* Citrix-XenSource from a storage point of view
Citrix’s acquisition of server virtualization vendor XenSource is good from a storage standpoint. Let me explain why.
XenSource’s XenEnterprise v4 incorporates a number of storage technologies, including support for snapshotting and pooled storage. XenEnterprise supports all forms of locally-attached storage, as well as shared networked storage. In XenEnterprise, storage is abstracted through a common component called storage repository. Storage repository is a pluggable component – there’s an API through which users can plug in storage repositories dynamically.
“The architecture of XenEnterprise gives it access to a much broader range of storage configurations for clustered hosts than VMware supports,” says Simon Crosby, CTO of XenSource. “When VMware does clustering or resource pooling they use clustering based on Fibre Channel and a clustered file system called VMFS, which is proprietary.” That gives VMware a global name space, says Crosby, and a way to expose storage to a wide range of host computers in the infrastructure.
XenEnterprise supports a partnership with Symantec, which will be in a .1 release of XenEnterprise later this year. XenEnterprise also supports a global name space using a Network File System share. The pluggable API supports calling out to any kind of repository that would support thin provisioning, snapshotting, backup or virtual disk images. In the case of software, XenEnterprise uses the Microsoft hard disk file or through raw block storage that supports those functions directly.
A XenEnterprise v4 license lists for $2,500, plus $500 per year for technical support.
