How the Parallels elastic IT solution works

The Parallels elastic IT solution is installed on one or more Linux servers in the company data center. The solution provides virtualization as well as web based provisioning, simplified configuration & consolidated management. After installation of the software, security & network parameters are set and the environment is ready to provision virtual environments.

To provision, the administrator simply initiates the new environment wizard and selects a pre-defined template that results in a business ready server. Launch the new instance and the fully configured environment and its applications are ready in moments.

Administrators may also create their own templates containing virtual environment types (CPU, memory, disk space, etc), operating systems, applications, libraries, data and configuration settings.

Monitoring & troubleshooting are managed from the centralized web based interface. Administrators may also choose to provide a selection of self service capabilities to end users reducing the day to day operational burden on the IT department.

Increasing the capacity of the Parallels elastic IT implementation is as easy as adding additional hardware. Mix and match server types, brands, CPU speeds and memory footprints. After a quick configuration with the management center, the resources of the new hardware are immediately available to virtual environments.

Solution Highlights

Instantly deploy a new configured environment with a few clicks

On-demand provisioning
Instantly provision business ready environments through the web based administration center. Delegate requests to approved users and implement internal approval workflow. Rapid provisioning reduces the amount of time to onboard developers, test projects & deploy production servers improving overall time to market and reducing costs.

Virtual environment elasticity
Increase or decrease virtual environment parameters on the fly without impacting applications or end users. Instantly add more CPU, memory or disk space to improve performance or alleviate bottlenecks. Deploy additional environments from templates or clones in seconds to add capacity as needed.

Flexibility & control
Standardize virtual environment settings & configurations to streamline the deployment of new instances. Create a library of pre-approved configurations including compute resources, operating systems, libraries, applications and more simplifying provisioning of fully configured servers down to just a few clicks.

Maintain backups and perform restores from the console

Integrated backup & recovery
Automate backups of virtual environments to improve reliability and confidence in disaster recovery capabilities. Integrated backup technology supports both full and incremental backups as well as the ability to recovery eliminating the need for 3rd party add-on solutions and additional costs.

Live migration capabilities
Easily move running Linux containers between physical servers with a few clicks. Transfer workloads mid-stream without disrupting the processes or end users. No special storage solutions or chipset parity required by the Parallels solution.

Flexible web API
Integrate the elastic IT solution into existing business processes, third party solutions or custom built web applications through a well documented web based API. Blend Parallels elastic IT solution into your overall virtualization strategy maximizing your investments.

Simplify the management of virtual environments

Implementation choice
Choose between two implementation styles for Parallels containers depending on your business needs. Install directly on top of a supported host Linux distribution or install directly onto a bare metal server. Both implementation options provide the same Linux containers managed by the Parallels Virtual Automation solution.

Technology flexibility
In addition to Linux Containers the Parallels elastic IT solution supports hypervisors via Parallels Server Bare Metal. Organizations can augment their elastic IT solution with Parallels Server Bare Metal resulting in additional technology flexibility.

Feature Summary

Manage servers & virtual environments from a single console

The following is a summary of features that you will find in the Parallels elastic IT solution:

• Web based management console with single pane of glass for physical & virtual environments
• Dashboard views of top resource consumers & potential problem areas
• Hierarchical and logical organization of servers & virtual environments
• Server virtualization choice between Windows containers, Linux containers and hypervisor technologies
• Role based policies for access, activities and user self service
• Virtual management user auditing
• Provisioning for single or multiple environments with a single task
• Auto-configuration of software & server settings
• On-the-fly resource modification of containers
• Template library for OS, application & server configurations
• Thin provisioning of OS & applications
• Clone existing environments
• Migrate physical servers to containers
• Live migration of Linux containers (zero downtime)
• Warm migration of Windows containers (VM restart required)
• Server level resource reporting & alerts
• Virtual environment resource reporting & alerts
• Resource accounting by virtual environment for memory, CPU, disk and network traffic
• Dashboard
• Self manage IP address pools
• Virtual network management
• Firewall management
• Network accounting and traffic shaping
• Remote desktop access to virtual environments
• File sharing across virtual environments
• Web based user self service for environment administration
• Incremental & full backups
• Backup scheduling
• Automated maintenance tasks
• Update manager for Parallels software & templates
• Centralized virtual environment audit logs for tasks, alerts & events
• Multi-environment/multi-server task manager
• Console alerts and SMTP traps
• Web based XML API and SDK for custom extensions

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