Virtualization Scales Out at VMworld
Storage vendors spew virtualization at this week's VMworld show
September 17, 2008
Cloud storage, backup, and managed services are all high on the agenda at VMworld this week, as vendors attempt to catch a ride on the virtualization wave.
Citrix
VMware rival Citrix used its competitors show to unveil ramp up its cloud strategy and unveil Version 5 of its flagship XenServer software, which it claims has received some 130 different enhancements.
Citrix CTO Simon Crosby told Byte and Switch that the upgrade, for example, includes a feature called "automated high availability."
“We prioritize your VMs on the basis of high availability,” he says. “For example, my Exchange server needs to come back first, before my file and print servers.”
Citrix has also expanded the list of storage arrays supported by XenServer, adding, for example, a direct plug-in to devices from Dell/EqualLogic.“That lets users use the built-in features of the array to do backup and cloning for the VM on the array, rather than on the host,” he says. “It saves a ton of time.”
Pricing for XenServer 5, which is available now, remains the same as for Version 4 of the technology.
Like VMware, which threw its weight firmly behind cloud storage this week, Citrix is also keen to boost this side of its business.
The vendor used VMware’s annual get-together to take the wraps off its Citrix Cloud Center (C3) offering, a repackaged bundle of hardware and software aimed specifically at service providers.
C3 includes the vendor’s XenServer cloud edition software, a NetScaler layer 7 switch, a WanScaler WAN optimization appliance, and Citrix’s Workflow Studio software.“It’s an ‘'in-place' upgrade for Xen-based Linux,” says Crosby. “You drop in our drives, but we keep the lid open for our service provider partners to deliver their own storage architectures.”
The exec would not reveal specific pricing for C3, although he did confirm that the service will be charged on a per-VM basis.
“We’re charging per VM, not per server, so our customers avoid a significant outlay of capital on day one,” he says.
Marathon technologies
Software specialist Marathon has teamed up with VMware rival Citrix to jointly develop XenServer High Availablilty (HA), which can manage failures on host servers. XenServer HA is part of Citrix XenServer 5.0 server virtualization offering, which was launched this week.