Managed Servers and Virtualisation in Portugal: Decide Before Windows Server 2016 Ends and VMware Moves to Subscription

According to Gartner figures cited by the trade press, licensing increases after the move to subscription range from three to four times the previous cost. In a small infrastructure, this is what changes the answer to the question of keeping VMware.

The dates come from Microsoft and Broadcom and may be revised. Always check each manufacturer's official lifecycle before investing.

Each option is legitimate, and the wrong one is paid for over five years. We always present the advantages and costs of each side by side.

A new on-premises server

Suited to latency-sensitive applications or large files on the local network, a stable load and a current server that has reached end of life. The downside: capital expenditure returns, along with space, power, replacement in five years and the need for day-to-day management.

Consolidate and change hypervisor

Suited to cases where the VMware bill is no longer proportionate to the infrastructure and the workloads are standard — files, database, management application. The downside: migration has a cost, downtime windows, and drivers and backups to redo. Hyper-V comes with Windows Server; Proxmox is solid and needs no licence, but requires someone who knows how to run it.

Migrate to the cloud

Suited to distributed teams, irregular growth or a company that does not want to buy hardware for another five years. The downside: capital becomes a permanent monthly cost, and older ERP systems, hardware-bound licences and very large folders tend to cost more in the cloud.

The most common outcome is hybrid: email and office files in the cloud, the management application and heavy data on premises. It is almost always the lowest bill. The full comparison is in the article replace, virtualise or move to the cloud.

• Survey and sizing Servers, workloads, peaks, licences and the age of every disk. Without this, any proposal is guesswork, ours included.
• Virtualisation and consolidation Hyper-V, VMware or Proxmox depending on the case and who operates it; several physical machines become virtual machines on a properly sized host.
• Windows Server migration Moving off 2016 and 2012 R2 with a planned window, a prepared rollback and application-by-application validation.
• Backup with proven restores 3-2-1 rule, an immutable off-site copy and real restores with the date and result recorded. See managed backup.
• Monitoring and maintenance Disks, RAID, temperatures, space, updates and certificates, with an alarm before the first complaint; 24/7 watch only on the Premium 365 plan, through NOC monitoring.
• Cloud and hybrid Azure and Microsoft 365 and cloud when they pay off, and the honesty to say when they do not.

Half of the surveys we carry out end in a recommendation that is cheaper than the client expected.

• 11 years and 232 clients Infrastructure managed for Portuguese and international companies since 2015.
• Top 5% PME Distinction awarded by scoring.pt.
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• Zero incidents In 11 years, DataRoad has never suffered a security incident.

The server, network and virtualisation projects we keep running are in DataRoad news and projects.

We come on site, measure and deliver the document with the three options and our recommendation. The document is yours, whether or not you go ahead with us. Ongoing management is provided exclusively under an IT Unlimited contract; we do not sell standalone equipment or carry out one-off interventions.

More than 10 workstations · support contract · remote, on-site and phone support.

Request a no-commitment survey · +351 211 459 950* · sales@dataroad.pt

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