Server Hosting and Virtualisation
As part of the package that we offer at CMCS, we provide support for the hosting of customer IT equipment within our dedicated server room. The room is under 24/7 CCTV, both inside and out, and employs a swipe card access system to ensure all equipment is as safe and secure as possible.
We maintain a customer network that is isolated from the internal CMCS network and used solely by equipment that customers choose to locate in our server room. Customers can use this facility to replicate any data processing or workflow management systems they may have, to ensure that their critical IT functions are protected. Secure access can be provided from the customer network to a subset of the CMCS network, allowing customers to talk directly to our equipment, such as printers, so jobs can be managed and executed autonomously by customers, without having to involve CMCS IT resources. This provides customers with the peace of mind that comes from ensuring all have dedicated comms.
Whilst we can provide internet access to any customer equipment located in our server room, there is often the requirement for customers to provide their own dedicated link to their equipment. Any customer can have their own dedicated lease line link installed into our server room and we already have over 30 private lines installed by various customers.
Virtualisation
Virtualisation is a proven software technology that has rapidly transformed the IT landscape and fundamentally changed the way that people compute. Today’s computer hardware is designed to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications, which increases the utilization and flexibility of hardware.
By virtualising multiple workloads onto a single platform, you can reduce your physical server requirement, allowing you to fully support your business with less hardware, resulting in lower equipment costs, maintenance and physical space requirements. You have all the benefits of installing a physical server, but at a greatly reduced cost.
As such, in addition to supporting physical equipment CMCS also maintain a virtualised environment for customers who have a need for off-site IT capabilities without the expense of hardware. We can provide customers with as many virtual machines as they require.
Customers can use our facility to host IT equipment offsite, enabling them to replicate key IT functions and infrastructure, store backups, or extend their IT capabilities. And with support for virtualization and dedicated comms, we can host whatever equipment you need.
Virtualisation reduces the cost and complexity of business continuity. Essentially, by using virtualisation technology, you can encapsulate an operating system, an application, and its data into the equivalent of an application running on top of an operating system – the operating system, in this case, is the virtualisation software. You can then easily transmit this encapsulated application to an offsite location – just as you would transmit a data file – and make it available on a remote machine for employees to access.
“Implementing a reliable, rapid-recovery strategy can be time-consuming and expensive, requiring redundant server, storage and network infrastructure often in separate locations. Because of this, many companies simply don’t have comprehensive business continuity plans to protect their critical infrastructure and applications.
“With virtualisation business continuity solutions, you can add high availability and disaster recovery options to your business. Plus if you already deploy business continuity for some applications, you can use virtualization to extend protection to additional applications.”