Managed Services

As CTO of Managed Services it is my privilege at Lightbound to have the opportunity to leverage shared storage and virtual server technologies for our customers.  This will empower Lightbound and its customers to create highly efficient and cost-effective solutions in the areas of storage and server consolidation, data disaster recovery and business continuity, small business server hosting, and off-site data backup services, to name a few.

I have been administering and managing network operations in Indiana for 15 years, prior to Lightbound serving as Network Operations Manager for 8 years at The ILM Group. While with The ILM Group, our team virtualized and consolidated 65 physical windows servers to 10 vmware ESX servers across two sites.  This led to the realization of real world cost savings.

Now, my goal is to leverage these and other technologies to provide value-added cost-effective and secure consolidation and managed services solutions to Lightbound customers!

Thanks for tuning in.

Sam Newberry

Cloud services providers offer hosted virtual servers and they can also offer Storage as a Service. At LightBound we offer both.  A customer can opt only for storage as a service, and to this can add server virtualization services.  There are two technologies we leverage to maximize cost savings, which we in turn pass on to the customer - thin provisioning and tiered storage.

Definition: A LUN (Logical Unit Number) is a single storage unit on a SAN (Storage Area Network), mapped to a server which...Read More »

One of the most important aspects of Cloud Services that will greatly contribute to its market adoption and growth is the removal of the complexities.  Companies of all shapes and sizes, most not offering a technical product or service, are simply not interested in Storage Area Network Solutions, Hosted Virtual Servers, or Virtual Storage.  What they're interested in is bringing their products and services to market in the simplest most seamless means possible.  Enterprises have always cringed...Read More »

Historically, ergo back in the days of physical servers, I often commented that Disaster Recovery in preparation of Business Continuity is much like a dog chasing its tail.  Server Collocation was often employed to have backup servers at a remote location.  Well, congratulations - you've just doubled your workload, not to mention increases your costs, possibly more than two-fold.  So here's where I say welcome virtualization services and cloud services!  Storage Area Network Solutions (SAN's)...Read More »

Another reason Cloud Services is so attractive is that it leverages Server Virtualization Services and Virtual Network Services.  The concept is simple: In physical legacy infrastructures the hardware is available only to or what I like to call "married to" the software.  In a virtual environment utilizing shared storage, servers (or hosts) are pooled together and the software is virtually mapped to the pool of virtual storage and server hosts.  If a host is lost, no problem, the virtualization...Read More »

In my previous blog, I wrote of the fact that Cloud Services will go commodity, and so LightBound is striving to set itself apart with added value beyond the base infrastructure offering.  This is a two factor approach, one is the human element and the other is technical.  In this blog I'll write of the human element and in a subsequent blog I'll write of the technical.  And don't write off these human factors.  We all know the pain attributed to hours of hold music followed by a conversation... Read More »

The answer to why we need and want Cloud Services and Storage Area Network Solutions is simple - money.  Ok, there are a few more reasons, but I'll start with cost savings.  Businesses don't generate their own electricity to produce their products and services (except the electric companies). Why? Because due to economies of scale it's much more cost effective to buy the electricity we need from the electric company.  This same economies of scale applies to shared storage and server...Read More »

Infrastructure as a Service is definitely going to become a commodity offering and with economies of scale, virtual network services will be a high volume, low margin product.  Cloud Services providers are already offering Hosted Virtual Server, Storage Area Network Solutions, Off Site Data Backup Services, and even Storage as a Service combined with Server Collocation for pennies on the dollar compared to legacy physical network and server infrastructures.  That being said, the...Read More »

Cloud Services is not a new idea.  In fact, it's been around for more than thirty years.  Remember mainframe? Mainframe was effectively a virtualization service, using the old "green screen" as the user interface.  With the advent of Windows and other pioneering operating systems and applications, users wanted a more feature rich and aesthetically pleasing operating environment. And this amongst other reasons, caused a shift in the late eighties/early nineties to decentralize the mainframe,...Read More »

Cloud Computing and Cloud Services represent one of the most significant shifts in information technology likely for many of us to see in our lifetimes. Embracing virtualization services, your enterprise's computing requirements being provided as a utility has great potential, promising innovations we cannot yet imagine.  With this great potential, however comes great responsibility. (Thanks Aunt May)  For starters, let’s talk about privacy.  Here are some tips for considering cloud computing...Read More »

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LightBound's goal in offering Cloud Services to its customers is simple.  Maintain the same level of useability and security, while adding the benefits associated with virtualization services such as high availability, scalability and flexibility with strong disaster recovery and business continuity mechanisms.  LightBound is able to offer cloud services including storage as a service, network shared storage, and server virtualization services.  For migration and hybrid solutions we can...Read More »

Defining Cloud Services:

• Public Cloud (cont.): There are many, many considerations and risks associated with public cloud which must be mitigated.  Instead of attempting to address every risk, I will provide some questions to be asked whenver one is consiering cloud services.

1. Where is the data?
2. Who owns the data?
3. Is the data backed up?
4. Can the data be extracted?
5. Are the data and servers volatile?
6. Who has access to the data and servers?

In my next blog I will answer these questions as applicable...Read More »

So, what is cloud services?  Plainly stated, cloud services is defined as "consumer and business products, services and solutions that are delivered and consumed in real-time over the Internet."  What does that tell us about virtualization services?  Nothing.  in fact, you don't need virtualization services to provide cloud services, but they sure make it easier.  Again, virtualization services is a function of cloud computing, which enables cloud services.

So next, I will start work on the...Read More »

In part one I identified the three types of cloud services: public, private, and hybrid.  So what are the differences?  Well, again all three offer virtual network services such as storage as a service, server virtualization services, and off site data backup service, among many other services.  So before I can talk about the differences, I have to talk about their similar roots.  Referred to as "Cloud Computing", this commonality between the different types of cloud services is the...Read More »

Storage Area Network solutions come in many shapes and sizes, and with the advent of virtual storage, brings about a host of new capabilities which cater well to server virtualization.  LightBound offers a shared storage server platform that sets it apart from its competition.  Our storage as a service provides all the high performance, scalability, and dependability of the enterprise SAN at a low monthly cost.  Bundled with LightBound's virtualization services, medium and small business server...Read More »

Not all Cloud Services are the same.  There are some stark differences between one provider's virtual network services and another.  At a high level, there are three commonly accepted cloud service types: Public Cloud, Private Cloud, and Hybrid Cloud.  All three offer virtual network services such as storage as a service, server virtualization services, and off site data backup service.  In part two I will discuss this commonality and what Cloud Computing is and how it is different than Cloud...Read More »

Defining cloud services:

• Private Cloud:  Cloud services operated solely for one organization.  These may be managed by the organization directly or by a virtual service provider and may exist off-premise or on-premise.  Considerations for private cloud are while this type of service yields minimal risk, it may not provide the scalability and agility of public cloud services.

• Public Cloud:  Cloud services made available to the general public.  Virtual storage and hosted virtual server(s) are owned...

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