Should You Be Suggesting Stretched Cluster Virtualization to Your Clients?

As businesses become more technologically advanced, company leaders continue to look for ways to maximize uptime and productivity, while protecting themselves from the unthinkable.

Stretched clusters are a relatively new development helping businesses accomplish both and elevating corporate cloud and virtualization strategies to the next level. While there are many organizations able to provide more traditional virtualization paradigms, see why a VMWare stretched cluster may be a valuable addition to your cloud offerings.

Beyond Virtualization

Although it has been a trend for a while, virtualization on its own is not a fool-proof solution. The next phase of your IT strategy should include maximizing virtualization with an emerging trend called stretched clusters.

A stretched cluster is a deployment model where two or more host servers located in the same datacenter or separate geographic locations are part of the same logical cluster.

Stretched clusters allow for greater load balancing and higher availability. And when it’s time for planned maintenance, guaranteeing uptime is simpler and more straightforward.

When it comes to preparing for disaster scenarios, IT staff can easily migrate virtual machines to the linked facility as needed. This helps ensure servers are fully operational at all times.

Consider Your Cloud Strategy

Offering your clients the best possible cloud solutions is vital to your continued partnerships and prosperity. The team at CPU knows how important it is to have the most up-to-date solutions in place — steady, reliable and ready to be deployed for your clients. With so many cloud hosting options available — public, private and hybrid — if your current cloud partner doesn’t provide this capability, it could be time to make a change.

Just this year in Italy, the University of Pisa underwent a revamp of its infrastructure with a focus on flexibility. After thorough research, the university’s IT leadership team found that implementing stretched clusters with VMWare was the right solution to ensure high-performance computing infrastructure.

The university, known for its use of leading-edge hardware and software solutions, expanded to operate a stretched cluster installation spanning multiple sites, along with a data center and disaster recovery installation.

This set-up was selected to be the optimal environment after the university’s IT staff reviewed various options with various providers. Use-cases such as this one can help illustrate to your clients the value provided with stretched cluster virtualization.

Forge the Strongest Partnerships to Serve Your Clients

Speaking with the CPU team will help you make the right choices when it comes to virtualization, hosting and disaster preparedness.  Since 1986, CPU has operated with a firm belief that technology is a differentiator — a way to set your business apart from the competition. This is particularly true in the crowded space of cloud offerings. With CPU at your side as a trusted cloud services provider, you can confidently offer the latest services to your clients.