What Is Virtualization and How Can It Benefit Small Businesses?

Virtualization with Synology and Seagate IronWolf

When access to physical servers is cost-prohibitive or unavailable for small business, virtualization is a viable option. Your small business customers concerned with total cost of ownership (TCO) and bottom-line efficiency will find answers with Synology’s storage and virtualization solutions, made more successful with the Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD.

Virtualization 101

When it comes to data storage for small businesses, one option for minimizing costs and maximizing productivity is virtualization.

What is virtualization?
Virtualization creates a virtual server, reducing the need for physical servers, as well as the time, expense, and energy it takes to power them. Using the physical machine’s full capacity, virtualization distributes its capabilities out to multiple users within their own environments.

Think of it like a card dealer dealing out hands of cards to multiple players. The cards are the data, the dealer is the central physical server, and the players are the remote machines.

Fewer servers free up time and optimize businesses’ TCO, since it’s cheaper and faster to deploy virtual machines over new physical ones.

The Benefits of Virtualization

Small business owners with TCO on their minds will find the advantages of virtualization essential to managing their bottom line.

Advantages of virtualization:

• For desktop users, the ability to run applications intended for a different operating system without rebooting into a separate system or switching computers
• For server administrators, the ability to run different operating systems
• Ability to segment a large system into smaller parts, allowing the server to be used more efficiently by multiple users or applications with different needs.
• Promotes isolation, keeping the programs running inside a virtual machine safe from the processes taking place in another virtual machine on the same host
• Presents storage solutions with performance, integration, and scalability in mind

Storage Made Virtual

Synology provides storage solutions for virtualization. The Synology platform offers:

• Performance
• Scalability
• Integration
• Built-in data protection
• Ability to consolidate virtualized workloads and file services

TCB/TCO

Synology lets small businesses concentrate on maximizing their storage needs without the hassle of maintenance contracts, license fees and server upgrades. Virtualization environments can take advantage of Synology’s seamless integration, full suite of included data protection features, and a 5-year limited warranty.

Lowering TCO happens right out of the Synology box, allowing your customers to take care of business while minding their TCO.

Which Drive to Choose?

HDD? SSD? While the debate continues over the better storage option, it’s important to note that both have their benefits.

While HDDs are more affordable and have more storage space than SDDs, SDDs process and back up data faster and are silent, producing no mechanical noise. Because an SSD has no moving parts and uses flash memory to store data, latency isn’t an issue. The input/output bottleneck is eliminated.

Virtualization is maximized through SSD solutions from Synology, while keeping cost efficiencies top of mind.

Synology Products in Profile

SA3400: Highly Scalable Storage for Large-Scale Businesses
This 12-bay rackmount NAS was designed for large and extensive data storage scaling. Comprehensive data protection technologies make it a reliable server for massive storage deployment.

FEATURES:

• Hybrid cloud backup
• Server of virtual machine backup
• Flexible support for both SAS and SATA drives
• Built-in dual 10GbE and quad 1GbE ports with failover and Link Aggregation support
• Effortless data protection through Synology Active Backup Suite

FS3400: All-Flash, Lightning Speed Server for Large-Scale Businesses
Created to run I/O-intensive and latency-sensitive applications, the 24-bay all-flash NAS is ideal for real-time analytics, online transaction processing, and mission critical database services.

FEATURES:

• Enhanced endurance of SSD arrays
• Hassle-free data mirroring
• Various virtualization deployments
• Exclusive Synology RAID F1 technology effectively boosts system endurance
• Built-in dual 10GbE and quad 1GbE Ethernet ports with failover and Link Aggregation support

FS6400: Blazingly-Fast All-Flash Server Aiming for I/O-Intensive Applications
The all-flash FS6400 is a highly reliable, ultra-high performance server for I/O-intensive and latency-sensitive applications, such as multimedia post-production, virtual machines, online transaction processing, or databases.

FEATURES:

• Over 240,000 iSCSI 4K Random Write IOPS, ultra-high performance with low latency
• Dual Intel^® Xeon^® Silver 8-core processors and 32GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM, expandable up to 512GB
• Onboard 10GBASE-T ports, capable of installing optional 10GbE/25GbE/40GbE NICs
• Scale up to 72 drives with 2 × Synology expansion unit RX2417sas2
• Advanced Btrfs file system offering 65,000 system-wide snapshots and 1024 snapshots per shared folder

All products are backed by Synology’s 5-year limited warranty.

Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD: Making Matters Work

The force behind virtualization and enterprise storage is the Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD, the world’s first SSD for NAS.

Built for NAS with capacities ranging from 240GB to 3.84TB, Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD includes AgileArray^™ firmware to keep NAS enclosures maximized for demanding 24×7 and multi-user virtualization environments. The drive is ideal for all-flash arrays like the Synology FlashStation FS3017.

Seagate IronWolf 110 SSD + Synology FlashStation FS3017 = The Next Level of Storage

Small businesses looking to maximize their TCO can use an all-flash storage system like the FS3017 and enjoy sustained data rates up to 560MB/s, allowing the server to deliver more data throughout a multi-user environment.

This fully utilized system delivers pure performance in a small business setting. IronWolf 110 SSD can be integrated for caching capabilities on compatible NAS systems. The combination of HDD and SSD allows for caching that provides maximized capacity, minimal expense, and optimized performance.

Summary

Virtualization is optimized by Synology’s business-grade systems and Seagate drives, like IronWolf 110 SSD. Your small-business customers will discover an unimpeded network of possibilities through virtualization and storage solutions that integrate flawlessly, so they can take care of business and mind their total cost of ownership.