PALO ALTO, Calif. - July 23, 2007 - XenSource, Inc., the leader of the open source Xen™ virtualization project, and a provider of enterprise virtualization solutions, today announced that it has signed an OEM agreement with Symantec to embed Veritas Storage Foundation, Symantec’s industry-standard storage management software into XenEnterpriseTM, and collaborate on delivering enterprise-class HA/DR and backup technology to XenSource customers.
By unifying the industry’s leading storage virtualization software with the industry’s leading open source hypervisor, customers can implement a scalable, high-performance virtualization platform that leverages their current storage investments, processes and environments.
“The combination of Symantec and XenSource can deliver an integrated server and storage virtualization solution that is fast becoming a requirement for many IT organizations,” said John Humphreys, program vice president of IDC's Enterprise Virtualization research. “The challenges of coordinating the migration of virtual servers across hosts in combination with massive storage growth and data movement requirements has been gaining increasing attention in the market. This partnership will enable customers to use the existing storage infrastructure of Symantec, while leveraging the advanced capabilities of XenEnterprise.”
By working with Symantec, XenSource will enhance XenEnterprise to address key customer needs in three areas:
- Unified Server and Storage Virtualization
XenSource will embed Veritas Storage Foundation within XenEnterprise to provide customers seamless storage management for major server and storage array and enable advanced storage functionality, including utilization optimization, dynamic multi-pathing and point-in-time copies.
- Resiliency and Business Continuity
XenSource will develop XenEnterprise High Availability, a new product which will be tested for certification by both Symantec and XenSource, to provide failover of virtual machines, ensuring business continuity for enterprise applications.
- Data Protection and Backup
To provide protection for critical applications running within XenEnterprise virtual servers, Veritas NetBackup will be jointly tested for certification.
“XenSource’s open architecture allows for integration of storage virtualization technology directly in the hypervisor, allowing customers to realize the same benefits of Storage Foundation in their virtual environments that they enjoy in their physical environments,” said Aaron Aubrecht, senior director of Storage Foundation product management, Symantec. “This tight integration of storage and server virtualization technology eases complexity associated with deployment, allowing enterprise customers to reduce their capital and operating expenses, while leveraging trusted technology from Symantec.”
“Our data must be absolutely reliable,” said Fred Wettling, Bechtel fellow, Office of the CTO, Bechtel Corporation. “We leverage both Symantec and XenSource technologies. Going forward we see the integration of Symantec storage management, HA/DR, and backup with XenEnterprise virtualization as a solid solution to address important aspects of business continuity.”
XenEnterprise customers will benefit by having XenSource as the single point of contact for support on their server and storage virtualization solution, enabling easier and faster upgrades since retesting and recertification of independent software packages isn’t required. XenEnterprise customers on full maintenance agreements will benefit from the new features from Storage Foundation as a no cost upgrade.
“Customers want a unified server and storage solution that extends their existing storage management investments,” said John Bara, vice president of marketing, at XenSource. “The inclusion of Veritas Storage Foundation inside XenEnterprise ensures customers will get the best of breed in virtualization and storage management in a single, unified solution from XenSource – addressing the need for mission-critical applications in the production environment.”
Product Availability
Starting as early as this fall, XenSource products will include key storage management products from Symantec, and joint customers will benefit from the ability to leverage the complete, enterprise-class storage stack from Symantec, which will be fully integrated, certified, and supported with XenEnterprise.
About XenSource Virtualization Products
For customers seeking to reduce the number of under-utilized servers in their IT infrastructure, XenSource virtualization products help dramatically reduce server hardware and operating costs through savings on power, space, cooling, and system maintenance. Offering high performance virtualization within an easy to use virtualization platform, XenSource supports both Windows and Linux servers. XenSource products are based on the Xen™ hypervisor, and offer easy to use Windows and Linux virtualization solutions with built-in virtual machine lifecycle management, at breakthrough price and performance. XenSource products are being adopted worldwide in enterprises to increase server utilization, support server consolidation, and reduce total cost of ownership.
About XenSource, Inc.
Founded by the inventors of the open source virtualization engine known as the Xen™ hypervisor, XenSource is the leading provider of enterprise virtualization solutions based on Xen™. Companies worldwide deploy and trust XenSource products to increase resiliency and reliability of their business operations, improve the speed and agility of their IT investments, improve security and realize the TCO savings that result from server consolidation, increased utilization, and reduced complexity in the datacenter. For more information, visit http://www.xensource.com.
XenSource, Xen, XenEnterprise, XenServer, XenExpress, XenCenter, XenEnterprise High Availability and XenEnterpriseHA are trademarks of XenSource, Inc. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.