It isn't always easy to know when to upgrade to the latest hardware or software release. In the case of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, there are many compelling reasons to make the move, including: Enhanced business intelligence; improved business continuity features; better performance and better management capabilities. 

Virtualizing your servers enhances server consolidation and provides easier server management. It might also introduce new availability requirements for your applications. Your virtual environment must be able to quickly recover from physical server failures. This paper introduces SAN solutions that work with VMware to deliver high availability. 

While SQL Server 2008 is now considered stable and beneficial, many businesses are still hesitant to migrate. In this expert E-Guide, brought to you by SearchSQLServer.com and SHI, you will discover the unique advantages offered by a SQL Server 2008 migration. 

This article explores ways in which small and mid-sized businesses can improve the performance of their databases — and their businesses — by upgrading to SQL Server 2008. 

Read this expert E-Guide to discover strategies and best practices essential for effective SQL Server consolidation and optimization. Gain insight into the common challenges associated with consolidation initiatives and learn how to maintain a high level of availability and performance in SQL Server virtual machines. 

Neverfail improves upon high-availability options available for Exchange Server 2007 by providing for simplified deployment, enhanced monitoring, and the ability to easily perform fail-over operations. These capabilities can lead to the benefits of minimal downtime without the added costs, complexity, and maintenance of other HA approaches. 

In this second podcast in a series of three, Augusto Valdez of Microsoft discusses the new mobile messaging features of Exchange 2010. Specifically, Valdez highlights the ease of implementing mobile messaging with Exchange 2010 and how to secure and manage devices once they are deployed in an organization. 

The support team for Microsoft SQL Server has published guidelines for virtualizing this database engine. Read this paper to learn how to move forward with the process and create supported SQL Server virtual machines (VMs) that can be hosted on Dell PowerEdge servers. 

Despite the obvious advantages associated with Microsoft Hyper-V, this virtualization platform does not come without its availability and resiliency challenges. In this expert E-Guide, brought to you by SearchWindowsServer.com, Dell and Microsoft, you will gain insight into the improvements made to Hyper-V by Windows Server 2008 R2. 

In this solution brief learn how the Dell EqualLogic™ PS Series can provide a fully virtualized storage infrastructure that delivers high availability, resiliency, flexibility, and scalability that is simple and cost-effective to deploy, manage and grow. 

In this chapter of the "Introduction to Virtualization E-book" we will look at how to protect production workloads running in a virtual environment as well as off load this work to a stand-by host if needed. 

In this videocast, senior enterprise IT architect Nelson Ruest breaks down the seven different layers of the server virtualization architecture, and explains the role the hypervisor plays in the success of that infrastructure. 

This expert E-Guide from the writers at SearchServerVirtualization.com brings you up-to- date on the latest virtualization developments and explains how they can benefit your IT shop.