Citrix has made available a new solution called Citrix Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V, offering advanced virtualisation management capabilities for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

“Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V will enable Microsoft customers to obtain even more value from their investments in the Windows platform and Microsoft virtualisation solutions,” said Mike Neil, general manager, virtualisation strategy, Microsoft Corp. “We see Citrix Essentials as a powerful extension that enables customers to accelerate their Hyper-V adoption in the enterprise in much the same way Citrix XenApp has extended the Windows Server platform for nearly 20 years in the application delivery arena. Microsoft also will work to ensure that a future release of Microsoft System Centre will support Citrix XenServer for customers with mixed Hyper-V and XenServer environments.”
In another move to counter VMware’s lead, is to make its XenServer software free. “This move is all about accelerating the adoption of virtualization by tearing down the barriers of cost and complexity that have been in place for far too long,” said Simon Crosby, CTO, Virtualization Management Division, Citrix. The new free Citrix XenServer release will be available for download from the Citrix website by the end of March 2009.

One of the most powerful and innovative new features in the Citrix Essentials product line is the Citrix StorageLink technology.

The StorageLink capabilities in Citrix Essentials include the following four feature sets:

* StorageLink Gateway enables automated discovery and one-click access to native storage services using any of the leading storage architectures and protocols, including DAS, NAS, SAN, iSCSI and Fibre Channel.

* StorageLink Resource Manager makes common actions in native storage arrays visible from within the virtualization management environment, including partitioning, snapshots, backups and data replication.

* StorageLink Image Manager provides a centralized library of virtual machine images that can be instantly converted between XenServer and Hyper-V and rapidly cloned and delivered to any number of target hosts.

* StorageLink Connect provides a set of clearly-defined open APIs that make it easy to link XenServer and Hyper-V environments to third-party backup solutions and enterprise management frameworks.

“With three-quarters of servers still not virtualized and customer choices increasing, the virtualization market is still wide open”, according to Peter Levine, senior vice president and general manager of the virtualization management division at Citrix.

Citrix Essentials for XenServer was made available from Citrix resellers on April 7, 2009.