NEWS : Westcoast Solutions Lab is now open for business!

Westcoast is proud to announce the new...



The Westcoast Solutions Lab is a multi-vendor, fully functional demo facility that you and your customers can take advantage of to maximise your business. The Lab will always showcase the most up to date products and technologies from a range of manufacturers to keep you ahead of the competition.

The Solutions Lab has an HP Rack system fully loaded with the latest technologies from HP, including Generation 7 BL460c blades and DL380 rack servers, HP 5400zl and A5800 core switches, P4000 SAN storage running Virtual SAN appliance software as well as the full suite of HP management tools and Microsoft software.

Westcoast Solutions Lab

The lab also benefits from multiple tech pods which are available to demonstrate the latest solution combinations from HP, Microsoft and other key vendors, to help you position the benefits to your customers.

• The live environment is fully Microsoft Lync enabled so demonstrates the software and technology using various Lync optimised end points.

• The Solutions Lab staff can show you and your customers Virtualisation and Management demonstrations using Microsoft Hyper-V and System Centre on an HP Blade Systems platform.

• The facility uses the latest AV technologies to ensure presentations and training are of the highest visual standard.

• The space can be re branded to suit the audience and the event using the visual display capabilities on site.

Westcoast Solutions Lab

Located in Milton Keynes and with easy access from the M1 motorway the Westcoast Solutions Lab is available for many different types of events free of charge to our resellers including;

• Reseller and end user events
• Vendor days
• Conferences
• Focus groups
• Breakfast meetings
• Training sessions

We would encourage you to please visit the Lab on our open days on the 12-14th October to see what the lab can offer you and your customers. There will be 3 identical sessions at the below times on these days.

• 10am - 12pm
• 1pm - 3pm
• 3.30pm - 5.30pm

Plus! Join us on one of these open days and get entered  into a draw for 3 chances to £200 cash back on your next servers, storage or networking order! 
One must be given away each day!

Please click the image above to book the lab

We hope that you can make use of this fantastic new facility, so please In the meantime if you need anymore information then please do not hesitate to contact us.

If you wish to book the lab then please either click the Calendar image (above) or go to this link

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

Westcoast Smart Bid website now extended to HP Networking..

The new HP Networking section of the popular Westcoast SmartBid website has been now been launched where you can obtain special pricing on specific HP Networking product part numbers.

The site allows you to manage your bids and get a decision within 4 business hours.

Visit the site today and log in with your Westcoast log in details www.westcoast.co.uk/smartbid

If you have a Networking solution you wish to implement or would like help or more details on HP's range of networking solutions, then please do not hesitate to contact the Solutions team.

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

Westcoast at Convergence Summit South (4-5th October 2011)

With the worldwide IT and Infrastructure changing rapidly over the last 3 or 4 years as organisations of all sizes, commercial and public sector look at ways to reduce costs, increase ROI on investments and maximise their current infrastructure Westcoast have reacted to this challenge.

Westcoast have partnered with Microsoft, HP and Aastra to bring you a complete Unified Communications Solution.

Combining technologies from these three vendors will allow you and your customers to adapt to evolving business needs with a secure communications platform that spans across all the different ways people communicate, including telephone, e-mail, voice mail and instant messaging. Westcoast is also a leading supplier of IT Infrastructure products to the computer reseller channel.

Click here to arrange a meeting with us.

For more details on the Convergence Summit South event please go to http://www.convergencesummit.co.uk

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

September 2011 - HP Server and Storage offers.

In order for you to have your own copy of this months offers, We can now offer them in a easy downloadable PDF for you.

Please click the image above to open the PDF.

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

HELP : VMware vSphere 5 licensing Explained

Since the lauch of HP VMware Sphere 5 there have been a number of questions on how it is licenced as there is a little confusion from people moving over from vSphere 4.

In vSphere 5 the licence you use (Standard, Enterprise or Enterprise plus) is partly determined by how much vRAM the virtual machines have been allocated.

vRAM is new in Version 5, Unlike in vSphere 4 where the core and physical RAM entitlements are tied to a single server and cannot be shared among multiple hosts, the vRAM entitlements of vSphere 5 licenses are pooled, aggregated, across all vSphere servers managed by vCenter Server.

So what is a vRAM?
When a virtual machine is created, it is configured with a certain amount of memory available to the virtual machine, this is called vRAM.

What are the new Licences?
 The licences are split up into 3 different versions...

• Standard 1 Processor licence allow for a maximum of 32GB/entitlement
• Enterprise 1 Processor licence allow a maximum of 64GB /entitlement
• Enterprise plus 1 Processor licence allow a maximum of 96GB/entitlement

So how do I licence Servers and vRAM?
The easiest way to explain it is to provide an example.

If you were to use two DL380 G7 servers each with two 6 core processors (4 processors in total), 128GB of physical RAM and you wanted to use vSphere Enterprise edition, each physical CPU would require a license. To correctly licence vShpere you would need to purchase a minimum of four vSphere 5 Enterprise licenses (one for each processor). Now as each Enterprise license provides a vRAM entitlement of 64GB this creates a vRAM pool of 256GB.

Next, you would need to create the virtual machines.

In this example lets say you want to create 50 virtual machines each having 4GB of vRAM in each, and planned to deploy them across the two DL380 G7 servers, this would only take up 200GB of your 256GB entitlement. As both of the DL380 servers are connected to the same vCenter Server and are running the same VMware vSphere edition This vRAM pool also allows DRS and VMware vMotion to move the virtual machines between any of the CPUs without needing any additional licenses.

Even if all 50 virtual machines were running on a single CPU, no additional vRAM capacity would be required, because the pooled vRAM entitlement would not be exceeded.

If you increased the memory in the DL380 servers to beyond the vRAM entitlement, you would need to purchase additional processor licences (of the same type) for the additional physical memory you installed in the servers to be used.

For instance If you increased the memory in the servers from 128GB to 192GB each (384GB in total) but only had the 4 Enterprise licences as shown above, you would only ever see an entitlement of 256GB of that 384GB. You would therefore need to purchase another 2 enterprise licences to allow the additional memory in the servers to be used.

So what do the different versions give me?

Below is a table showing what features are with each edition of vSphere 5

I Hope that has helped with any questions around licencing vSphere 5.
If you have any questions please post them below and i will be happy to help or please contact us.

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

NEWS : VMware Vsphere 5 now released on HP part numbers.

VMware from HP provides a comprehensive suite of virtualization solutions designed expressly for mission-critical enterprise computing.

HP offers a complete portfolio of VMware licences Server and Desktop Infrastructure Software.
VMware software from HP includes either a 1year or 3year 9x5 of unlimited support and subscription with uplifts to 24x7 and multiyear support for 3,4 or 5 years. With this support, customers receive installation, configuration and troubleshooting support. HP also offers VMware software bundled with HP Insight Control and the HP P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance software.

The VMware OEM portfolio from HP includes:

• All VMware vSphere 5 core server editions and related acceleration kits
• Upgrade licenses within the core server editions
• VMware vCenter management products including Site Recovery Manager (SRM), Lab Manager, AppSpeed, Chargeback, CapacityIQ
• vCloud products including vCloud Director, Request manager
• vShield products
• VMware View products
• VMware ThinApp products
• The VMware OEM portfolio from HP includes a 1- or 3-year 9x5 unlimited support and subscription services. Additional care pack services can be purchased separately with 24x7 or 3/4/5 year terms.

For more information (part numbers etc) then please go to the HP quickspecs

If you have a virtual server solution you wish to implement or would like help or more details, then please do not hesitate to contact the Solutions team.

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

NEWS : New Installation services from Westcoast

A couple of months ago (in this post) I mentioned that we have some exciting new services that were soon to be announced.
I am therefore pleased to announce a whole host of new Installation services that Westcoast are now offering, these include..

• Network installation and configuration,
• Server & Storage Deployment,
• Project Management,
• Site surveys,
• Capacity planning,
• Software Configuration,
• Rental

As always the Westcoast Solutions presales team are always happy to help you with your Server and Storage solution and now as we can offer the above services we can provide a full service suite to make your solution concept and implementation run more smoothly.

If you have a solution you wish to implement and would like details on the above services, then please do not hesitate to contact the Solutions team.

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

Video of the Week : HP 3PAR - The next generation of storage

Virtualization is transforming data centers. But this shift is also placing new demands on infrastructure that legacy storage platforms were never designed to handle.

The next generation of Tier 1 storage, HP 3PAR Utility Storage was built from the ground up to exceed the economic and operational requirements of even the most demanding and dynamic IT environments. HP 3PAR Utility Storage delivers 100% of the agility and efficiency demanded by the virtual data center and cloud computing. It does this through an innovative, purpose-built architecture that offers secure multitenancy, built-in thin processing capabilities, and unique autonomic management and storage tiering features.

Get the SAN infrastructure performance, scalability, and availability you need to transform your data center and enable virtual and cloud computing.



If you need help with a 3PAR storage solution then please contact us and we will provide a tailored solution to your customers needs.

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

Why its important to backup your data - UK Riots

We have all seen the riots in the streets and destruction of businesses around the UK's major city's this past week. Unfortunately as with any disaster man-made or natural, a few of these businesses will never recover due to lost data.

A study was done back in 2003 and it was found that the estimated cost of data loss in the US came to $18 billion and that only 57% of companies actually backed up their data. You can imagine that now in 2011 the cost of losing data would have gone up substantially UK included.

The UK does not really suffer from many natural disasters, however the most recent events proves that destruction of business's can come overnight from any circumstance, so doing regular backups or having a disaster recovery solution this day in age is imperative.

If you need help with developing a backup or disaster recovery solution for your customers then please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

New Solution team member - Paul Holliday Westcoast HP Storage BDM

I would like to announce a new member to the Westcoast Solutions Team - Paul Holliday.

Paul has extensive experience within distribution and reseller markets which make him the ideal candidate for Westcoast HP Storage business development manager.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome him to the team and wish him all the success for the future.

If you need any help with HP storage then please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

August 2011 - HP Server and Storage offers.

In order for you to have your own copy of this months offers, We can now offer them in a easy downloadable PDF for you.

Please click the image above to open the PDF.

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team

Hp Networking Offer - Buy a 24-port switch and get 8 extra ports for £1 - offer on the V1410, V1410G and V1810 Switch Series

Right now, some of HP Networking's best-value switches are better value than ever!

For a limited time, your customers can improve their network at the Edge with a 24-port switch, plus benefit from an extra 8-port switch from the same family for only £1 extra!

It's great news for small and growing business, for a network that's flexible, secure and reliable.
This offer is valid August 1st - September 30th 2011,
Please click here for more information
 
For more information on what we can do for you please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards

Technical ISS Solutions Team