Remote desktop protocol (RDP) threats are now a major blind spot for enterprises globally, with threat actors pouncing on exposed servers.

That's according to Forescout Vedere Labs, which spotted 1.8 million RDP and 1.6 million virtual network computing (VNC) servers exposed on the internet – and many of those are running old versions of Windows.

Forecourt said that third-party access is essential for businesses across many industries, be it for hybrid work or remote monitoring and maintenance.

"This is especially true in critical infrastructure sectors with mission-critical remote sites, including utilities, transportation, and oil and gas," the company said in a blog post.

Remote access has traditionally been managed by VPNs or RDP and VNCs. These approaches were “designed to extend networks”, researchers noted, but not to control interactions, which is increasing attack surfaces.

Indeed, such systems often lack the necessary authentication and authorization controls that organizations require to keep secure – and once inside, attackers gain "broad, persistent" access.

Millions of servers exposed

The researchers used device-search site Shodan to look for RDP and VNC servers, finding millions exposed on the internet, most of which are in China and the US.

However, Forecourt noted that's possibly because some of the spotted systems are actually honeypots, admitting not all of the remainder will provide access to an enterprise network.

"After excluding them, we identified 91,000 exposed RDP servers and 29,000 exposed VNC servers that could be categorized by industry," the researchers noted.

More than four-in-ten exposed RDP servers are running Windows 10, while a further 18% are on end-of-life Windows versions, the researchers noted.

The study found that 19,000 of the exposed RDP servers were vulnerable to a single exploit known as BlueKeep that was discovered seven years ago.

Similarly, many of the exposed VNC servers had authentication disabled, meaning anyone could interact with the applications presented by the device.

The post noted that these exposed remote-access assets are at left "open to compromise by threat actors to perform a range of activities, such as defacing systems, disrupting processes, wiping data, or moving laterally into the wider network."

What's the risk?

When it comes to RDPs, 32% of the exposed servers were in retail, followed by services at 23%. For VNCs, 28% of the exposed servers were in education, followed by 22% in services.

However, Forecourt noted: "Exposure volume alone does not define risk. Different sectors face different operational realities."

Indeed, researchers noted that transportation environments are complex because of multi-vendor access requirements, while manufacturing is an attractive ransomware target and has seen previous RDP-based attacks.

Water and other utilities may have limited budgets and are frequently targeted by hacktivists.

Forescout said that mitigating these risks requires taking a different approach to remote access, treating it as a controlled operational workflow via secure remote access systems for more security and control as well as accountability.

"Access should be governed with the same rigor as procedures on the plant floor," the company added.

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With hybrid working the norm, the need to remotely access both PCs and servers is becoming ever more common. Few home workers have the necessary skills to diagnose and remedy their own problems, and enterprise support departments frequently lack the resources they'd need to visit them on-site. In such instances, remote control or monitoring can bridge the divide.

But it's not only in enterprises where remote control software has an important role to play. Single board computers, whether Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or otherwise, are becoming more capable by the month, with many headless devices now running full GUI-based operating systems. Enabling remote control allows them to be administered from a desktop, either on the same network or thousands of miles away. Remote intervention can likewise be a demonstration platform, allowing trainers to perform steps on a delegate's machine while that delegate sits and watches – and home workers can use it to access resources on an office PC.

It's fortunate, then, that this is an area well served by a wide range of client/server pairings. Many are entirely free to use, and several of those that don't offer complimentary tiers for a capped number of enrolled machines. Before we pick out five of the best, here's what you need to consider when choosing the right free remote control software for your business.

Best free remote desktop software

How many machines do you need to control?

Remote control software uses a client-server model; a small application on the remote host grants access to a matching client utility on your local machine. It doesn't matter when you have just one or a hundred remote machines to administer: the software at either end of the link will often be the same. The differentiator, then, is your subscription, which will usually determine not only which features are unlocked, but how many computers can be enrolled through a single account.

Enrolling a machine makes it easy to find on the network – or, if it's not on site, across the wider Internet. That way, if its IP address changes, you won't need to look it up on a DHCP table. Instead, it will continue to appear in the list of machines tied to your account, so you can connect to it with a couple of clicks and a password or a key pair.

It isn't always necessary to enrol a machine at all. Some options, like Chrome Remote Desktop and AnyViewer, let you set up a temporary connection using a displayed code. Likewise, where the operating system on your guest machine has native VNC support (or similar), and the host machine is running a compatible server, you may be able to connect using the host's LAN or remote hostname without resorting to third-party tools. Often, such connections are enabled within the operating system itself.

However, while temporary or ad-hoc connections of this sort are generally suitable for home users with a familiar LAN topography, they are less suited to business use, where the network under management will usually be more complex and widely distributed. At this point, the number of machines you can enrol on your free account takes on greater relevance.

Do you need to transfer files?

File transfer is a premium feature for some remote control platforms. Others don't offer it at all. If you need to move files between devices, therefore, either select a platform that offers this, or make alternative arrangements, like cloud transfer, local network sharing, or SFTP.

Among our selection, AnyViewer is one of the most flexible when it comes to file transfers, with this feature unlocked on the free tier when you register an account. NoMachine also has a very clear implementation, allowing for two-way drag-and-drop, rather than managing file transfers through a dialog.

Would Secure Shell do the job?

Full remote control can be overkill for some jobs – in particular if the task at hand can be accomplished at the remote command line. Much of what you may want to do on a Linux machine or server, for example, can be more quickly achieved using secure shell (SSH), which you can access at the command prompt in Windows, macOS, or Linux.

The latest builds of Windows 10 and Windows 11 also include a built-in SSH server, extending the technology beyond its traditional domain. It should be noted, however, that at the time of writing the server element remains a 'preview feature' (see SSH in Windows Terminal).

Best free remote desktop software 2025

AnyViewer

App-based remote control client and server

• Platform(s): Windows, Mac, iOS, Android

REASONS TO BUY

• Easy setup
• Quickfire controls
• Built-in chat system

REASONS TO AVOID

• Some features only for paid tiers

If you just want to make an ad-hoc connection, setup is refreshingly simple: install the AnyViewer app on both the local and remote machines, and type the server's on-screen code into the client window. It couldn't be any easier – unless you want to transfer files between your devices, in which case you'll need to set up an account. This is free, and it simultaneously registers your first two devices (the server and client). You can add one further machine for free before you'll need to upgrade. Once registered, connections to your remote machine are persistent. So, you can easily reconnect in the future, even if they've moved to different networks, and you'll no longer need to type in the on-screen code. This latter point is particularly important, as it means you can access an unattended machine, without needing someone in the vicinity to wake it up and read you the code over the phone.

The viewer window has a series of handy buttons, covering not only the aforementioned file sharing, but direct access to the remote command prompt and task manager, quick shut down and restart, and resolution settings. If the host machine's native resolution is larger than the guest machine's display, it can be downscaled, or you can remotely shrink it. You also have control over the client's refresh rate, colour mode (mono is an option), and image quality.

Finally, there's a built-in chat system, allowing operators at either end of the connection to send messages. A feature like this is particularly useful when using remote access to diagnose problems or for training. It's also neatly implemented, with an option to shrink the chat window to a tab on the edge of the host machine's screen so it keeps out of the way.

Chrome Remote Desktop

Browser and plug in-based

SPECIFICATIONS

• Platform(s): Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS

REASONS TO BUY

• Simple setup
• Tight security controls

REASONS TO AVOID

• No file sharing

You can set up Chrome Remote Desktop for your own use – with a persistent link – or to give temporary access to a remote support agent. Do the latter and they'll have limited time to access your machine and, once they log off or you close your browser, they'll not be able to return without explicit re-authorisation from yourself.

It may well have one of the simplest setups going. The most important element is a browser that supports WebRTC at either end of the connection, and you'll also need to install the Chrome Remote Desktop extension on the host machine. Once you've done that and logged in to your Google Account on both machines, point both browsers at remotedesktop.google.com to get started.

To grant third-party temporary access, click Remote Support in the sidebar, followed by Generate Code, and give the number that appears to whoever needs access (you if you're at the remote machine). Once a number has been generated, it remains valid for five minutes; if it's not used in this time, it expires and you'll need to start the process again. Likewise, each code is single use. So, if you're granted access to a remote machine this way, and the connection is cut, whether deliberately or by accident, it won't work for a second time: a new code must be issued.

If you're setting up a machine for your own use, you needn't issue a number every time. Instead, click Remote Access in the sidebar, and every machine registered to your account will appear. Click that device, enter the PIN you specified during set-up, and the link is established. You don't need to know where that machine is on the LAN or Internet: Chrome Remote Desktop takes care of that for you.

While it lacks file sharing, there are ways around that, like using the remote connection to upload a file to cloud storage from the remote machine, or send it by email. All in all, this is a lightweight, easy-to-use, and very elegant solution.

NoMachine

App-based remote control client and server

SPECIFICATIONS

• Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, ARM

REASONS TO BUY

• Built-in whiteboard, screen recording and screen grabbing, and a chat tool.

REASONS TO AVOID

• No remote server access on the free tier

NoMachine is unusual in having started as a Linux application that expanded to cover Windows and macOS machines. It's free for personal use with a cap of one concurrent connection. The client application, which is also available for Android and iOS mobile devices, will search your LAN for machines running NoMachine server, saving you the need to manually connect or know their IP address in advance. Connections are secured using the remote machine's regular login credentials or you can send a connection request from the client to be actioned on the server – assuming someone is sitting in front of it.

Once connected, you can interact with the remote machine as if you were sitting in front of it, scale the viewer window, and stream audio and video – with support for H264. There's a built-in whiteboard, screen recording and screen grabbing, and a chat tool. The latter could come in handy if you're connecting to remotely diagnose problems with the machine's regular user sitting at the keyboard, or for remote training.

NoMachine supports wake-on-LAN, USB device forwarding, and drag and drop file transfers in both directions. All traffic is encrypted. What you don't get if you're using the free tier – aside from support, which isn't surprising – is remote server administration and management, SSH support, and desktop access via the browser, among some other business-focused features. However, we think most home users will be able to manage without these, making NoMachine an excellent option for accessing rarely touched machines, like music and file servers.

Raspberry Pi Connect

Browser-based remote control

SPECIFICATIONS

• Platform(s): Raspberry Pi (ARM)

REASONS TO BUY

• Well-documented setup process

REASONS TO AVOID

• Few platform options

Raspberry Pi OS used to include a free non-commercial licence for RealVNC, but that stopped working for a while with Raspberry Pi's move to the Wayland display server in October 2024. Fortunately, a solution had been rolled out almost six months earlier, in the form of Raspberry Pi Connect – a browser-based remote access tool through which you can register a whole fleet of single board computers to use headless, both on your own network and beyond. The Connect server works on Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm and later.

Setup takes place at the terminal prompt, but don't let that put you off: it's well thought-out (and well documented) and requires just a couple of commands: update your distribution, install Connect, and turn it on. If you're using the GUI, you can activate it via the menu bar and, when it's up and running, you can give your device a unique name, at which point it will be registered to your Raspberry Pi account.

Now, visit connect.raspberrypi.com from your local machine and, so long as you're logged in to the same account, you'll see your registered Pi devices and can connect to either the GUI or remote shell (you can disable either or both of these from the host machine). If you're using the GUI, you can copy from or paste to the remote clipboard using buttons at the top of the browser window. If you want to transfer files, you'll need to do it using the remote shell.

When using devices where every byte and processor cycle count, a native solution like this is very welcome. It also does much to simplify the process of administering devices with very specific use cases, which may be deployed in awkward or otherwise inaccessible locations.

RealVNC Lite

App-based server and client remote control

SPECIFICATIONS

• Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Linux, Raspberry Pi (ARM)

REASONS TO BUY

• Easy to use

REASONS TO AVOID

• No file sharing function

While RealVNC is primarily a commercial offering, it has a free ('lite') plan allowing non-commercial remote access to personal devices. You can register up to three Windows, macOS, or Linux devices and access them one at a time.

You'll need to install RealVNC Server on your host machine, and RealVNC Viewer on the remote guest. With both logged in to the same RealVNC account, the Viewer will show your registered machines, whether they're on the same LAN or remote, making sign-in a one-click process, even if the remote machine has been issued with a fresh IP address.

You can set encryption to 128- or 256-bit, and choose from a variety of credential options, including your host machine's user password or a dedicated VNC password (in our tests, we chose the latter). When the link is live, there's a neat control bar at the top of the client window that drops down when you hover over the border. This contains quick links to settings and can send a ctrl-alt-del combo, but some other options on the bar, like file transfer, were disabled on our Lite account.

As with Chrome Remote Desktop, you could get around this limitation by copying files to a cloud drive within the remote window, or sending them by email from the remote email client. However, also bear in mind that AnyViewer allows for transfers between machine to any user with a free account, while also offering the same three-machine cap as RealVNC Lite.

How to choose the best free remote desktop software for you

The first thing to remember when selecting one of these pieces of software is that many of them tend to be fairly similar and simple. This could mean that not all of the free remote desktop programs are able to support multiple users. If this is a dealbreaker for you, it could be worth taking a look at packages like TightVNC or Microsoft Remote Desktop.

Security is an important feature to take into account, with AnyDesk excelling particularly well at it. Always take into account which operating system, or systems, you’ll need to deploy it on and make sure that the program is compatible.

It’s useful to not forget that these programs are available for free. This means they probably won’t contain all the features you need and might not be fancy. We recommend trying out some of the programs we’ve covered and see which one works the best for you.

Interested in learning more about remote desktop technology and platforms? Then take a look at our variety of content on the topic, including how to use Microsoft Remote Desktop, what TeamViewer offers, learning about XRDP, and how to use Microsoft Remote Desktop.

While the darkest days of lockdown are hopefully behind us, many businesses plan to continue supporting work from home. The ad-hoc approach won’t do as a long-term solution, though; virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) services provide a secure and manageable alternative.

It’s a market with plenty of mature products to choose from, but Parallels Remote Application Server 18 (RAS) stands out with a wealth of features aimed at improving life for both workers and administrators. The platform takes care of all VDI and application delivery services, with support for FSLogix Profile Containers for easier user configuration, and the whole thing integrates with Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), so it can be managed from a single console.

Even better, users can keep the benefit of working on their preferred hardware: Parallels provides clients for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and Chrome OS, and there’s even an HTML5 client for accessing services using a compliant browser.

If you want to test-drive RAS, it’s available as a free 30-day trial, and can be hosted either locally or on AWS or Azure. We tested using Azure and found deployment admirably swift: the setup procedure created a new Windows Server 2019 VM in the cloud for us, and pre-loaded all necessary components and services, such as Azure Active Directory (AD) for role-based access control.

The desktop console app provides access to management services; here you’ll find wizards for adding Windows Remote Desktop session hosts to your site, publishing applications and sending email invitations to users, which include client download and login instructions. Parallels is developing a web-based portal too – it’s a work in progress right now, but as more features are migrated across, it’s intended to eventually become the primary management tool.

Publishing apps is simple. You just need to choose which servers to publish from, then pick the desired apps from the list presented. RAS defaults to permitting app access to everyone, but a filtering option lets you lock this down to specific AD groups or users.

From the Farm tab you can view all sites, deploy Azure WVD providers and add other VDI hosts, with support for all popular hypervisors. You can keep close tabs on site performance too, with graphs showing server CPU, memory and storage utilisation. To help further optimise performance, the new UX Evaluator and Advanced Session Details features provide over 25 metrics for monitoring user experience, including time between a user loading a resource and the response, connection quality and latency. You can set alerts and thresholds to warn of any issues, and export data for further analysis.

From the user’s point of view, getting started with RAS is almost effortless. Once they’ve installed the client they just need to authenticate: RAS supports multifactor, SAML SSO or smart card authentication, and policies with custom settings can be pushed to users and groups. The RAS Windows client integrates with the standard WVD client, so users can run Windows virtual desktop sessions and access published apps from the same console. We found we could start apps directly from the client or pin shortcuts conveniently to our local desktop, and open them by either double-clicking or dropping local or remote files onto them.

We also appreciated that during Windows virtual desktop sessions our local drives were redirected for easy access from within the session, and we could create remote shared folders for everyone to use. This latest release of RAS includes a new accelerated file retrieval feature for Windows and macOS, which uses caching on redirected drives to improve copy performance.

Parallels RAS 18 is a great choice for businesses transitioning to hybrid working. It’s easy to set up, with fully centralised management and strong access security. Workers, meanwhile, get seamless access to the apps they need on the devices of their choosing – and costs can be easily managed, as pricing is based solely on the number of concurrent users.

If the COVID crisis gave the PC industry a boost, with companies rushing to get computers to homeworkers, Windows 365 could pop any air left lingering in that balloon. Pitched exclusively at businesses, Windows 365 is designed to let employees stream a full Windows desktop from whatever hardware they have to hand – an old desktop PC, a MacBook, even an iPad.

In theory, it eradicates the need to equip homeworkers with company hardware, or even office workers with new computers. They can run a company-supplied Windows desktop on whatever hardware they have to hand, without the inherent security risk of doing business on personal hardware. But how well does it work in practice? We’ve spun up a Windows 365 instance to find out.

Windows 365 review: Specs and pricing

The first thing to state is that Microsoft has made Windows 365 licensing typically complex. There’s a vast matrix of plans available, starting from £20.50 per month for a 1 virtual CPU (vCPU) package with only 2GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, right through to the 8 vCPU, 32GB of RAM and 512GB storage tier that costs an accountant-wobbling £138 per month. There are, however, various discounts available for Windows Hybrid and Enterprise customers.

Microsoft supplied us with a test account with a mid-range spec of 2 vCPU, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage – a package priced at £38.30 exc VAT per month. That’s plenty enough to keep Office apps ticking along nicely, although the Cinebench benchmarks we ran on our virtual system revealed the vCPU (listed as a 2.6GHz Intel Xeon Platinum 8272CL) won’t make the Earth move. It’s about a third as powerful as an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 running at 1.6GHz, for instance.

The performance of our test Windows 365 PC (currently running Windows 10 Enterprise) was mixed and dependent on how you accessed the virtual machine. You can jump into your Windows session via pretty much any modern web browser, but the experience is much smoother and more feature-packed if you use the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, which is available for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices.

Running Windows 365 in the Vivaldi browser on our MacBook Pro, for instance, worked okay, with the Windows desktop automatically resizing to the shape and size of the browser window. But the MacBook’s webcam wasn’t recognised when we attempted a Google Meet, and pressing print on a Word document resulted in nothing more than a PDF being made available to download.

Running that same instance using the Microsoft Remote Desktop app made all those problems melt away: the printer connected to our home-office Wi-Fi network was automatically recognised, the webcam kicked in, and as an added bonus the Windows desktop was now spread across both our external monitor and attached laptop, rather than merely being confined to a browser window.

Windows 365 review: Performance

So with Windows 365 running across your screens as if it were installed locally, does it have the performance of a local installation? Can you even tell you’re using a virtual cloud-hosted instance in day-to-day use?

Yes, you can. It’s important to state here that the test account Microsoft provided us with is hosted in the US, which introduces unwanted latency. Customers who buy Windows 365 in the UK will have an instance hosted in the UK, which should eliminate some of the lag. However, having spoken with customers who’ve purchased an instance over here, their experience is similar to ours – the micro-lag between typing a letter and it appearing on screen in your Word doc, say, is noticeable. You never truly get the sense that you’re working on a local machine.

The lag is most noticeable in latency-critical apps such as videoconferencing or video streaming. When using Google Meet, for instance, the video image of yourself has an annoying half-second lag that gives conversations with others that tedious ‘satellite-delay’ feel. Videos streamed from YouTube were sometimes out of lip-sync. Again, that latency may be reduced on a UK-hosted instance, but we’d be cautious about using Windows 365 for roles that required a lot of videoconferencing, for instance.

That’s not to say the speed of the connection in Microsoft’s data centre is poor – far from it. Running an internet speed test on our Windows desktop showed download speeds of around 500Mbits/sec and uploads hitting a ridiculous 2,670Mbits/sec. Downloading a 2GB file to our virtual desktop took just under a minute, which is much faster than many home connections in the UK would ever be capable of. If an employee’s job involves lots of big file transfers, this set-up could prove much more efficient than a local machine, where the bottleneck is the speed of their broadband connection. (Watch out for the data caps on Windows 365, mind.)

Windows 365 review: Device compatibility

Microsoft should also be applauded for making it easier for employees to work on any device they choose. Installing the Microsoft Remote Desktop app on an iPad Pro worked superbly – it’s the best use case we’ve found yet for the mouse support that Apple introduced into iPad OS in 2020. Could you realistically use an iPad Pro as a portable Windows laptop with Windows 365? Absolutely, especially when travelling (provided you can get a fast enough broadband connection, of course).

Installing Microsoft Remote Desktop on a Chromebook was a similar story, thanks to its support for Android apps. Chromebooks and iPads are the types of devices employees are most likely to have at home these days. Windows 365 could not only make BYOD much more viable than ever, it could also transform the type of devices companies supply to their employees.

Windows 365 review: Verdict

Windows 365 isn’t going to be the answer for everyone. There’s not a sniff of graphics grunt for power users, for example, and that slightly laggy experience may irritate anyone whose work requires constant split-second accuracy. Calculating the TCO with so many tariffs on offer will also give IT managers sleepless nights.

All that said, Microsoft has offered us a glimpse at what is arguably the future of computing and it has many attractions – not least a much-reduced hardware management headache for companies with lots of remote employees. Who’d have thought the biggest threat to the hegemony of Windows hardware in businesses would have emerged from Microsoft itself?

With end users either needing or desiring the freedom to work from anywhere, on any device, organisations must find a way to handle the challenges that come with supporting this move.

Today, enterprises can affordable leverage flash storage, new data centre architectural options, and hybrid cloud to transform and improve the methods by which end users access and consume enterprise resources. While there are still costs and security risks to consider, organisations are in a much better position today than ten years ago to support their remote workforces.

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Connection broker software vendor Virtual Cable has signed a technology partnership with remote access software company Glyptodon that’ll enable users to log onto virtual desktop and application sessions without a VPN.

Virtual Cable offers software that enables administrators to manage and provision virtual desktops and applications. Glyptodon offers open source software that lets users log into remote sessions without a VPN. The two companies developed an extension that integrates the two, enabling VPN-free remote desktop sessions for Virtual Cable users.

Available as a subscription, Virtual Cable's UDS Enterprise software enables companies to set up virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) services quickly, supporting Windows and Linux virtual desktops. Administrators can manage multiple desktops from a single dashboard, and it includes support for user access management via several authentication systems. Virtual Cable is especially popular with higher education and public administration customers.

Glyptodon's solution, called Glyptodon Enterprise, is a commercially supported version of Apache's Guacamole open source remote access software that provides browser-based access to remote desktops. The developers of the original Guacamole software formed Glyptodon and offer their implementation of the open source product free for personal use.

The companies expect a wave of demand for easily accessible remote desktop services due to the continued work-from-home trend during the pandemic. "With so many companies planning to continue remote work in some form after the pandemic, enterprises need simple, secure solutions that can scale quickly and affordably," said Glyptodon's CEO Mike Jumper.

VPNs have concerned some IT decision-makers, who worry about the security risk and overhead cost of running multiple devices on their premises.

Lenovo and Nutanix have announced a new solution to help businesses address the growing demands of a remote workforce.

Called Lenovo TruScale for Hosted Desktops with Nutanix, the new solution combines the traditional, on-premises infrastructure with the simplicity and benefits of the cloud.

“Many organizations are modernizing their IT infrastructures to support the growing demands remote work continues to place on their IT systems,” said Kirk Skaugen, executive vice president of Lenovo Group.

“We are seeing a shift where customers are more interested in as-a-service models to help offset the investment associated with upgrading their IT systems quickly. Lenovo’s collaboration with Nutanix provides customers with a more secure, Hosted Desktop as-a-service solution that is easy to secure, deploy and manage with minimal up-front costs.”

A fully managed IT solution, the Lenovo-Nutanix Hosted Desktops service also includes devices, data center infrastructure, and management tools for a reduced up-front investment. Customers may choose to work with Lenovo’s services group to design their migration strategy, added Lenovo. What's more, Lenovo Managed Services makes infrastructure management convenient around the clock, saving IT administrators’ time.

Most notably, Lenovo TruScale for Hosted Desktops with Nutanix reduces operational costs by co-locating compute, storage, and virtualization onto one cluster. Built on ThinkAgile HX systems and Nutanix cloud platform software, the service can tackle increased workload and scale for maximum flexibility.

Fraser Health Authority was an early adopter of the Lenovo-Nutanix hosted desktop solution in response to COVID-19. Through using this service, the Fraser Health Authority raised its IT capabilities to boost patient care during a statewide lockdown.

“We see that remote connectivity is more than just a short-term response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s part of our long-term strategy to ensure we can deliver vital health services no matter what,” said Wesley Kampff, portfolio manager at Fraser Health Authority.

“To streamline maintenance and support, our preference was to engage a single vendor to deliver the workstations and data center solutions. We were confident that replacing our traditional three-tier architecture with the cutting-edge ThinkAgile HX hyperconverged platform, with Nutanix, would offer the performance, availability and scalability we wanted,” added Kampff.

After sixteen major releases, you might think there’s not much left to be added to Parallels Desktop – and for the vast majority of Mac users who are still using Intel CPUs, there isn’t. For them, this update to the popular virtualisation software tidies up a few bugs and adds support for the latest version of the Linux kernel, but that’s largely it. Overall it’s not even consequential enough to warrant a full ticking up of the version number.

Yet arguably, this is the most significant release of Parallels Desktop since it first appeared in 2006. Just as version one unlocked the potential of Apple’s then-recent switch to the Intel architecture, this one breaks new ground by allowing you to install and run Windows 10 on Apple Silicon.

It’s an enticing prospect, but not quite as straightforward as it sounds. It would be a huge technical challenge to get a standard x86 build of Windows 10 running on Apple’s ARM-based M1 chip, and Parallels doesn’t attempt it. Rather, the focus is on Microsoft’s own port of Windows 10 for ARM processors. With Parallels Desktop, you can now run Windows on ARM (WoA) in a VM on the M1 platform – and since the OS itself includes an Intel translation layer, it opens the door to running a huge range of Windows apps on the latest Macs.

The catch is that while Parallels Desktop may be ready for WoA, the OS itself is still a work in progress. Early versions have trickled out on a handful of lightweight laptops – notably Microsoft’s own Surface Pro X – but the only way to get an installer for your Mac is via the free Windows Insider programme, which means you can expect beta-quality code with no guarantees of performance or stability.

Parallels Desktop 16.5 review: Setup

Virtualisation can be a complicated business, but Parallels makes it pretty painless. Once you’ve installed the Parallels Desktop app on an M1-powered Mac, it prompts you to pick a guest OS, with helpful links to ready-to-roll images for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Debian 10.7, Fedora Workstation 33-1.2, and Kali Linux 2021.1. This is a nice spread of options to have, but we doubt many people are really buying Parallels to run Linux, especially inside a host OS that’s already built on UNIX.

Happily, installing Windows is almost as easy. Microsoft provides the WoA installer in the form of a VHDX image file, which you can simply drag onto the Parallels window and boot to kick off the installation. There’s nothing to customise on the OS side; accept the default settings in Parallels and you’ll be looking at a Windows 10 desktop in no more than ten minutes.

Parallels Desktop 16.5 review: Compatibility and features

Once you’ve got past the thrill of seeing Windows boot up on your Mac desktop, the experience is pretty anticlimactic. WoA looks and feels exactly like regular Windows 10, and it works like it too: initial releases were limited to running 32-bit code, but that restriction is now gone, and we were able to install and use a whole stack of industry-standard apps and tools with zero fuss, including Chrome, Office, Photoshop, 7-Zip and Zoom. We’re not saying it necessarily makes sense to run these apps in Parallels, but they illustrate how broadly Windows on ARM can stand in for the x86 edition.

Anything in the Microsoft Store ought to work too, since WoA fully implements the UWP framework, and any other required resources should come bundled into the installation package. In fact, when we tried to set up the Dropbox client, the regular installer detected a platform error and smartly directed me to install the Store edition instead, which worked perfectly.

As usual with VMs, Windows appears as a desktop in a window, but with a click you can enable Parallels’ signature Coherence mode. This lets Windows applications float freely among your Mac windows, and puts their icons in the Dock alongside native apps. Your personal folders in Windows are mapped directly to their Mac equivalents, helping to smooth out cross-platform workflows, and you can even copy and paste text and images between Windows apps and Mac ones.

This being a virtual machine, you can also take snapshots of your Windows system whenever you like, and roll back to previous states at will. This could be useful if you just need to use Windows from time to time to accomplish a specific task, and don’t want to worry about unwanted cruft or malware accumulating over time.

Parallels Desktop 16.5 review: Hitches and hurdles

Parallels makes a good go of integrating Windows apps into the Mac environment, but some dissonance is unavoidable. For example, apps from different platforms have their window controls at opposite corners, and the modifier keys on the standard Mac keyboard are in a different order to Windows, which tends to mess with our brain. We don’t see that there’s a better solution, but it’s not ideal.

And while WoA works remarkably well with modern apps, older software is more hit and miss. For example, we normally use an ageing edition of MAGIX Sound Forge 11 for our everyday audio editing tasks; this works perfectly well on our “real” Windows 10 desktop, but it refused to install in WoA, complaining that a DLL couldn’t be registered. We tried to roll back further to version 9, but this demanded the .NET Framework 2.0, and our attempts to install it were rewarded only with error codes.

The connecting together of the Mac and Windows file systems can confuse some apps too. Macrium Reflect couldn’t handle the fact that our Desktop folder wasn’t located on a real hard disk and crashed at the very start of the installation. On that note, anything that requires bespoke hardware drivers is likely to struggle too.

This sort of thing matters, because one of the most common use cases for virtualisation is to keep alive legacy software that’s not supported on the new OS. It’s not at all surprising if apps from the XP or Windows 7 era don’t work on this whole new architecture, but it is a shame.

And don’t forget that the OS is, at present, an Insider release. This means it receives large, frequent updates, sometimes on a daily basis. It’s possible that new builds will progressively make more apps and devices work in WoA, but they may also unpredictably change and even break things.

Parallels Desktop 16.5 review: Performance

By default, Parallels Desktop allocates two of the M1’s eight processor cores to your virtual WoA machine, along with 3GB of RAM. You can raise it to a maximum of four CPU cores and 8GB of RAM – or higher if you’ve sprung for a Pro subscription – but doing so inevitably leaves fewer resources for macOS. However you slice it, it’s not exactly a recipe for peak performance.

On top of that, most of the programs you’re currently likely to want to run in Windows are going to have to go through Intel emulation, and this drags performance down enormously. We used Parallels Desktop to run our standard benchmark suite on WoA on an 8GB Mac Mini, and while we were pleased to see that the tools installed and ran without a hiccup, it was hard to be delighted about the eventual score of just 23 – a long way off the 223 achieved by the same hardware using ARM-native video tools in macOS. Even if you give Windows four cores to play with, performance only scales linearly to an overall score of 45.

Still, this doesn’t make WoA unusable at all. Performance is about on par with a lightweight Windows laptop from 2015, and while we wouldn’t want to do everything in that environment, it’s perfectly fine for the odd individual task. Since the Windows system itself is running natively on ARM, the whole caboodle feels more responsive than you’d expect anyway – and there’s surely scope to improve translation performance in future builds.

Parallels Desktop 16.5 review: Verdict

Barely six months after the M1 processor was unveiled to the world, Parallels Desktop 16.5 gives it a whole new dimension of potential. For that, it feels absurdly cheap, with the standard edition costing a flat £80. Alternatively, you can sign up for a rolling subscription, but at £70 per year it’s not an obviously great deal. As we’ve mentioned, there’s also a subscription-only Pro edition for £80 a year, which lets you virtualise up to 32 cores and 128GB of RAM as well as adding some advanced developer features, and a business edition at the same price which focuses on centralised deployment and management.

The fly in the ointment is WoA itself. It’s expressly a work-in-progress OS with unpredictable app compatibility – and so far Microsoft hasn’t made any real commitment to its future. In two years’ time it could be a thriving companion to the Intel build, or it could be an abandoned experiment.

For now, therefore, we can say only that Parallels Desktop 16.5 is an impressive proof of concept, and a fun and useful tool for tinkerers. Whether it becomes a true landmark release is down to Microsoft. Parallels deserves praise for what it’s put together, but we’d recommend you wait for the OS to at least reach a first stable public release before you invest in the idea of Windows on Apple Silicon.

Server and workstation vendor AMAX has announced support for Nvidia's professional-grade RTX A6000 GPU in its workstations.

The company, which aims its AceleMax workstations at artificial intelligence (AI), rendering and visualization work, will include the new Nvidia GPU in its lineup. Its systems are designed for use with software tools like Google's TensorFlow AI system for compute-intensive training workloads that are a key part of building AI software, and are also well-suited for scientific visualization work.

Announced in early October, The RTX A6000 is Nvidia's latest pro-grade GPU and is the successor to the RTX 8000 and 6000 Quadro units. It features over 10,000 CUDA cores and 48 GB of video RAM that’s expandable to 96 GB when connected to two GPUs. The new card comes with four DisplayPort connectors and is rated at 300 watts.

In October, Nvidia said the RTX A6000 would be available in mid-December.

The cards are based on Nvidia's new Ampere architecture, which is its first GPU design to feature a 7nm process. They feature Nvidia's third-generation Tensor Cores dubbed the Tensor Float 32, which provide up to five times the throughput and up to 20 times the performance of the existing Floating Point 32 data type.

It also features Nvidia's third-generation NVLink technology, which is a high-speed data exchange bus allowing multiple cards to work in concert. The new architecture's second-generation RT cores offer a performance boost for ray tracing, which is important in 3D animation.

This card represents a significant upgrade for AMAX, which currently uses NVIDIA's Quadro and GeForce cards in its workstations. The new Nvidia card will be available in the AceleMax DL-E110A, DL-E120A, and DL-E140A workstations, which feature AMD Ryzen AM4, Threadripper, and EPYC processors respectively.

AMAX will also support the new card in its Xeon-based DL-E440 unit. These workstations already support the Quadro and GeForce card families.

Customers will be able to fit a single A6000 in the DL-E110A, two in the DL0E120A, and four in the DL-E140A and DL-E440.

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There are three operating system instances running on my Mac – two of them are Windows 10. That noise you can hear is Steve Jobs spinning in his grave at 7,200rpm.

Why have I got two lots of Windows 10 on the MacBook? Because a Boot Camp installation and a virtual Windows 10 running in Parallels Desktop have different strengths and weaknesses, which make it worth the extra storage space sacrifice. And just to confuse matters further, you can get the best(ish) of both worlds and run your Boot Camp Windows installation using Parallels, without having to reboot the entire system.

Here, then, for anyone considering running Windows 10 on a Mac, is an explanation of the three different ways to run Windows and why you might, or might not, want to do each.

Boot Camp

Boot Camp is the Apple-endorsed way of getting Windows onto your Mac. You fire up the Boot Camp Assistant “app” from within macOS, point it at the Windows image you wish to install (which you must have previously downloaded), tell it how much disk space you want to afford the Windows partition, and let it do its thing.

Once it’s done, you’ll have a Mac that can dual-boot into either macOS or Windows – one or the other, not both at the same time, like you get with Parallels.

The key reason to do this is performance. Boot Camp Windows isn’t a virtual machine that’s running atop another OS: It has direct and exclusive access to the processor, RAM and graphics hardware while it’s running. If you’re planning to run intensive applications (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, CAD apps) or games, Boot Camp is the way to go. As much as Parallels tries hard to run the latest games, I’ve found it struggles to reach playable frame rates in Fortnite and GTA V, which run fine in Boot Camp on my 16in MacBook Pro. Boot Camp is also the way to go if you want to purely run Windows and don’t want anything to do with macOS.

Boot Camp does have drawbacks, though. The biggest is that the two OSes don’t play nicely. You can see the Boot Camp partition from within macOS and see its files listed, but you can’t open them. In Windows, you can’t even see the macOS partition without workarounds.

It’s not a complete deal breaker if you need to access files from either OS. You can store files on external storage or use a cloud service such as Dropbox or OneDrive to keep files synced between the two, but it’s awkward in a way that installing via Parallels is not.

Running Windows as a virtual machine in Parallels

There are many little Windows apps that don’t have direct macOS versions or equivalents. Paint.net and MP3 Skype Recorder to name but two. If you still want access to these and other Windows tools, without having to dive out of macOS and reboot into Windows every time you want to, say, record a Skype call, installing Windows 10 in Parallels Desktop is the way forward.

Like Boot Camp, Parallels handles the Windows installation for you – you don’t even have to have the image downloaded in advance. And although you will be asked how much disk space you want to afford the virtual Windows 10 installation, this is – unlike a Boot Camp partition – dynamic. If you need more storage, it can take it. If you find your Windows installation is gobbling too much space, you can “reclaim” it using Parallels’ control panel (provided you’ve got free disk space in the Windows virtual drive, that is).

Parallels can run in two main modes. You can choose full desktop mode, where the Windows desktop appears as a window or full screen within macOS. Or you can run Windows applications in what’s called Coherence mode, where the Windows apps are contained within their own window just like a native macOS app. The apps even get their own icon in the macOS Dock, the only difference being they are overlaid with the two red vertical lines of the Parallels logo to indicate they’re virtualised.

I have to say, Coherence mode is absolutely brilliant. The ability to mix and match apps, irrespective of which OS they’re coded for, is enormously useful. You even get access to the built-in Windows apps (a Windows app launcher is installed in the Dock, acting as a virtual Windows Start menu), so if you prefer the Windows Calendar to the macOS equivalent, you can run it without fuss.

Whether you’re running apps in full desktop or Coherence mode, one huge advantage of Parallels over Boot Camp is that you can just drag and drop files between them. If, for example, you have an image saved in your macOS folders that you want to edit in Paint.net, you simply drag and drop it from Finder into the application. Likewise, Windows apps have full read/write access to the Mac partition, so you can use their File | Open dialogs to open and save files. The Mac disks appear as Network Locations from within Windows, as if they are a NAS drive.

The convenience doesn’t stop there. Right-click on an image file on the macOS desktop, for example, and choose Open With, and Windows art applications will appear in the dropdown menu alongside the native Mac apps. You can even set Windows apps to be the default application for certain file formats.

Accessing a Boot Camp partition from Parallels

Then we come to that best of both worlds solution: accessing your Boot Camp partition from Parallels.

First, you have to get your ducks in a row. You have to install the Boot Camp partition first and then point Parallels at it – you can’t set this up using Parallel’s wizards.

There are key differences between accessing your Boot Camp partition from Parallels and a straight Windows 10 virtual machine too. While you can run your Boot Camp Windows 10 in a window or full screen, it acts like an isolated OS – there’s no dragging and dropping between Windows and macOS, no Coherence mode. The two OSes don’t really talk to one another, much like they don’t in Boot Camp.

There are other restrictions. The VM can’t be paused, you can’t save snapshots of a Boot Camp Windows, it can’t run in Safe Mode and it can’t be compressed to save storage. If you just need quick access to a Windows app inside your Boot Camp partition, it’s fine. But it’s very different from installing Windows in Parallels itself and nowhere near as flexible.

Finally, running your Boot Camp partition from within macOS is not the same as running Windows natively in Boot Camp – you won’t get the same performance from games or demanding 3D apps as you would if you booted into Boot Camp, because macOS is still running underneath. That hardware is dealing with two OSes, not one, and performance suffers accordingly.

That’s why I’ve ended up with both. Windows 10 in a Parallels VM for running day-to-day Windows apps, and Windows 10 in Boot Camp when I need the full system performance for games or big Photoshop jobs. Finding the mix that works for you is the key.

Netflix is launching a desktop as a service application that will allow developers to remotely work on content for the streaming service.

The 'NetFX' platform will connect vendors, artists and creators "from diverse backgrounds and experiences", the firm said, enabling them to collaborate on a wide range of films and TV shows currently in production.

The service arrives as a virtual workstation with integrated storage and full access to secure rendering in a connected environment. It will allow the streaming site to scale and creatively iterate on its visual effects work like never before, according to Netflix.

Vendors will be able to contribute artist resources to optimise capacity and individuals can participate on-demand, all in a safe, coronavirus-free, virtual environment.

"Visual effects are in almost all of our features and series, ranging from the creation of complex creatures and environments to the removal of objects and backgrounds," the streaming giant said in a blog.

"NetFX is a cutting-edge platform which will provide collaborators frictionless access to infrastructure to meet Netflix's demand for VFX services around the world as our library of original content continues to grow."

A beta version of the platform is currently in use in Canada with Netflix partners Frontier VFX and Galavant VFX. The hope is that the NetFX platform will be available for vendors, artists and creators in Mumbai by early 2021.

The news comes after recent changes to the Netflix board, with longtime executive Ted Sarandos being named co-CEO alongside co-founder Reed Hastings.

"Ted has been my partner for decades. This change makes formal what was already informal - that Ted and I share the leadership of Netflix," Hastings said in a letter to shareholders.

This also comes after the streaming site added a function to drop content from the "continue watching" row on user accounts.

Microsoft has announced a new security feature that will allow its professional and enterprise users to run suspicious programmes in complete isolation.

The new desktop tool, dubbed Windows Sandbox, will create a virtual machine-like desktop environment that can allow users to run any software, regardless of how harmful it is, without risking lasting impact on their device.

A form of sandbox-style 'private desktop' tool has been in the works for months, with Windows Insiders previously finding evidence for a VM environment in August, at the time dubbed 'InPrivate Desktop'.

"How many times have you downloaded an executable file, but were afraid to run it?" said Microsoft's lead program manager in the Windows Core Kernal Platform Hari Pulapaka, writing in a blog post.

"Have you ever been in a situation which required a clean installation of Windows, but didn't want to set up a virtual machine?

"At Microsoft, we regularly encounter these situations, so we developed Windows Sandbox: an isolated, temporary, desktop environment where you can run untrusted software without the fear of lasting impact to your PC."

Windows Sandbox will be packaged into Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise build 18305 or newer, by default, and runs in complete isolation to a user's machine.

Running the tool will be like opening a clean install of Windows 10 in a windowed application, with everything done within this isolated environment wiped completely upon shutting the app.

Moreover, the tool uses hardware-based virtualisation, relying on Microsoft's hypervisor, which creates Windows virtual machines, to run Windows Sandbox separately from the host.

Users will also need to have AMD64 architecture, virtualisation capabilities enabled in the BIOS, minimum 4GB RAM (8GB recommended) 1GB hard disk space (SSD recommended), and a processor with at least 2 CPU cores (4 with hyperthreading recommended).

"Any software installed in Windows Sandbox stays only in the sandbox and cannot affect your host," Pulapaka continued. "Once Windows Sandbox is closed, all the software with all its files and state are permanently deleted."

Windows Sandbox is currently subject to testing, with users welcome to provide feedback via a specified hub.

Microsoft has officially unveiled its Windows Virtual Desktop that allows multiple users to access a Windows 10 desktop at the same time, optimised for Office 365 ProPlus.

The solution means that instead of reaching for a third-party virtualisation platform, you can use the feature as part of an Azure subscription, making it much simpler for businesses that don't want to wander out of the Azure environment.

"For many companies, the specific needs of their business require a virtualised desktop experience. The reasons for virtualisation vary," Julia White, corporate vice president for Microsoft Azure said in a blog post announcing Windows Virtual Desktop.

"For example, for regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, a virtualised desktop experience ensures compliance regulations are met and access to sensitive data is securely managed. For mobile workforces and Firstline Workers, desktop virtualisation makes managing and provisioning access to corporate data and apps easier."

And Microsoft wants to make that process a whole lot easier. Plans include integration with Microsoft Store and existing Windows applications, as well as services that users may want access to at the same time, without needing to make use of server-based virtualisation.

Other benefits of using Microsoft's native virtualisation platform are free Windows 7 Extended Security Updates for those using the legacy platform and the ability to virtualise both desktop and apps, depending on what your needs are at that time.

The next step in this virtualisation journey is for Microsoft to start working with other businesses such as Citrix, CloudJumper, FSLogix, Lakeside Software, Liquidware, People Tech Group, and ThinPrint with integrations that allow tighter partnerships with the apps companies may already have running.

The company added that Virtual Desktop will be available through Microsoft Cloud Solution Providers if businesses need to add extra services to their implementation.

Cloud computing is the future for many businesses worried about the cost burden of on-premises IT services. Cloud-hosted virtual machines (VMs) offer on-demand compute resources and deliver flexible and cost-effective services allowing businesses to tailor them to their current demands and budgets but easily upscale or downscale them to keep in step with future requirements.

Cloud servers are also ideal for businesses conducting application development and testing. If they need a new server, they can spin one up in a matter of minutes, adjust its resources to suit, and get rid of it when they've finished.

In fact, one of the biggest hurdles facing business on the road to cloud computing is the huge range of hosting companies to choose from. There are far too many to list here so we opted to try out two of the largest providers – namely Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure – and see how easy it is to deploy cloud virtual machines (VMs).

How to prepare for a switch to virtual servers

Cloud-hosted servers offer many advantages over on-premises servers but there are a number of important points you need to be aware of before diving in. The internet connection your business uses needs to be fast, stable, and reliable as if it slows down or goes down it can cause delays and have a serious impact on productivity. 

On-premises servers score higher for data security as you are in total control of all aspects of this, including data governance. Most cloud providers use a 'shared responsibility model' where they manage the security of the infrastructure, data centers, and server hardware leaving you to look after cloud application, data, operating system, and access security.

It's essential you keep a close eye on cloud subscription costs as these can easily spiral out of control if you don't monitor account usage. Your cloud provider must present clear billing details about hourly and monthly pricing with the best ones offering cost monitoring, usage tracking, budgeting, and forecasting tools in their web portals.

Everything you need to know about AWS' virtual servers

As you'd expect from this giant, AWS offers an incredible range of virtual server facilities with its elastic cloud compute (EC2) platform. They are easy to provision too, as we were able to create new instances from our AWS dashboard in a matter of minutes.

Tapping the 'Launch Instance' button transports you to a smart wizard. This guides you through providing a name for your new AMI (Amazon machine image), choosing an operating system from an impressively huge list, and selecting an instance type with AWS offering over 700 options with varying amounts of architectures, virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and memory.

We opted for Windows Server 2022 and as it was being used only for testing, selected a 't2.small' instance type which provided one vCPU plus 2GB of memory with the portal advising us of the cost per hour. Unless you specify otherwise, storage is handled by Amazon's EBS (elastic block store) which provides highly resilient and persistent cloud storage so if you shut down the instance, you won't lose its data.

Key pairs ensure tight login security and when creating them, make sure you store the PEM file somewhere safe as you'll need it to decrypt the default admin password AWS applies to the instance. Security groups are sets of firewall rules you apply to the instance and can include restricting SSH and RDP access to known IP addresses and allowing inbound HTTP/HTTPS traffic.

We found the whole process pleasingly simple as after starting the instance, it was ready in four minutes. To access the instance, we downloaded the pre-configured RDP configuration file, logged in with the decrypted password, and were ready for action.

Everything you need to know about Azure's virtual servers

Microsoft's Azure offers an equally impressive range of flexible and affordable virtual server features and new users can take advantage of a special offer that gives them $200 credit for 30 days and one year of free access to popular services. Annoyingly, Microsoft still hasn't fixed the telephone-related glitch in the sign-up portal but if you ignore the error that tells you the number isn't correctly formatted, it should work.

VMs are simple to create from the Azure services portal as the whole process can be achieved in one screen.  Select your subscription and use an existing resource group or create a new one so you can apply lifecycle settings, permissions, and policies to all member VMs.

As with AWS, you can choose the region where you want your data to be stored. Azure availability zones replicate VMs for extra resiliency in the event of a data centre outage although these will incur egress and ingress charges between the zones.

Azure offers an extensive range of operating system images and we opted to try out Windows 11. You're presented with an equally large range of sizes, each accompanied by their monthly charges, and we used the 'Standard D2s v3' version which provisioned two vCPUs plus 8GB of memory and left Azure to apply a default 127GB managed disk for the OS which used premium SSDs with locally redundant storage.

Whereas AWS auto-generates an initial admin password, Azure requires you to enter an administrator username and password for your VM. You can also apply inbound port rules for SSH, RDP, HTTP and HTTPS traffic.

For swift RDP access, you select the VM's Connect option and download and run the preconfigured configuration file provided. Overall, we found VM creation a simple process and we were pleased to see that Azure also keeps you well informed on all charges and ongoing costs.

AWS vs Azure: Which is best?

During testing, we were impressed with the ease with which we could create AWS and Azure VMs. They both offer a remarkable range of cloud services with their well-designed portal providing swift access to all features.

Both offer plenty of cost management tools with the AWS Cost Explorer analysing your past spend and providing forecasts while AWS Budgets allows you to set custom cost thresholds and receive warnings when you exceed them. Microsoft's Azure Cost Management + Billing suite of tools tracks expenditure for all services, offers billing forecasts plus trending and issues overspend alerts.

These highly flexible services make it simple to 'right-size' cloud server instances as if they are running out of steam, you can quickly increase resources such as vCPUs, memory, and storage capacity. Likewise, for over-specified VMs, you can just as easily scale back resources and make big savings on running costs.

Enterprise virtualisation hardware tends to comprise of separate hypervisor hosts and storage arrays, but Qnap's new TDS-16489U Double Server breaks with tradition. The clue is in the name as it's designed to function as an application server and storage server in one box.

Big virtualisation hosts need equally big hardware specifications and Qnap doesn't disappoint. The Double Server series is its first to use E5-2600 v3 Xeons and DDR4 memory.

Four models are available with the TDS-16489U-SA1 on review endowed with two 2.4GHz E5-2620 v3 Xeons and 64GB of DDR4 RDIMM memory. The SA2 version keeps the same CPUs but has memory boosted to 128GB.

If you want even more, then the SB2 and SB3 models have eight-core E5-2630 v3 processors plus 128GB and 256GB of DDR4 respectively. The motherboard has sixteen DIMM slots so all models can be upgraded to 1TB.

Virtually free

Fundamental to the Double Server are Qnap's Virtualization Station and Container Station apps which are included free with its QTS software. The former allows you to host any number of virtual machines (VMs) running just about any OS you care to name.

The Container Station integrates with Docker and LXC and runs Linux apps in isolated lightweight containers. We found both very easy to use and tested the Virtualization Station by importing predefined VMs from the VMware Marketplaces and creating custom VMs using its configuration templates.

Qnap provides the Virtualization Station and Container Station apps as standard features

We created VMs for Ubuntu Desktop, Windows Server 2012 R2 plus Windows 10 and assigned them with local storage for their hard disk images. We could access them remotely from the app's interface and protect them with on-demand VM snapshots.

Virtualization Station VMs can be remotely accessed using its built-in console

Big storage

The storage outlook is even brighter as the appliance supports 12Gbps SAS 3 hard disks and SSDs, but doesn't use a SAS expander on the backplane. To improve performance, the motherboard has three embedded LSI SAS 3 controllers - each is connected directly to the backplane and supports a maximum of seven 12Gbps ports.

A peek round the back reveals four extra SFF hot-plug drive bays used to add SSDs as fast read or read/write caches. The appliance's four PCI-Express slots support high-performance NVMe PCIe SSDs, a graphics card plus 10GbE or 40GbE network adapters.

The four drive bays at the back are for SSD read and write caches

Storage expansion up to over 1PB is possible by fitting optional dual-port SAS 3 adapters with the appliance supporting eight of Qnap's 16-bay disk shelves. There are a couple of glitches as Qnap's four-port 10GbE SFP+ module doesn't work, so appliances are currently being shipped with two dual-port 10GbE adapter cards and the BBU slot at the back still isn't functional.

Storming performance

For performance testing, we moved to 10GbE and used a Boston Fenway dual Xeon E5-2600 v4 rack server running Windows Server 2012 R2 and equipped with an Emulex dual-port 10GbE SFP+ adapter.

Raw NAS performance is excellent with a mapped share returning Iometer read and write speeds of 9.2Gbits/sec and 9Gbits/sec. Real world speeds are equally impressive as drag and drop copies of a 25GB test file delivered average read and write speeds of 7.6Gbits/sec and 4.5Gbits/sec.

The appliance also worked well as a backup target with our 22.4GB test folder and its 10,500 small files backed up at a speedy average of 2.6Gbits/sec. The dynamic Xeon duo handled share encryption duties with aplomb as our 25GB test file was copied to an encrypted share at 1.8Gbits/sec.

Qnap delivered the goods for IP SANs, with a 600GB target returning steady Iometer read and write speeds of 9.2Gbits/sec. We increased the pressure with a dual 10GbE MPIO link and saw Iometer speeds step up to 18Gbits/sec and 15.2Gbits/sec.

The appliance even has an IPMI chip for remote monitoring via a web browser

Data tiers

Virtualisation fans will like Qnap's free Qtier tiered storage feature as this keeps an eye on storage usage and migrates data blocks across three storage levels based on usage. We tested using a 400GB HGST MLC SAS 3 SSD, four Seagate SAS 3 15K SFF drives and four WD Enterprise NL-SAS LFF drives.

Creating a tiered pool is a cinch as a wizard automatically placed the correct drives in the ultra-high speed, high speed and capacity tiers and, for the latter two, also created RAID5 arrays. The migration process isn't dynamic as Qtier runs scheduled data reallocation tasks, but we could run these as often as we wanted, set them to start at quiet times and choose from three migration priorities.

We could monitor the migration process from a statistics screen which showed data movement across the three tiers. For more detail, a history report provides graphs for each tier showing clearly how data is being migrated.

Qtier migrates data to different disk tiers based on usage patterns

Conclusions

With prices starting at 5,795 ex VAT, the TDS-16489U appliances offer SMBs a powerful virtualisation solution that's easy to deploy and manage. There are no hidden costs as the Virtualization and Container Station apps are included as standard and you don't have to factor in any per-core licenses.

Its server-grade hardware has the horsepower to handle a lot of VMs, storage features are exemplary and there's plenty of room to expand capacity. As a straight storage server it's a tad OTT, but the TDS-16489U is hard to beat as an affordable virtualisation platform.

Verdict

Ideally suited to SMBs, the TDS-16489U is an innovative and affordable virtualisation appliance with plenty of power to cope with heavy demands

Chassis: 3U rack

CPU: 2 x 2.4GHz Xeon E5-2620 v3

Memory: 64GB DDR4 RDIMM (max 1TB)

Storage: 16 x hot-swap SAS 3/SATA 3 LFF/SFF, 4 x SFF SSD cache bays

Array support: RAID0, 1, 5, 6, 10, hot-spare, JBODs

Network: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet; 2 x dual-port 10GbE SFP+ PCI-Express cards

Expansion: 3 x PCIe x8, 1 x PCIe x16 (2 free)

Other ports: 4 x USB 3, VGA

Power: 2 x 650W hot-plug PSUs

Management: Web browser, Gigabit IPMI port

Warranty: Five year limited

Raspberry Pi, the microcomputer created to encourage children to learn how to code, is being brought into the enterprise as a thin client.

During his opening keynote at the company's annual Synergy conference in Las Vegas, Citrix's new CEO, Kirill Tatarinov, said: "We're introducing support for a very interesting and revolutionary new form factor, which is support for Raspberry Pi devices. A really thin client a client that can be procured for under $100 and we now have Citrix ADI technology running on a system on a chip environment. We can provide this new scenario and this is truly exciting."

In collaboration with another presenter, Tatarinov showed a live demo of a Raspberry Pi being used as a thin client running HDX on a chip offeringWindows 10 desktop with XenApp and XenMobile security.

At a press conference held following the keynote, IT Pro asked why Citrix had elected to introduce support for Raspberry Pi, when there are so many dedicated enterprise thin clients available.

"The way we look at things is not just around innovation, it's not just around partnerships, but it really is TCO/ROI," said Bill Burley, Citrix's corporate VP and GM of Workspace Services. "A big part of it is the endpoint, and so over the years if you analyse buying a PC and what that cost is, not just the upfront costs, but the ongoing management needs of that PC, then you start to realise that [they] consume a lot of capital expenditure that goes out in delivering virtualised environments."

Burley praised the original idea of encouraging children to code with the unit, but went on to say that its ability to run high-end graphics and video as needed by the enterprise at a very low cost made it attractive as a thin client for business as well.

Even if each Raspberry Pi is only used for a couple of years, Burley said, it would still be a fraction of the cost of purchasing, maintaining and replacing alternatives over the same period.

"PCs [are] on average $700-$750, thin clients are $400. Raspberry Pi is just $100," said Burley.

"So it's not just I can connect and get to Windows apps', it's I can connect and run all my high-end graphics, all my video' it changes the dynamic of how you consume technology when you can drop something below $100," he added.

An additional demonstration of Raspberry Pi running the Xen portfolio will take place during the second day keynote on Wednesday.

See also: Top Raspberry Pi projects to try yourself

Asustor is the storage spin-off of laptop giant Asus and has built up a solid range of well-priced NAS appliances. Its latest AS6204T continues this tradition as this four-bay desktop box has one of Intel's latest Braswell' 1.6GHz Celeron N3150 processors and yet prices start at just 352 ex VAT.

The port count is good as the AS6204T has a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, three USB 3 connectors, a couple of USB 2 sockets and two eSATA sockets at the rear along with a single HDMI port. You can plug in a USB disk at the front and press the One-Touch Backup button to start a backup job on the appliance that copies data to or from the external storage device.

The appliance comes with 4GB of DDR3L memory which can be upgraded to 8GB. It's easy to do, but you'll need to replace the two 2GB SO-DIMM modules with 4GB versions. Plus, it pays to be careful when removing the metal lid as it's wafer-thin and easily bent.

The appliance uses an external power brick which should be secured as it's easy to accidentally pull the plug out of its small socket. All cooling is handled by a single 12cm fan and we found the appliance was whisper-quiet.

Control Center and MyArchive

We tested the AS6204T by loading three 4TB WD Red NAS Pro hard disks into the solid metal drive carriers and used the Asustor Control Center app to discover the appliance. We found the appliance's front-mounted LCD panel very useful and its menus easily accessed using the group of four buttons alongside.

We used the Control Center app to create a RAID5 array with mirrors, stripes and RAID6 also supported. It took nearly 10 hours to synchronise our array but we could use the appliance during this phase, albeit with slightly reduced performance.

The MyArchive feature allows hard disks in the third or fourth bays to be designated as removable media. This'll prove handy for quickly transferring data between separate Asustor appliances and for storing backup data off-site.

We tested this feature using a 1TB WD drive and after formatting it as a MyArchive drive, copied 22GB of data to it from another share using the File Manager app. We then ejected the drive from the Storage Manager app, plugged it into the IT Pro lab's trusty old AS-606T and swiftly transferred the new data across.

The ADM web console is well-designed and easy to use

Good performance

For performance testing, we used a HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 rack server loaded with Windows Server 2012 R2. For a share mapped over Gigabit Ethernet, Iometer reported fast raw read and write rates of 113MB/sec and 108MB/sec while copies of a 25GB file returned equally good real world speeds of 110MB/sec and 108MB/sec.

Backup performance won't disappoint as we secured our 22.4GB folder and its 10,500 small files at a speedy 84MB/sec. To test maximum NAS performance, we mapped a share to another Xeon E5-2600 v3 Windows server and with Iometer running on both systems, recorded cumulative read and write rates of 226MB/sec and 221MB/sec thus confirming Asustor's claimed speeds.

IP SAN performance is just as good with a 600GB target returning Iometer read and write speeds of 113MB/sec and 112MB/sec. The AS6204T didn't wilt under pressure as speeds for a dual Gigabit Ethernet MPIO link stepped up to 226MB/sec and 220MB/sec.

The N3150 CPU and its integral AES-NI engine handled encrypted folders well with copies of our 25GB test file delivering sustained write speeds of 78MB/sec. To put this in perspective, we ran the same test on an older Synology DS1813+ with an older D2700 Atom processor which only mustered an average 22MB/sec write speed.

You can even use the VirtualBox app to host a Windows Server 2012 R2 VM on the appliance

Backup and file syncing

Asustor's Data Master (ADM) web console and its chunky icons provide easy access to all features. We used the Backup & Restore app to secure data to other local folders, Rsync compatible NAS appliances and FTP servers plus external USB and eSATA devices.

The Amazon S3 app worked well. If you want to use providers such as Amazon Glacier or Microsoft Azure then you'll need to check out alternative appliances from Qnap and Synology.

Cloud backup support is limited to Amazon S3 which we had no problems with

File syncing apps are provided for multiple Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive accounts while Asustor has its own cloud storage service which works via its WebStorage app. The new QuikFynd app is useful for finding files on the appliance but, unlike Qnap's Q'sirch app, this is a third-party cloud service and the free Lite version of the app is heavily feature-limited.

Asustor offers a choice of file syncing apps including Google Drive

Snapshots are supported, but these are only available for iSCSI LUNs and can only be taken manually. They worked well enough though, as we deleted data from a 600GB target and restored it all from the Storage Manager app in 30 seconds.

Conclusions

The AS6204T's low price and good performance make it a tempting NAS for small businesses. It's well built and has some useful backup apps as well.

However, we recommend checking out Qnap's new TS-453A as this N3150-powered 4-bay appliance puts up some stiff competition. Along with quad Gigabit Ethernet and dual HDMI ports, it has a vastly superior range of apps and it costs around 25 less too.

Verdict

The AS6204T delivers good storage performance and is well-suited to small businesses that don’t want many bells and whistles

Chassis: Desktop

CPU: 1.6GHz Intel Celeron N3150

Memory: 4GB DDR3L (max. 8GB)

Storage: 4 x 3.5in/2.5in hot-swap SATA drive bays

Array support: RAID0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD

Network: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet

Other ports: 3 x USB 3, 2 x USB 2, 2 x eSATA, 1x HDMI

Management: Web browser

Warranty: 3 years RTB

Veeam has announced the latest edition of its Availability Suite, which adds in enhanced storage options that the company says will reduce the cost of ownership thanks to lower hardware costs.

Jason Buffington, Senior Data Protection Analyst at ESG explained the production and protection storage volumes market is growing by around 40 per cent year-on-year and it's, therefore, important for vendors like Veeam to adapt their products to meet this demand.

"The irony is that IT is being asked to increase their availability and agility to recover but aren't even able to maintain the status quo with legacy approaches to backup, in part due to storage requirements," he explained.

Additionally, companies are demanding recovery time and point objectives of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data, meaning optimum availability is key for any company looking to grow their data plans.

Veeam's Availability Suite v9 features the Veeam Unlimited Scale-out Backup Repository, offering simplified backup storage management with a modular approach, allowing organisations to add additional storage devices and managing the capacity as demand requires.

Veeam said by using the space more efficiently, Veeam Unlimited Scale-out Backup Repository can increase the capacity of existing storage by at least 30 per cent.

"The contradiction between the need to raise IT resiliency and agility while trying to reduce storage burdens is adding complexity and burden to many folks' IT infrastructures," Buffington added.

"Veeam's new Unlimited Scale-out Backup Repository should help alleviate those burdens by simplifying backup target storage, which ought to further ease administration while providing flexibility to backup and virtualisation administrators who have more strategic tasks to do than managing their underlying storage pool."

HP has always had a sharper focus on SMBs that many other big names in the storage industry and its Modular Storage Arrays (MSAs) have a well-deserved reputation for value. The latest MSAs go even further as they offer a heap of enterprise level features but without a commensurate price increase.

We look at the new Gen4 MSA 2040 which introduces a range of advanced virtualised data services. These include thin provisioning and SSD read caching but the feature that really makes it stand out is HP's automated data tiering.

HP includes the standard and archive tiers in the base price where data is initially held on SAS drives and moved to lower cost NL-SAS drives as it gets cold. Available as a licensed option, the performance tier comprises SSDs which store hot data and deliver a much higher performance.

Usage analysis is carried out in real-time with 4MB page moves occurring every 5-10 seconds allowing it to respond quickly to changes in I/O patterns. This is far more effective than products such as Fujitsu's Eternus arrays where their daily I/O batch processing makes them best suited to static usage patterns.

HP's 9-step wizard helps get the array deployed in minutes

The new hardware

The 2U chassis is available with 12 LFF or 24 hot-swap SFF hard disks. HP offers a wide choice of drives including enterprise SAS, NL-SAS, SSDs and self-encrypting drives but SATA isn't supported.

The new converged SAN controllers in our review system support both 8/16Gbps Fibre Channel and 10GbE iSCSI. Each controller has four SFP+ ports grouped in two pairs so you just pop the transceivers of your choice in either pair which automatically sets their personality.

HP also offers a 4-port 12Gb/sec SAS controller model and all versions have 4GB of on-board cache memory protected by a super-capacitor and CompactFlash card. Expansion potential hasn't changed from the previous generation but is still very high with support for seven disk enclosures and up to 96 LFF and 199 SFF drives.

The new SMU v3 console provide a clear overview of storage pools, disk groups and tiers

Automatic everything

The latest GL200 firmware introduces HP's new SMU v3 web console which you'll need to use if you want virtual volumes, data tiering and caching. We've been used to the older SMU v2 web interface and found it took us a while to get the hang of it.

Its quick start wizard made light work of initial deployment where it helped us configure general system settings, management access and data port assignments. The system supports two storage pools assigned to each controller and within these we created virtual disk groups.

The rest is automated as SAS drives are placed in the standard tier, NL-SAS arrays get put in the archive tier and, if licensed, SSDs go into the performance tier. We could also create SSD read caches which are automatically assigned to the storage pools.

Disk groups are automatically placed in the storage tier best suited to the selected drives

Linear disks and snapshots

Previously, the MSA 2040 uses vdisks (virtual disks) to provision storage. Now called linear disks, you can still create them but they won't have data tiering applied as they are independent of the new storage pools.

At any time you can swap over to the older SMU v2 web console to manage linear disks and host mappings. The standard license includes 64 snapshots upgradeable to 512, but these can be only be scheduled for linear disks.

Snapshots of virtual volumes must be taken manually but they offer significant advantages. Unlike linear disk snapshots, they don't need a dedicated storage pool, are created much faster and allow you to create child snapshots.

The web console graphs shows our test data being moved to the SSD performance tier

FC and iSCSI performance

For testing, we used an HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 server (web ID:23173) equipped with QLogic 8Gbps FC and Emulex 10GbE adapter cards. We found FC performance on the money with Iometer reporting raw sequential read and write speeds of 785MB/sec for a volume on the standard virtual tier.

IP SAN speeds were equally good with a 500GB target on the same tier delivering raw read and write speeds of 1,150MB/sec and 965MB/sec.

To test read cache performance, we ran a baseline Iometer test on a 750GB iSCSI target with a 90/10 random read/write spread which returned around 2,000 IOPS. We added a read cache disk group using two 200GB SSDs and saw the same test deliver near to 9,000 IOPS after a 90 minute warm up period.

Next, we deleted the read cache and used the same SSDs to create a virtual disk group which the MSA 2040 automatically classified as a performance tier. After leaving the same Iometer test running for an hour, we watched throughput rising swiftly to over 37,000 IOPS and could see from the console's performance page that all the I/O action had shifted onto the SSD-based tier.

Conclusion

It took us a while to get used to HP's new web console but found the data tiering features easy to configure as most of it is automated. Our speed tests show it's capable of boosting performance substantially and at a price the competition won't be able to match.

Verdict

HP’s new virtualisation features make one of the best SMB storage arrays on the market even better. The MSA 2040 is easy to deploy and the automated data tiering features boost performance and lower storage costs

Chassis: 2U rack Storage: 12 x LFF or 24 x SFF hot-swap drive bays Power: 2 x 500W hot-plug PSUs Two controllers each with the following: Memory: 4GB cache with super-capacitor and CompactFlash card RAID support: RAID1, 10, 5, 6 Data ports: 4 x SFP+ supporting 8/16Gbps FC and/or 10GbE iSCSI Management: 10/100 Ethernet Expansion: 6Gbps SAS port (max 96 LFF/199 SFF disks) Other ports: Mini-USB CLI port Snapshots: 64/512 (Standard/Maximum) Management: Web browser

CIOs running software-defined storage on commodity hardware are risking severe data loss, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has warned.

The term software-defined storage has plenty of different interpretations within the industry, but is commonly described as a way to separate the software that controls storage tasks from the physical storage hardware.

The trend has benefits like avoiding vendor lock-in, because you can simply buy the storage management programming and pick off-the-shelf commodity hardware, and it's seen start-ups like Nexenta challenge incumbents such as EMC.

But HDS's chief engineer told IT Pro that while the Japanese giant is interested in the technology, it carries big risks for customers.

Speaking at Hitachi Connect 2015 in Las Vegas, Michael Hay said: "It's not for the faint of heart. We do a lot of work with our hardware OEM suppliers and in many cases there were some very high severity data loss issues we had to have them fix or we had to build workarounds [for]."

And he warned that those running storage software on commodity hardware should make sure it's been tested for compatibility.

"Nexenta, they just have the software and you pick your hardware. For us, if customers just want our software, we can give them a list of qualified suppliers, and they can buy off that no problem," said Hay.

"As soon as they deviate from that, we'll really have to talk about what does that mean. A lot of companies just gloss over it, they say it's no big deal, but you lose data.

"As a storage company, how can you actually with a straight face just say 'run it on whatever'?"

One example Hay gave was HDS's object storage system, Hitachi Content Platform (HCP), whose S series suffered 40 separate data loss issues with the OEM, which the pair of vendors had to solve.

And Hay warned that without a significant number of in-house engineers, firms pairing software-defined storage with unqualified commodity hardware would face a challenge trying to solve such problems themselves.

"Unless you're a company who's prepared to go build that talent up yourself, how do you do that?" he said.

HDS itself launched a number of software-defined solutions yesterday at Hitachi Connect 2015, however.

These include an expansion to its range of Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) models, to provide customers with the storage virtualisation capability in different-sized capacities.

Hay said the new VSP range is "pure Intel", and HDS's Storage Virtualization Operating System can either sit on top of Intel's processor, or "replace it all with software".

And Hay admitted: "We're definitely preparing ourselves in case the market shifts one way or the other."

But that balancing act also means HDS is holding onto its hardware design centres, not wishing to get rid of its expertise in this area despite the software-defined trend.

"We still have the talent to build chips - if we find some benefit then we will," said Hay.

He pointed to Intel's mooted takeover of fellow chipmaker Altera, which builds reconfigurable processors, as one innovation that shows hardware can be more than just a commodity.

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has expanded its range of software-defined storage so customers can pick and choose their preferred capacity.

Announced at HDS Connect 2015 in Las Vegas, Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) models now include the G200, G400, G600 and an upcoming G800 in addition to its G1000 product, offering users storage virtualisation and data migration functionality no matter what capacity they require.

"Customers now have the ability to choose systems based on the necessary capacity, performance and price required to meet their business goals, not because of functional difference," HDS said.

Running on all the VSP models is Hitachi's Storage Virtualization Operating System (SVOS), which helps customers consolidate and simplify user environments and perform easier migrations.

Converged platform

HDS has also grown its Unified Compute Platform (UCP) portfolio, adding a hyper-converged product in UCP 1000, which supports VMware's Evo:Rail appliance, a combined compute, networking, and storage solution competing with Oracle's more expensive converged systems.

Like the 1000, the newly-announced UCP 2000 uses new rack servers and is aimed at SMB office users, according to HDS.

The company's UCP 6000 features Hitachi CB 2500 blade servers, and the expanded range was welcomed by retailer Spar.

"The Hitachi UCP technologies will help us stay ahead in the markets, fine tune what we need to supply to best meet customer needs, and support a most efficient business model," said Andreas Kranabitl, managing director for SPAR's information and communication services.

"We at SPAR are now wisely prepared to meet and proactively address any changes and growth."

Data lake

Yesterday, upcoming HDS acquisition Pentaho spoke about its ability to make data lakes "easy and safe to swim" in - a timely announcement with HDS now revealing a new Hyper Scale-Out Platform (HSP).

Capable of swallowing massive amounts of different types of data across a distributed, clustered architecture, the firm claims Hitachi file system technology enables this data lake to grow elastically with the help of virtualisation.

HSP is being positioned as an ideal Hadoop platform, allowing users to analyse data there and then rather than moving it out of Hadoop in order to do so.

IT-as-a-service management

Lastly, HDS has bolstered its IT management suite to help out beleaguered IT departments.

It reckons these solutions will lead to greater automation, cutting costs and complexity along the way.

Its Automation Director works with Hitachi Command Suite to let customers create service templates for simple, application-specific provisioning of storage resources to databases, applications and VDI environments.

Once created, end users can also try these templates out in a self-service capacity.

Meanwhile, Infrastructure Director is a management app that hooks into the VSP systems' APIs to automatically control environments that don't need too much manual tweaking.

Instance Director is designed to simplify data protection by automating backup snapshots and data cloning, in addition to live backup and archiving under one platform.

"The fundamentals of IT are changing," Sean Moser, senior VP of HDS product management, said. "Customers are looking for ways to be more agile and flexible to gain a competitive advantage.

"Hitachi is delivering a new generation of software-defined technologies built to support the changing needs of customer application environments to deliver on those goals and connect what works today with what's next."

Peter, the IT Manager at Oil & Gas Systems Limited, thrives on variety and challenges - and shares the fun of an office move and the benefits of virtualisation when discussing what inspires him.

For more advice on transforming your business, visit HP BusinessNow

Connectivity is Surj's biggest challenge in IT, but also offers massive potential. Find out what inspires him as part of our series of videos where we interview inspirational IT managers and professionals.

For more advice on transforming your business, visit HP BusinessNow