Take advantage of 2010 energy incentives and save thousands on your green IT project!

TCS Vision has been hard at work to make it easy for you to take advantage of huge incentives slated for 2010 that can save your company tens of thousands of dollars. There has never been a better time to GO GREEN and save money on your data center operational costs. We are pleased to announce the following promotions available in January of 2010.

Learn more about these incentives today. Contact us to register for a FREE lunch & learn session where you’ll learn the details of these programs. Lunch is on us!

TCS Vision, your technology and innovation partner, can offer $2,000 in incentives and up to $10,000 in incentives for qualifying thin-client consolidation projects**. That means there’s no better time to take control of your company, increase your bottom line, and increase your profitability. Register for your FREE lunch & learn to learn more**.

A typical server virtualization procedure consists of partitioning the physical server into independent environments. These “contained” environments make sure that the program they run remains efficient and secure. If any one of these partitions encounters an error and crashes, the damage would be restricted to the affected virtual machine. At the same time, the partitioned server can pool the computing resources of all the virtual machines to power server activities. IT professionals use different techniques to accomplish this process, and at the same time monitor results and test new technologies to find the best possible server virtualization method.

If your business has not yet virtualized its servers, you are missing out on a quick and effective way to manage IT costs. Server virtualization is a low-hanging fruit that you can set your eyes on when thinking of other ways to cut back on IT expenses. There is generally little else that businesses can do about the vendor costs of IT hardware. It will be hard to compromise equipment quality because it will ultimately affect efficiency. But you can manage technology and, with the right method, determine how much hardware that your business will require by maximizing your resources.

Before deciding on a server virtualization project, however, make sure that you are aware of the fact that there is no generic approach to streamlining your servers, that there are best practices that are often ignored, and other mistakes that is commonly done in server virtualization.

Do You Make These Mistakes in Running Your Virtual Servers?

One of the most critical problems that a wrong server virtualization procedure can produce is excessive software licensing cost. Each virtual machine that runs a particular application requires a separate license for that application. This will not be a problem if you are using open-source programs. But if you are using enterprise-grade systems, you can be overcharged. Make sure to consider IT management service in your server virtualization project to explore your options.

Another thing that is often overlooked when streamlining server use is capacity planning and management. Careful planning is the foundation of any IT management procedure. It is important to match hardware capabilities with program requirements because this can make sure that the system will not run out of server resources to use. Also, it is important to note that maintaining the reduced number of servers is critical. Just because you have less servers doesn’t mean you have less equipment to maintain. Before you make a head start in your project, get a clear picture of how much resources you will have and how they will be utilized. From this you will know what you need to do in terms of server management to keep their efficiency.

How Server Virtualization Can Save You Even More on IT Costs

Reduced hardware outlay is the most prominent appeal of server virtualization. Because there is less hardware needed, businesses can cut their IT budgets significantly. This advantage of server virtualization makes it perfect for small businesses that require less computing resources, and even for medium-sized businesses that want to optimize what they currently have. Additionally, space requirements are lessened when the number of physical servers is reduced. Server virtualization results in a streamlined datacenter which needs little cooling, as well as low electrical and maintenance costs.

An easily forgotten but still important advantage of server virtualization is its ability to run legacy applications, or older versions of programs. Because it is easy to create different operating system environments in a partitioned server, it is highly convenient to transfer programs and applications from one system to another. With this capability, it will be easy to develop and test processes across various environments and initiate the best course of action on how to keep the system in tip-top shape.

For more information about server virtualization and how it can save your business a considerable amount on IT costs, please visit http://www.tcsvision.com or call 1-877-884-6827.

Planning Your Terminal Services Project

For Microsoft-based customers, the backbone of any successful thin-client or server-based rollout is Terminal Services. Regardless of choice (whether Citrix, 2X, Microsoft Server 2008, Xen, or a combination thereof with VMWare VDI solutions) a properly planned and executed Terminal Services environment is critical. It is important to note that the same limitations apply in terms of scalability, Microsoft terminal server licensing, and environment capacity planning.

The Terminal Services component of Windows Server 2003 builds on the solid foundation provided by the Application Server mode in Windows 2000 Terminal Services, and includes the new client and protocol capabilities in Windows XP. Terminal Services lets you deliver Windows-based applications, or the Windows desktop itself, to virtually any computing device, including those that cannot run Windows.

More Information:

View the Techical Overview of Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services

Terminal Server Capacity Planning

Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server Capacity and Scaling

Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server requires that you install a license server before the terminal server can function. A license server is a computer on which Terminal Server Licensing is installed. Using the following step-by-step guidelines and recommended resources, you can deploy Terminal Server and ensure that Terminal Server Licensing is correctly installed.

More Information:

Guidelines for Deploying Terminal Server

Download the Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server Capacity and Scaling Word Doc

Once complete, insert the VMWare ESXi CD into your server’s CD/DVD-ROM drive and be sure that the BIOS is set to boot from CD/DVD.

After the ISO image has been completely loaded on the server, you will see the yellow “loading” screen.

Press Enter to install and press F11 to accept the license agreement.

Choose the location for your ESXi installation.

Confirm the installation by pressing the F11 key.

The installation image for ESXi is quite small, so your installation should complete in under 5 minutes. Once the installation has completed, press Enter to reboot your system.

Once the system has been rebooted, you should see the following console screen. You should now be able to access your ESXi server by pressing the F2 key (using the slimmed-down customization interface), or point a web browser (from another computer) to the IP address of your ESXi server. You will then be able to download the management tools that will allow you to configure your new ESXi host.

Additional Resources:

The VMWare ESX 3i Homepage