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Storage virtualization and disaster recovery provider DataCore Software said Aug. 6 that it has joined with Citrix Systems to distribute a free virtual storage area network appliance for IT managers to test out.
The Virtual SAN Appliance software will enable IT shops that use Citrix’s virtual server tools to test out DataCore’s storage software at no cost.
DataCore said Citrix has “released a Citrix StorageLink adapter to integrate its storage virtualization solutions with Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V. The Virtual SAN Appliance evaluation software … [connects] Citrix Essentials with a StorageLink-certified, iSCSI shared-storage SAN that can pool up to 1TB of disk space.”
It should be no surprise that none of this will work with VMware’s ESX hypervisor, since Citrix is a dyed-in-the-wool competitor of VMware, the world’s largest virtualization software company.
The virtual appliance also features thin-provisioning storage for virtual machines, speeds up application performance and creates snapshots for “Instant Volume Cloning and Fast Disk-to-Disk Backups,” DataCore said.
Thin provisioning is a method of storage resource management and virtualization that lets IT administrators limit the allocation of physical storage to what applications immediately need.
Thin provisioning also enables the automatic addition of capacity on demand up to preset limits so that IT departments can avoid buying and managing excessive amounts of disk storage.
The DataCore Virtual SAN Appliance and StorageLink Adapter can be downloaded here.