DH2i Unveils New Sandbox Lab For The Rapid Proof Of Concept (POC) Testing Of Container Management Software For Microsoft Windows

DH2i Company, recently named a Cool Vendor by Gartner in the "Cool Vendors in Servers and Virtualization, 2015" report, recently announced the general availability of its new Sandbox Lab. Designed to provide simple access to evaluateDxEnterprise container management software for Windows applications and workloads, the new lab streamlines proof of concept (POC) testing. It gives IT teams unfettered access to a live customizable testing environment, eliminating the need to build and/or maintain their own on-premises POC infrastructure.

"The DH2i Sandbox Lab is an ideal way to accurately evaluate the value of container management technology for Windows Server environments, such as SQL Server workloads," said Edwin Sarmiento, Microsoft SQL Server MVP and MCM. "Using the lab, enterprises can quickly determine how container management software will meet their requirements in areas such as minimizing datacenter complexity, Windows Server OS sprawl, and licensing costs."

The DH2i Sandbox Lab allows enterprises to go from standalone to HA failover clusters in just a few minutes. Using the DH2i Sandbox Lab, customers and partners alike can test-drive DxEnterprise seamlessly, without setting up an on-premise test. This speeds the evaluation period so IT professionals can realize faster time to value.

The simple process consists of the following steps:

• Install DxEnterprise on two nodes
• Activate each node and join the two nodes together
• Provision and manage shared storage
• Create a Vhost, the logical container to which workload is associated
• Add the storage under the Vhost
• Associate SQL Server instance, Windows Server Service or Fileshare to the Vhost
• Demonstrate failover of Vhost-both a planned move and an "unplanned" one

"Using the DH2i Sandbox Lab we were quickly able to test out the benefits of DxEnterprise without impacting our production environment and without taking the time to stand-up a separate test infrastructure," said Pete Allan, Network Administrator at Radiology Imaging Associates, P.C. in Denver Colorado (RIA). "Instead, we could quickly test its ability to support our SQL Server workload management goals without a lengthy implementation process. As a result, we were able to demonstrate to our internal team exactly how DxEnterprise would enable specific tasks, such as the ability to move workloads from any host, to any host, anywhere with just an application stop and restart. Tremendous!"

"DH2i is changing the game for container management POCs," said Ian Nicholls, Independent Licensing & Software Asset Management Consultant, The SAM Club. "Its new Sandbox Lab enables our clients to trial and see how they can achieve advanced fault protection and near-zero downtime by using container management software – all without having to touch their existing infrastructure. It’s a powerful tool that is speeding evaluation time significantly."

DxEnterprise features a first-of-its-kind container technology that enables workload and data portability and high availability (HA) for Windows Server applications, services, and file shares. This pioneering container technology creates a framework for orchestrating datacenter management, high availability/disaster tolerance (DR) and policy-based SLA management. DxEnterprise is the only Windows container technology that leverages native Windows file system (NTFS) and shared or replicated storage technology to coordinate access to a pool of disk resources in the cluster. This provides consistent disk presentation no matter which host the container is active on. DxEnterprise can support any current version or edition of Microsoft SQL Server and OS across any physical, virtual, hybrid, or cloud infrastructure.

"Organizations today are struggling with simple ways to achieve true workload and data portability while also supporting the high availability they need for critical Windows Server applications and services," said Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder, DH2i. "DxEnterprise uniquely enables these benefits while featuring strong datacenter orchestration and policy-based management so that enterprises can more easily meet even the most demanding SLAs. Our new Sandbox Lab was developed to give prospects and partners an easier way to test drive our solution so that they could quickly see the benefits without undergoing lengthy on-premises implementations."

To view a DxEnterprise product tour visit: http://dh2i.com/product-tour-and-free-trial/dxenterprise. To sign up for time in the DH2i Sandbox Lab environment to test the solution live, visit http://dh2i.com/trial.