27.1 Introduction
Historically, ArchivistaBox has been created as a document management box (DMS). The basic idea behind this is that a standard computer is cheaper than the work of a specialist, who would set up the system manually.
While a standard operating system can be set up in 15 to 30 minutes, the basic installation does not include specialised applications ready for operation. Server services, updates, client and backup programs have to be manually and individually set up.
With the growing complexity of these processes, it has become common practice to set up a server for each specialised application. This is where virtualisation comes into its own. Instead of setting up a physical server for each solution, several specialised applications are bundled in a type of cage, each with its own operating system, and operated virtually on a powerful server.
However, advanced virtualisation solutions are still considered neither simple nor inexpensive. In addition to established products, OpenSource products have been available for a number of years now, but these require extensive Linux knowledge and skills to configure and maintain. We created ArchivistaBox because we wanted to overcome these limitations. Consequently, we began the search for a virtualisation solution that would be easy to set up and thus present an alternative for our customers.
The ArchivistaBox came about because we wanted to avoid precisely this. Consequently, we set out to find a virtualization solution that was easy to set up, so that we could offer our customers an alternative.
ArchivistaVM offers the possibility of integrating any operating system (especially Windows) elegantly into an ArchivistaBox or running many (Windows) servers on one or more ArchivistaBoxes with very modest maintenance costs. In the combination (with the ArchivistaDOM and ArchivistaK2 models or the corresponding options) of two or more ArchivistaBoxes, redundancy is available for the data of the virtualized operating systems across several ArchivistaBoxes. To ensure that this works 'just-in-time', the hard disks are synchronized between the different ArchivistaBox systems in real time using fast network cards (10 GBit, optionally 40 GBit) (keyword Distributed Replicated Block Device = DRDB).
Since ArchivistaBox 2021/III the distinction between ArchivistaVM and ArchivistaDMS or ArchivistaERP has been eliminated. All modules can always be found on each ArchivistaBox. However, when purchasing an ArchivistaBox it is possible to specify that the ArchivistaBox is to be used primarily as a server virtualization solution. In this case, the ArchivistaVM logon screen always appears when the IP address or DNS name of the ArchivistaBox is called up. In the other case, the ArchivistaDMS logon screen appears, whereby the ArchivistaVM logon screen can be called up there using the 'Home' button.