Virtualization
If you’re not virtualizing you’re not unlocking the true value and potential of your machines. Virtualization makes IT organizations more flexible and more able to swiftly respond to changing business requirements. The old “one physical server, one function” is a dead philosophy. Virtualization lets one computer do the job of many computers, by sharing the resources of a single machine. Each virtual server believes it has full control of the underlying hardware, but instead many machines are running on the same powerful server. With today’s massive servers, filled with 100s of GBs of RAM and chips with 6,8,12 and more cores, it’s easy to carve up your servers into smaller units. Not only is it easy, it’s the absolute best way to take full advantage of your hardware. Most servers sit idle most of their life. Virtualization allows you to maximize and fully utilize your powerful hardware. In addition to energy savings and lower capital expenses due to more efficient use of your hardware resources, you get high availability of resources, better management, and improved disaster recovery when you build a virtual infrastructure.
Linux
More and more business are turning to Linux as the platform of the future. Whether they are big UNIX shops that have spent their lives around AIX, HP-UX and Solaris, or all Windows shops who’ve never seen a command prompt, Linux is coming and it’s here to stay. Often CIOs and CTOs are turning around and finding that they already have Linux in the environment and they need help managing it. Did you know that some of the most critical workloads in the world are already running Linux? From the New York Stock Exchange to Fortune 500 companies running SAP app tiers on Linux to the world’s largest supercomputers, to massive web 2.0 companies like Amazon, Google and Ebay, Linux powers the world’s most prominent companies.
Networking
At Bulldog Data we focus strongly on Cisco and Juniper networking. Often networking equipment is overlooked in the larger IT picture. People spend a significant capital on software and hardware and often assume that networking equipment is a simple plug and play affair. If your networking equipment isn’t set up right, you’re robbing your enterprise hardware of significant performance or creating single points of failure in an otherwise optimally planned network. More than ever networking is the most essential part of your network, especially with the rise of virtualization and SAN technology. Our Cisco Certified engineers believe strongly in crafting a powerful, manageable network that acts as the backbone of your storage and infrastructure.
Storage
With today’s highly virtualized environments, storage has become the backbone of most data centers. Whereas in the past it was primarily the domain of databases, file and archiving, now it’s become the centerpiece of virtual machines with radical implications for performance. More than ever IT admins are finding a sudden need to become storage experts. Maximizing the performance of virtual machines has become a must have skill for any IT team. Our experts can help. We specialize in Nimbus, EqualLogic, EMC, and Netapp solutions. We also have a strong history of building our own custom designed NAS arrays utilizing the most cutting edge SSD drives and RAID cards working in concert to deliver incredible performance for demanding, high traffic applications.
Backup and Archiving
Without a good backup and disaster recovery plan your business is literally playing with fire. It’s never a question of if data will be destroyed, it’s a question of when. But backup solutions go well beyond simply recovering lost or corrupted date. It requires a well thought out solution that takes into account recovery speed, down time and business continuity, especially during crisis periods.
VoIP
At Bulldog Data we stand firmly behind one VoIP solution and one solution only: Cisco. We’ll help you build a pure Cisco solution that’s scalable, manageable and able to deliver the feature set and the stability you need to meet your SLAs and keep your business running smoothly. For SMB’s you won’t find a better, more robust, more extensible solution than the Cisco Smart Business Communication System. This is a complete system in a box. This is the way it should be.
Next Gen Firewalls
Today’s firewalls don’t do much better at protecting networks than locked doors do at protecting against car thieves. The problem is that you’re not going to be attacked on the ports your traditional firewall block. The ports you have exposed right now, https, http, ssh, smtp, these are enough for today’s sophisticated hackers to break through. In addition, your networks are saturated with threats from malware, viruses and external applications that you have no control over. Unfortunately, traditional “port blocking” firewalls can only classify traffic based only on ports and protocols – not on applications. As a result, they are a completely ineffective security solution to manage the risks and rewards of today’s Internet applications across the enterprise.
