.1 provides the optimum combination of agility with enterprise-class control. vSphere delivers zero-touch infrastructure, with built-in availability, scalability, security, and performance guarantees.

Freedom of Choice

- vSphere 4.1 is based on standards that enable choice and flexibility when it comes to the delivery of application and infrastructure services.
vSphere 4.1 supports of over 500 ISV solutions and 80 operating systems plus the latest x86 processors on the market.

New Features announced:

• Expanded Capability – x32 hosts per Cluster, 320 VM’s per Host, 3,000 VM’s per Cluster, x500 Hosts per vCenter, 10,000 VM’s per vCenter
• Storage I/O Control – Set storage quality of service priorities per virtual machine
• Storage Performance Reporting – Deliver of key storage performance statistics in vCenter
• Network I/O Control – Set network quality of service priorities per flow type (iSCSI, NFS, etc.)
• Memory Compression – A new hierarchy for VMware’s memory overcommit technology
• DRS Host Affinity – Set granular policies that define only certain virtual machine Movements

VMware vSphere 4.1 Brochure

Delivering a Cloud Computing Strategy

Come to the Breakfast Briefing that De-Mystifies the technology behind Cloud Services

Learn how leading technology from some very familiar vendors is delivering all the benefits promised by Cloud Services, there is a lot of media noise about “Cloud” and this event is aimed at cutting through this by showcasing the actual products you can use to build an in-house Cloud or to integrate with an outsourced Private Cloud.

Cloud computing revolutionizes computing

Many businesses today are looking for a way to significantly reduce ongoing IT capital and operating expenditures yet maintain a world-class IT infrastructure. The question is: How do you do it? How can you cut down on IT capital expenditures and ongoing IT operating costs, yet maintain a competitive IT infrastructure? With traditional IT infrastructure, you can’t. You’re stuck. You need all the hardware and software, and floor space and cooling and staff and labour-intensive system maintenance. That’s what traditional distributed computing infrastructure requires.

Agenda

08:30 Registration & Coffee
09:00 Introduction
09:10 Getting the right Cloud User Experience – Citrix
09:50 Delivering IT as a Service – NetApp
10:10 Break
10:30 vSphere 4 Powering the Cloud – VMware
11:10 LETN Cloud Services – LETN
11:40 Ask the experts + demonstrations of key technologies discussed.

Introducing Cloud Computing

Wouldn’t it be nice if IT infrastructure were like the infrastructure to deliver water or electricity? Just turn on the service, as much or as little as you want, when you want it. You pay nothing when you’re not using it. The service is reliable, high quality and inexpensive.

Cloud computing is the model for delivering IT infrastructure as simply as water from the tap or electricity from the socket. Cloud computing makes every element of IT infrastructure available as an on-demand service—operating systems, applications, storage, servers, appliances and workflow management. You don’t have to make capital expenditures or maintain an IT infrastructure department. You simply turn on the tap and it is delivered. You pay only for what you use.

Cloud computing revolutionizes computing in the same way that industrialization revolutionized goods production. It creates large, extremely efficient service providers that are able to produce IT infrastructure services in high volume at low cost and renders small operations uncompetitive.

Cost savings, flexibility and scalability abound
The primary benefit to businesses will be significant cost savings. “An OnDemand business app in the Cloud would cost a customer a third of an OnPremise client-server app over a five-year cycle,” according to Merrill Lynch*. You make no capital purchase other than a computer and Internet connection, and only need to pay for the services used. With no infrastructure to support, you can significantly reduce IT headcount. You can use the money saved to develop new products and revenue streams or just reduce your bottom line.

There is also no vendor lock in. You are not saddled with hardware or software that ties you down for years as you amortize the capital expense. You are not stuck with a subpar product or an unresponsive vendor. You can change vendors when you wish, as often as you wish.

Finally, you can immediately and massively scale up or down for spikes in computing demand, for growth or for decline. You don’t need to overprovision to prepare for high demand cycles or to engage expensive long-term resources that exceed your short-term needs in anticipation of future growth.

Global organizations and government agencies require more than network security to guard their confidential data and sensitive information. They must protect the data itself. Yet most organizations have little insight into where their confidential data is stored, and where it is going.

A leading analyst firm estimates that insiders are responsible for 70 percent of security incidents that incur losses. With the total number of data breaches for 2007–2008 reaching almost 900, companies are looking beyond securing network perimeters from external threats. They are now implementing solutions that guard against the insider threat by delivering unified protection of data wherever it is stored or used. CIGNA, Energen, Esurance, and other Fortune 1000 companies are using Symantec™ Data Loss Prevention solutions to ensure the security of their vital information assets.(1)

Did you know…

• 1 in 400 email messages contains confidential information (2)
• 1 in 50 network files contains confidential data (2)
• 4 out of 5 companies have lost confidential data when a laptop was lost (2)
• 1 in 2 usB drives contains confidential information (3)
• Companies that incur a data breach experience a significant increase in customer turnover—as much as 11% (4)

Download our FREE whitepaper to learn more about protecting your DATA…

Information Sources
1 Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) 2008 Breach List
2 Symantec Corporation: Data Loss Prevention Risk Assessment customer results,
3 Ponemon Institute LLC and Symantec Corporation end-user survey, August 2006
4 Forrester Research, Inc. and Symantec Corp. survey, February 2007

Many companies have more capacity than they need. But more flexible storage solutions allow you to scale storage up and down as required – and achieve major savings.

2. Think strategically about data storage.

Traditionally, it has been seen as a cost centre. But optimising storage can free up cash for investment, boost a business’s agility and speed to market, and improve resilience and risk management.

3. Consider new data storage technologies.

De-duplication, virtualisation and efficient data protection could improve your efficiency and cut costs.

4. Analyse the financial implications of data storage.

While it can appear to be a stubbornly intractable overhead, transforming the way data is stored can reduce energy, real estate and personnel costs. It can also help your business ensure regulatory compliance, protect your reputation and get more value from the information you hold.

5. Consider flexible funding models for data transformation.

This approach can turn your data from a capital expenditure into one that is operational and that can make all the difference.

6. Look at how you back up data.

While traditional back-ups regularly create full copies of entire datasets, smart backup systems only ever copy the data that has changed – slashing the time taken
and offering further savings.

7. Think green. The energy-intensive nature of IT storage equipment means its carbon footprint can be large.

Optimising the data storage environment, making smart use of new technologies (eg shifting your data storage into a cloud) could help your business in its efforts to tackle climate change.

At LETN, data storage is one of our core infrastructure solution offerings. If you would like to find out more about how you could turn data storage into a business driver while cutting costs, please call us on 01189070070 or email us at enquires@letn.co.uk

4/6/2010 » SANTA CLARA, CA » Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS), announced today that NASA has incorporated Citrix® XenDesktop™ with high-definition HDX™ technology into the recently launched Crew Support LAN, which provides astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) with direct, private access to familiar desktop applications and websites from any location, including outer space. The new network incorporates virtual desktops powered by XenDesktop and WAN optimization technology from Citrix Branch Repeater™ to ensure simpler communications that are both reliable and secure. The project is part of a broader effort to enhance the quality of life of astronauts during long-duration missions by helping to ease the isolation associated with life in a closed environment.

The system was first used last month by Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer when he posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account from space. Previously, limited bandwidth and significant latency meant that Tweets had to be emailed to the ground and shared manually with ground personnel before they could be sent to the astronaut’s family members. The new desktop virtualization solution gives the ISS crew unprecedented, direct access to vital personal communications tools such as Twitter and the ability to browse the web, while mitigating the existing latency of network communication from space.

With XenDesktop, virtual desktops are managed and secured centrally in the datacenter located on the ground, and can be accessed by the ISS crew using laptops located on the space station. XenDesktop with Branch Repeater help optimize the delivery of virtual desktops and applications to the ISS crew, dramatically reducing bandwidth requirements and optimizing performance for high latency satellite communications. Astronauts simply connect their laptop to a power source on board and log in to receive a familiar Windows desktop experience that’s personalized to each user, and makes it easy to securely access any application, including personal email as well as popular internet sites like Twitter.

“We are extremely proud to be partnering with NASA to enable the ultimate virtual desktop solution over high latency satellite connection,” said Tom Simmons, area vice president, Public Sector, for Citrix. “We are pleased to play a role in making the distance between the astronauts on the ISS and those of us on the ground just a little shorter. With this project we’ve proven that our desktop virtualization solutions can deliver desktops to anyone, anywhere, anytime, even under the most unique and challenging conditions.”

Related Links

Can virtual desktops go with you ANYWHERE? Even outer space?

How to Upgrade Your Space Station to Win7

Delivering a Cloud Computing Strategy

Come to the Breakfast Briefing that De-Mystifies the technology behind Cloud Services

Learn how leading technology from some very familiar vendors is delivering all the benefits promised by Cloud Services, there is a lot of media noise about “Cloud” and this event is aimed at cutting through this by showcasing the actual products you can use to build an in-house Cloud or to integrate with an outsourced Private Cloud.

Cloud computing revolutionizes computing

Many businesses today are looking for a way to significantly reduce ongoing IT capital and operating expenditures yet maintain a world-class IT infrastructure. The question is: How do you do it? How can you cut down on IT capital expenditures and ongoing IT operating costs, yet maintain a competitive IT infrastructure? With traditional IT infrastructure, you can’t. You’re stuck. You need all the hardware and software, and floor space and cooling and staff and labour-intensive system maintenance. That’s what traditional distributed computing infrastructure requires.

Agenda

Introducing Cloud Computing

Wouldn’t it be nice if IT infrastructure were like the infrastructure to deliver water or electricity? Just turn on the service, as much or as little as you want, when you want it. You pay nothing when you’re not using it. The service is reliable, high quality and inexpensive.

Cloud computing is the model for delivering IT infrastructure as simply as water from the tap or electricity from the socket. Cloud computing makes every element of IT infrastructure available as an on-demand service—operating systems, applications, storage, servers, appliances and workflow management. You don’t have to make capital expenditures or maintain an IT infrastructure department. You simply turn on the tap and it is delivered. You pay only for what you use.

Cloud computing revolutionizes computing in the same way that industrialization revolutionized goods production. It creates large, extremely efficient service providers that are able to produce IT infrastructure services in high volume at low cost and renders small operations uncompetitive.

Cost savings, flexibility and scalability abound
The primary benefit to businesses will be significant cost savings. “An OnDemand business app in the Cloud would cost a customer a third of an OnPremise client-server app over a five-year cycle,” according to Merrill Lynch*. You make no capital purchase other than a computer and Internet connection, and only need to pay for the services used. With no infrastructure to support, you can significantly reduce IT headcount. You can use the money saved to develop new products and revenue streams or just reduce your bottom line.

There is also no vendor lock in. You are not saddled with hardware or software that ties you down for years as you amortize the capital expense. You are not stuck with a subpar product or an unresponsive vendor. You can change vendors when you wish, as often as you wish.

Finally, you can immediately and massively scale up or down for spikes in computing demand, for growth or for decline. You don’t need to overprovision to prepare for high demand cycles or to engage expensive long-term resources that exceed your short-term needs in anticipation of future growth.

LETN have announced this week that customers thinking about adopting our Cloud Services offering are now able to experience the technology before they buy.
Whether you are looking to host just an application or a full server / desktop solution for your employees or customers LETN can now demonstrate the experience they will receive and easily test performance of the service over your existing lines.

To arrange your demo access please speak with you account manager who will arrange for up to five user access accounts to be provided for you.

The demonstration can be tested from any internet enabled PC or Mac running an up to date browser* so is ideal for asking remote offices or home workers to test without complicated setup. Its as simple as browsing to a website and logging in with the details your account manager provides.

*Please speak to your account manager to check compatibility. Or call call 01189070070 and ask for Dan Parsons.

LETN’s Sales Manager , Steve Denby said “LETN is committed to providing our clients with cost effective, best of breed solutions and therefore we are delighted to add Mimecast to our current product portfolio. We firmly believe that the inclusion of Mimecast’s Software as a Service (SaaS) solution will allow us to offer our customers greater flexibility and ultimately allow us to provide a solution that is specifically tailored to meet the individual requirements of each client”.

Mimecast Software-as-a-Service includes:

• Email archiving
• Email continuity
• Email security
• Data leak prevention
• E-discovery & compliance
• Email branding & disclaimers

Mimecast provides everything an enterprise needs in a ready-to-use online Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution: removing the growing risks and complexities of business email management with a single platform. Better yet, it comes at a fraction of the cost of alternative strategies, saving companies as much as 60% in ongoing costs.

LETN hosts regular Mimecast WebEx demonstrations that are tailored to provide a concise overview of the service and to address the specific requirements of each customer.

To learn more about Mimecast’s Unified Email Management Service or to discover how Mimecast is helping thousands of companies to successfully manage their expanding and complex email environments contact LETN sales department on 01189 070070 or via email at sales@letn.co.uk.

You don’t need to be a storage expert to manage NetApp systems in Windows environments. Setup and ongoing management are easy using System Manager within the familiar MMC framework. From a central console, Operations Manager delivers comprehensive monitoring and management for NetApp storage with alerts, reports, performance, and configuration tools to keep your NetApp storage infrastructure in line with business requirements for maximum availability and efficiency. Speed provisioning workflows and boost capacity utilization with NetApp Provisioning Manager—policy-based automation to provision your entire NetApp SAN and NAS infrastructure from a single console.

Flexible,
Unsure if you require a Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), IP, NAS, NFS, or CIFS protocol. Which drives are best suited to my environment FC, SAS or SATA?

Why worry, NetApp will support any of these protocols or drive formats disk drives from within a single “unified” storage platform. In addition all NetApp systems from the largest “Enterprise” to the entry level “SMB” system’s, fully support NetApp’s comprehensive range of value add software applications, providing unrivalled flexibility. So if you are considering a storage platform for Virtualisation, Business Continuity, Backup & Recovery, Test & Development or Archival & Compliance, or a combination of any of these, NetApp has a solution.

Reliable,
NetApp first developed their Data On-Tap operating system in 1992. This operating system is still in use today and has seen constant refinement and development to ensure that it is now recognised as one of the most robust and reliable OS platforms available. In addition all NetApp systems support RAID DP. RAID-DP is a Double Parity RAID 6 implementation that prevents data loss should two drives fail in unison within a single RAID group. In addition RAID-DP makes SATA disk an option for your enterprise storage as you can use less-expensive SATA without worrying about data loss, and therefore lower your storage acquisition costs.

NetApp’s unique Snap Shot technology allows you to create up to 255 “Point in Time” copies of your critical business data for instantaneous application/data Backup and more importantly, near instantaneous Restore. The optional Snap Vault application allows for the creation of an unlimited number of Snap Shot’s and these can be replicated to another DR/Business Continuity location via NetApp’s Snap Mirror application.

Affordable,
New and affordable Solution Bundles throughout the range provide lower cost, faster Return on Investment (ROI) and a lower overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) than previously possible. These “bundled” solutions are specifically designed to make it easier to purchase a high quality storage system from a Vendor that is Universally recognised as a market leader and who consistently rank’s at the very top of Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” for Storage Solutions.

NetApp’s Deduplication technology provides an easy and FOC method to reduce your existing storage capacity requirements. NetApp Guarantee’s to reduce your current storage capacities within a Virtualised environment by at least 50%. Deduplication is a zero cost option and is included within all NetApp storage solutions.

In addition, the recent introduction of NetApp’s “Easy Storage on Demand” (ESoD) Financing scheme has now made it even easier to purchase a premium NetApp solution. The ESoD Financing scheme also provides additional storage capacity FOC, as an added incentive to enter in to a NetApp flexible Finance Agreement. NetApp will provide FOC, an additional and fully populated storage shelf of identical capacity and configuration to the purchased system to provide a “buffer” for future performance and expansion requirements. The cost of the additional shelf will be added to the Finance Agreement only if or when additional storage capacity is required. At this point, the original FOC shelf is added to the Lease and another fully populated shelf is supplied FOC.

LETN is an award winning Data Storage & Management Solution Provider. We are delighted to report that we have recently received both NetApp’s “New Partner of the Year” award for 2009 and also VMware “Rising Star” Award for 2009 in recognition of our on-going commitment to provide the highest levels of customer advice, support and services. If you are interested in NetApp’s Unified Storage solutions or would like to receive additional information about LETN’s solutions portfolio and services, please do not hesitate to contact the LETN Sales Team using the contact details below.

Sales Team – 01189070070 – Sales@LETN.co.uk

One of the biggest costs of upgrading or developing your applications is the time it takes to test the changes you are planning. Spare hardware is often needed and building a test environment is both time consuming and out of date by the time you are finished and ready to test.

What you need is a solution that allows you to take copies of your virtual servers and data that take up next to no room on your infrastructure. Imagine then, how fantastic it would be if you could run your updates/upgrades against these real life copies to see what effect they have before you do it in the production environment….
It’s entirely possible and we are helping our customers to save huge amounts of time and money.

In order to benefit from writable low space copies we implement NetApp storage, because of NetApp’s unique SnapShot technology we are able to take up to x255 snapshots at volume level without any performance overhead, using an additional application called FlexClone we are then able to make the SnapShots writable allowing for tests to be run against a point in time copy of your production environment.

The cost savings are realised through:

Speed time to market
Develop and test applications faster by creating instant, space-efficient data replicas that shorten design cycles and improve service levels.

Rapid, efficient provisioning
Achieve dramatic reduction in server provisioning time for both physical and virtual environments. Scale to thousands of virtual desktops with zero footprint impact.

Lower infrastructure and operational costs
Reduce space, power, and cooling costs through highly efficient storage utilization. Manage many data copies with a small team.

Download the product datasheet here"

Contact Dan Parsons on 01189070070 / dparsons@letn.co.uk to book a demonstration of this product and other NetApp features at your offices.

Many great businesses were built on the back of a recovering market, getting your business setup to expand at this time can give you the ability to grab more market share or expand into new areas where there is a gap in the market.

Growth is incredibly fickle though, expansion is expensive and usually requires long term commitment from your business, larger premises, more staff and new technology all require investment.

Or do they?

A short term lease in serviced offices is an excellent way of expanding into a new geography or housing new employees while you are pushing the sales on.

New staff can be employed on short term performance related contracts or temporary staff can help back fill while you establish the pace at which you are going to grow.

And now for the first time you can pay for your IT infrastructure as you use it as well, using LETN’s Purple Cloud Service you can seamlessly expand and contract the resource you need to run your business, no need to own expensive hardware, software licenses or try to support it yourself.

Purple Cloud is a “Business Growth Enabler!”

Click Here to learn more about the service

Virtualisation is now becoming a critical component to an overall IT strategy, therefore it is important to choose the right vendor. VMware is the leading virtualisation provider, offering the most trusted and reliable platform for building internal cloud infrastructures and federating to external clouds. Building on the power of VMware® Infrastructure, VMware vSphere dramatically reduces capital and operating costs, and increases control over IT infrastructures while preserving the flexibility to choose any OS, application and hardware.

• Decrease capital and operational costs through server consolidation and energy efficiency
• Enhance IT staff productivity through simplifying management and automating of IT operations
• Deliver Always On IT, ensuring business continuity through high application availability, data protection, and disaster recovery

LETN Solutions is a leading supplier of virtulisation solutions and has built an enviable reputation for delivering systems that fully meet with our client’s goals, expectations and aspirations. We have recently achieved VMware’s “Rising Star in EMEA” 2009 and NetApp “Best Reseller” 2008 in recognition of our on-going commitment to providing excellent service and to delivering upon the promise of virtualised IT Infrastructures.

Agenda
08:30      Registration & Coffee
09:00      Introduction
09:10      vSphere 4 – Whats New?
09:50      Break
10:00      Veeam – Monitoring and Reporting on your Virtual Infrastructure      
10:20      NetApp – Virtual Storage solutions (deduplication)
11:00      Ask the experts – Demonstrations

Venue
60 Cannon Street, EC4N 6NP

Should you require additional information relating to the above event or if you would like to be contacted by a LETN virtualisation specialist in order to discuss your specific requirements, please email Simon Gadd, at sgadd@letn.co.uk or call the sales team on 01189 070070 and we will be pleased to help.

Kind regards,

Simon Gadd
Business Development Manager