GridServer Hosting Plan Options
GridSouth Networks offers an array of customization options designed to enhance your GridServer deployment. Our Engineering Team provides pre-configuration consulting and will recommend the optimal configuration for your virtual server deployment. Available options include a choice of operating systems, disk configurations, RAM, CPU, VPN tunnelling, clustering, VMware Fault Tolerance and more.
The most commonly requested options are described below. All options can be added to any GridServer hosting plan.
Operating Systems
We support the following operating systems in our vSphere infrastructure:
- Windows 2008 R2 Server Core
- Windows 2008 R2 Foundation
- Windows 2008 R2 Web Server
- Windows 2008 R2 Standard
- Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise
- Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter
- Windows 7 (all versions)
- CentOS
- Ubuntu
- Open Suse
- Fedora
- Free BSD
- Red Hat
- Open Solaris
- Mac OS X
- Vyatta
If you need support for a specific operating system or distribution that is not listed above, please be sure to ask and we will be glad to determine the feasability deploying that OS in our vSphere infrastructure. We can host older versions of Microsoft Windows but many of these OS versions are end-of-life and we would like to avoid deploying new services on outdated platforms.
Disk Configurations
Virtual servers can be deployed using redundant virtual disks in a mirrored configuration. In addition, we recommend that all deployments account for the number and block size format for all virtual disks attached to a given virtual server. Proper disk configuration is critical for optimal performance as well as data protection and future upgrade paths. Proper planning today can avoid serious downtime and performance headaches in the future.
RAM (Added Virtual Machine Memory)
RAM or memory can be added to any virtual server to provide the optimal amount necessary for a given application or service. Physical server memory does not necessarily translate when a physical server is virtaulized. VMware incorporates many optimization techniques into their vSphere products resulting in very efficient use of host server memory. Oftentimes, a virtual server with 512 MB of allocated memory (RAM) will outperform a physical server with 2 GB of physical memory (RAM).
CPU (Virtual Processors)
CPU capacity can be added to any virtual machine to provide the optimal number necessary for a given application or service. Some applications benefit when run on servers that have multiple processors or support hyperthreading. Other applications do not.
VPN Tunnelling
Our virtual firewalls support VPN tunnels (provided the firewall / router at the other end does as well) allowing us seemlessly join servers in our datacenters to your existing infrastructure in a secure manner. This configuration allows such things as joining GridServers to your existing Active Directory structure, selectively routing public and private traffic via router and firewall configurations and much more.
VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance
VMware Fault Tolerance enables vSphere to run a duplicate or secondary virtual machine that is in lock step with the active primary virtual machine. This virtual machine runs on a different host in the cluster and becomes active only if the primary virtual machine fails. This feature requires twice the resources but results in near zero downtime. This service is designed to protect against application downtime due to a host failure but does not protect against application failure within the virtual machine.
Other Options
If you have other needs specific to your application environment, please contact us. We will be happy to review your technical needs and recommend the best solution.
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