Businesses constantly seek to optimize their infrastructure, improve operational efficiency, and ensure business continuity. Knowing this, virtualization has emerged as a powerful solution to achieve these general objectives, as it is the sole foundation of cloud computing. It better enables organizations to create virtual representations of their IT environment including servers, storage, virtual machines, and networks, among others.

At WEI, we understand the benefits of virtualization, which essentially allows IT teams to improve their resource efficiency, simplifies device management with a software-defined VMs, minimizes downtime, and fast tracks provisioning into existing workflows. Ultimately, our VCDX certification allows our network and virtualization experts to empower customers, across all industries, to better realize the full potential of their VMware enterprise environment and take ownership of their hardware. Being one of just a handful of value-added resellers based in New England that hold this certification, our VCDX capability is a major differentiator as we serve customers across the globe.

So, what exactly is the VCDX certification, and why is it a critical resource for the enterprise? We recently spoke with our VCDX-certified Senior Architect and Virtualization Ambassador, , to find out. Mark earned his VCDX nearly 15 years ago and was one of the first non-VMware employees to earn the certification. Notably, he achieved this without today’s architectural guidance and mentors to lean on, although Mark proudly makes himself available as a mentor to today’s aspiring candidates.

Tech Talk: Identifying Proper Cluster Design For The Enterprise

Understanding The VCDX Certification

VMware Certified Design Expert stands as the highest credential offered by our longtime partner, VMware. It validates an individual’s in-depth knowledge, skills, and experience in designing and implementing complex VMware environments. In doing so, the expert must show they can articulate what an environment’s requirements are, identify what the customer’s desired outcomes are, identify constraints, and then identify risks for the business. During the certification process, the candidate must create detailed, logical documentation, effectively present and defend their design choices in front of a panel, and have a thorough understanding of all design aspects.

While the VCDX itself does not require passing a written exam, there are two mid-tier exams that must be passed before moving on to VCDX. These prerequisites include:

1. Obtaining the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) credential.
2. Securing both the VCAP-Design and VCAP-Administration certifications within a specific track.

“The certification process involves a comprehensive written exam, a detailed design submission, and a grueling defense of the design in front of a panel of VMware experts,” Gabryjelski shares. Earning these credentials demonstrates proficiency in both designing and administering VMware solutions. While VCDX-DCV focuses on advanced data center design expertise, VMware offers a comprehensive range of certification tracks beyond DCV, as follows:

• Cloud Management and Automation (CMA) Track
• Security (SEC) Track
• Network Virtualization (NV) Track
• End-User Computing (EUC) Track
• Application Modernization (AM) Track

These tracks cater to both beginners and experienced professionals, validating the essential skills needed to integrate and manage the technologies that deliver your desired business outcomes. Covering a wide range of technology areas, these tracks provide the flexibility to choose the path that best aligns with your virtualization career goals.

Why VCDX Certification Matters Today

As businesses embrace virtualization to drive agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency, the demand for highly skilled virtualization professionals is increasing. Here’s how the VCDX certification empowers WEI to address this growing need for customers:

1. Unmatched Expertise: As indicated above, VCDX-certified engineers can design, deploy, and manage complex virtualized environments with exceptional efficiency and precision. This means asking the right questions and making the best IT decisions the long-term ramifications in mind.
2. Strategic Design: A VCDX-certified engineer can suggest and design virtualized solutions that align perfectly with your organization’s specific needs and future goals. They can consider scalability, security, performance, and compliance factors to ensure your virtual infrastructure is properly future-proofed.
3. Problem-Solving Prowess: The VCDX program equips professionals with the ability to scope a VMware environment through an advanced lens that is focused on grasping the specific requirements for the customer’s IT systems, desired business outcomes, and identifying the limitations that must be considered when designing solutions.
   
   WEI Tech Talk: vSphere Upgrade and Why Infrastructure Testing Is Important
   
   

Beyond Certification: The Commitment To Empower Clients

Gabryelski also underscores WEI’s commitment to enabling customers through . This investment in customer enablement sets WEI apart, allowing clients to take ownership of their hardware and maximize its value while knowing they can rely on WEI for support and expertise. In a regularly scheduled workshop program, Gabryjelski leads workshops based on the following solutions, all designed to put customers in a better position to own and operate their environment:

• vSphere
• Disaster recovery workflows
• Backup and recovery strategy
• Introduction to PowerShell
• Introduction to Kubernetes

“I think that’s a huge differentiator, because it enables our customers,” says Gabryjelski. “What we end up doing is training our customers. They put themselves in a great position to own and operate, and they know they can come back to us for some assistance if they need it, or even another set of eyes, as they’re planning their next update or upgrade or migration activities.”

Partnering For Success

Choosing the right solutions provider can significantly impact your organization’s success. Under WEI’s VCDX guidance, our network and virtualization team can help you optimize your VMware enterprise deployment. Here, we can effectively collect and assess customer requirements to develop an architectural design that includes virtual infrastructure, configuration suggestions, and deployment validation methods. This also includes producing well-organized documentation, presenting and justifying solution choices, and comprehensively understanding all aspects of the design.

Drawing from his experience, Gabryelski shares how having direct access to a VCDX at WEI has accelerated a customer’s tech stack. He recounts a scenario where a longstanding customer with a sizable ESX infrastructure (80-90 ESX hosts) sought guidance on hardware replacement as the hardware was approaching unsupported status.

Through collaborative discussions, Gabryelski’s careful evaluation of the situation revealed deviations from best practices, which, although minor, provided an opportunity to make improvements. The customer initially requested a straightforward hardware swap, but an opportunity arose to guide them towards a more future-proof strategy. As vSphere’s next version approaches, it will introduce a new patching strategy. Recognizing this, the approach shifted to not only replacing old hardware but also rethinking the cluster’s structure to align with future requirements. This proactive strategy aims to minimize the need for further adjustments and additional projects in the coming years as the new hardware is integrated into the system.

Final Thoughts

We understand that your VMware environment is a major component to your overall IT infrastructure. To achieve your business goals, you deserve a reliable and experienced IT solution provider and partner to design, implement, and manage your virtualized data center with confidence.

Contact WEI today to learn how we can support you through strategic designs and innovative solutions to transform your infrastructure and help your business thrive in today’s dynamic digital landscape.

Next Steps: In this episode, the WEI Tech Talk Podcast welcomes WEI Senior Architect and Virtualization Ambassador Mark Gabryjelski. Mark has been practicing VMware since 2000 and is VCDX #23. Known as “Gabs” around the industry, he is one of the first non-VMware employees to have earned the certification.

Today’s episode will explain what the VCDX certification is and why it elevates WEI as an IT solutions provider. Mark also explains what his journey was like in earning his certification and how the program has evolved over the past several years. The content for this episode was recorded in January 2024.

The post The VCDX Advantage: Redefining IT Solutions With Virtualization Expertise appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Has your on-prem virtual host environment become saturated? Many organizations don’t want to admit to this, so here’s a good truth indicator to help answer the question: If your IT team is forced to perform basic maintenance on your virtual host infrastructure during evening, night, or weekend hours because there is no capacity to bring down infrastructure components during normal business operations, your answer is probably yes.

Virtual Cluster Saturation

Virtual host saturation inevitably happens over time. A primary culprit is mission creep, which is where the goals, objectives, or scope of a project gradually expand over time. In professional sports, we see the reality of salary creep for athletes. In 2000, the average NFL quarterback made $1.9 million. Twenty years later, the average salary stood at $10.5 million for a 450% increase! But this salary rise is made possible through expansive league growth, rising team values, control over media markets, and the importance of finding a franchise quarterback to lead a team for the next several seasons.

This brings us back to the virtual cluster, and the mission creep is virtual machine (VM). Either the number of VMs increases over time or VMs are overprovisioned. There will come a day when an IT leader realizes that the virtual cluster that performed so well in 2016 will no longer suffice. That’s not because the original cluster design failed to meet the initial requirements seven years ago. Rather, as time rolls on, business needs have changed, and workloads have expanded. The SQL report that took one hour to create in 2016 now takes twice as long in 2023.

Do You Take Your On-prem Virtual Cluster For Granted?

It’s easy to take your virtual cluster for granted. It quietly does its job in the background. Outside of the system admins that support it, the virtual cluster ends up being largely forgotten. The cloud isn’t like that. Cloud customers are reminded every month of their growing workloads when they see the bill come in. A slight uptick is instantly felt in the pocketbook while your on-prem VM cluster was paid for years ago.

However, while the growing saturation in your datacenter may not be fiscally expensive, it is costly in lost performance and missed opportunities. What’s more, your business leadership may be oblivious to the saturated state due to the workarounds that your experienced system admins miraculously perform regularly. One day, there will be a reckoning in which a disruptive event occurs for which there is no available work around.

Is Your Virtual Cluster Designed for Perfection?

If your virtual cluster was professionally designed and implemented, it had slack built into it at one point. It contained vacant capacity that allowed system admins to perform firmware updates on a host server during business hours. Most hardware failures also did not disrupt business workflows because the cluster design was resilient thanks to excess capacity.

Unfortunately, now that your cluster hosts twice as many VMs than it did originally, your cluster is unintentionally built for perfection in the same way that an airliner overbooks its flights. In the case of the airline, the overprovisioning of customers on every plane often plays out fine in the end as there are usually a small number of passengers who never make their flight due to one reason or another. But then, occasionally, everyone does show up and that is when things get strained. Some customers must be enticed to give up their seat, which either costs money or causes customer dissatisfaction. Similarly, you might get away with the practice of overprovisioned resources on your virtual cluster, but eventually you get burned.

Other Reasons for Virtual Cluster Saturation.

VM creep isn’t the only cause of virtual cluster saturation. Other reasons include:

• Poor capacity planning due to unrealistic assumptions concerning workload growth.
• Misconfigurations of component settings.
• Persistent hardware failures due to aged equipment.
• Insufficient resource allocation to service expanding workloads.

The Importance of an Optimization Assessment

A monthly bill isn’t required to alert you of the oversaturation of a VM environment. You need an optimization assessment performed by a team of virtualization experts. WEI has a team of experts that can properly analyze your virtual environment to assess its ability to meet the workloads of your business. We can identify any discovered shortcomings and advise how to address them. Understand that assessment recommendations don’t have to include new purchases. Often, a cluster simply needs a retuning as its original configurations cannot accommodate the modified workloads it must handle now.

In the same way that your vehicle requires scheduled maintenance, you should have an optimization assessment performed on a quarterly basis. This is even more critical today due to the highly dynamic nature of business today. Your business depends on your virtual cluster, so give it the respect and attention it deserves. Contact WEI today about an optimization assessment today. It is as easy as sending us an email and including optimization assessment in the subject to ensure prioritization.

Next Steps: WEI’s Mark Gabryjelski, who has been practicing VMware since 2000, and ESX since 2002, explains in the video below why it is wise to regularly perform an optimization assessment on an enterprise’s cluster infrastructure.

The post Here’s Why A quarterly Assessment Of Your Virtual Cluster Is Recommended appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Due to no staffing, our pharmacy will be closed on Thursday, December 21, 2022.

For months, signs reading like this have been a frequent occurrence at retail pharmacies across the country. Amid a national shortage of pharmacists and technicians, pharmacy closures and reduced hours have become the new norm. As a result, pharmacies have extended wait times to fill prescriptions, had less availability for vaccines and patient consults, and have seen growing customer dissatisfaction.

The sad reality is that the shortage is likely to worsen. But technology can help retail pharmacies weather the talent shortage.

According to the , the U.S. will see at least a 2 percent decline in pharmacists over the next ten years. Fewer workers and the upsurge in online retailers and tech-enabled startups entering the healthcare delivery space will make competition for qualified talent fierce.

Can Technology Help Retail Pharmacies Weather the Talent Shortage?

The short answer is yes. While there is no one perfect solution to overcome a worker shortage, implementing new technologies can alleviate many issues created by a lack of employees. For example, the manufacturing industry has struggled to fill jobs for more than a decade due to the “great retirement” of baby boomers exiting the industry and a lack of interest among younger workers to enter the sector. In response, manufacturers have invested heavily in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to reduce human involvement in repetitive and physically demanding tasks. The impact has been greater efficiencies, fewer injuries, and less quality issues on production lines.

While the pandemic ushered in many technology changes for retail pharmacies, more opportunities remain available.

According to a survey by Surescripts, nearly half of pharmacists (48%) reported an increase in technology use in the 18 months following the pandemic. The survey concluded, however, that “there still appears to be plenty of room for technology to improve everyday workflows and frustrating processes.”

Five Areas Technology Can Make the Biggest Impact on Retail Pharmacies

Technology leaders feel a growing pressure to find technology solutions to combat their retail pharmacy’s staffing issues. Digital transformation initiatives may be considered across the company, but which ones can significantly impact labor-related issues? WEI has implemented solutions to tackle five of retail pharmacies’ most pressing needs, resulting in reduced capitalized costs, shortened time to market, minimized operational expenses, and an improved customer experience.

1. Reduce Prescription Fulfillment Delays
   

Prescription verification is a critical last step in the filling process that requires a pharmacist’s sign-off. When faced with a shortage of pharmacists, stores may be forced to delay filling patient prescriptions for hours or even days, worsening patient dissatisfaction.

Fortunately, new virtual verification technologies can alleviate this issue. A pharmacist working miles away can be sent a high-resolution image of the medication to verify the prescription remotely. The highly secure technology solution complies with state laws and is a game changer for retail stores, helping prevent delays and gain efficiencies with existing staff.

2. Eliminate Medication Dispensing Errors
   

A technician (or a pharmacist if technicians are in short supply) spends considerable time manually processing hundreds of prescriptions daily. Unfortunately, as with many manual processes, human errors occur, a study in Patient Safety News reported that 68% of medication errors occur during administration.

With the introduction of digital drug dispensing systems (DDS), pharmacies have experienced zero errors and accelerated prescription processing. Per a study published in Innovations in Pharmacy, manual processing generated an average of 2.73 errors per month, while the DDS yielded zero errors. In addition, the digital system filled more prescriptions per month than staff members did by hand.

Such systems, which involve medication management software and medication dispensing machines, provide a dependable approach to medication management across locations. And these systems free up pharmacists to spend more time on profitable offerings, such as point-of-care testing, medication adherence services, and personal consultations.

3. Improve Medication Inventory Visibility
   

Another area ripe for improvement is medication inventory management. The timely availability of medications for patients directly impacts patient safety, satisfaction, and outcomes. Unfortunately, many stores rely on manual, error-prone methods, such as “eyeballing the bottle,” to capture inventory levels, methods that can cost companies millions of dollars annually.

For pharmacies to successfully manage real-time prescription medication inventory and monitor prescription expirations, planning teams need the right tools and technology. Automated systems, including wireless digital scales that communicate with a company’s inventory management system, are being utilized to support chain-wide inventory counts, forecasting, and replenishment.

4. Eliminate Manual Monitoring Activities
   

Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians have enough day-to-day tasks to attend to without the added responsibility of checking refrigeration temperatures. But to ensure a pharmacy remains CDC, VFC, and FDA compliant, these checks are required.

The introduction of cloud-based wireless temperature sensors enables remote temperature monitoring of vaccine and medication storage units and automated validation and data backups for compliance managers. Such systems are easily scalable to ensure compliance across multiple locations.

5. Streamlines Processes and Clerical Tasks
   

As noted above, pharmacists are spending more time handling paperwork and other clerical tasks. The widespread use of mobile technologies has created new opportunities for pharmacies to digitize many paper-based processes. This assistance is vital for teams that may be shorthanded or are busy retraining green personnel.

Retail Pharmacies Turn to Technology Partners to Support Digital Initiatives

Developing and implementing the right solutions is a massive undertaking for most in-house retail technology teams. By partnering with WEI, nationwide pharmacy retailers have a knowledgeable technology advisor who proves solutions work and delivers efficiently and accurately to go to market quicker. Our tailored solutions can:

• Reduce capitalized costs: We standardize across locations by combining best-of-breed technology and award-winning expertise.
• Shorten time to market: By providing effective material planning and inventory stocking strategies we enable fast rollouts. Our integrated logistics drive efficiency and accuracy.
• Minimize operational expenses: Our solutions reduce in-store installation efforts and generate savings via custom integration, fulfillment, and delivery programs.
• Improve customer experience: With innovative, scalable, agile response to evolving in-store technology.

Next Steps: Would any of the above-mentioned technologies help your nationwide pharmacy retailer locations? Let’s talk. We have developed technology solutions that can be quickly implemented to solve these pressing challenges. Complete the form below to request a call from a member of our technology team.

The post 5 Solutions to Alleviate Challenges From Retail Pharmacy Staffing Shortages appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

WEI is committed to helping organizations accelerate their by leveraging their validated services delivery capabilities around advanced VMware technologies. Today we are proud to announce the successful achievements of the Datacenter Virtualization and Desktop and Mobility VMware Master Services Competencies.

“Few VMware partners have earned the distinction of achieving two Master Service Competencies,” said WEI President Belisario Rosas. “WEI is proud to have earned these technical achievements.”

“VMware is pleased to recognize WEI for achieving Data center Virtualization and Desktop and Mobility Master Services Competencies. This achievement shows customers that partners like WEI are dedicated and invested, and have validated expertise in advanced VMware technologies,” said Jenni Flinders, vice president and worldwide channel chief, VMware. “We value WEI as a VMware partner, and appreciate their efforts in achieving this VMware distinction as they work to increase their service delivery capabilities.”

These achievements will assist WEI in developing customer-centric solutions for our clients in four distinct areas:

• Cloud Management and Automation – Designates expertise in delivery of VMware Cloud Management and Automation solutions and services with deep understanding and execution of cloud management design principles and methodologies.
• Data Center Virtualization – Designates expertise in delivery of environments and digital infrastructure services with deep understanding of and execution in Data Center Virtualization design principles and methodologies.
• Desktop and Mobility – Designates expertise in designing, installing, and maintaining and solutions with deep understanding of and execution in desktop and mobility design principles and methodologies to deliver a scalable and reliable digital workspace.
• Network Virtualization – Designates expertise in the delivery of VMware NSX environments and with deployment and optimization of NSX environment capabilities.

Let WEI Help Guide Your Digital Transformation

When it comes to delivering or obtaining the right set of cloud services, WEI routinely pairs industry best practices with top-flight technologies and its own brand of innovation. The result? The right cloud-based solution at just the right time for any enterprise. Contact us today to get started.

The post WEI Masters VMware Services Competency in Data center Virtualization, Desktop, and Mobility appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.