Pillar Arrays Supporting Citrix StorageLink

The Pillar AxiomONE Release 4.1 from Pillar Data Systems supports the Citrix StorageLink technology in Citrix XenServer to provide further integration for simplified virtual infrastructure management. The new Citrix XenServer 5.6 provides multi-path support natively for Pillar Axiom Arrays for XenServer hosts.

                                 Citrix StorageLink

StorageLink provides virtualization administrators with a single management interface for both Citrix virtual machine deployments and Pillar Axiom storage arrays. Combining Citrix StorageLink with the Axiom arrays allows users to fully utilize the capacity and computing power of their existing physical servers and storage arrays. The combination results in server consolidation, power and space savings, high server availability and affordable disaster recovery. With built-in, system wide Quality of Service that allows administrators to match storage and server resources with business Service Level Agreements, Pillar’s Axiom provides a robust platform for Citrix virtualization environments.

“StorageLink is a key part of our strategy to simplify and enhance virtualized storage environments,” said Benn Schreiber, Director of Business Development, Citrix Systems. “By integrating with more partner platforms, our customers get added flexibility that helps them generate cost savings. Customers can be assured that any environment virtualized with XenServer and Hyper-V will work seamlessly with their Pillar storage systems.”

“With so many businesses embracing virtualization as a way to streamline operations and reduce overall costs, it’s surprising that they continue to allow legacy storage infrastructures to limit the business benefits,” said Bob Maness, Vice President, Worldwide Marketing and Channel Sales, Pillar Data Systems. “The Pillar Axiom was designed to virtualize Cache, CPU and Capacity resources with simplicity and ease of use in mind. In conjunction with the Axiom, StorageLink allows us to offer greater operational flexibility to administrators who are virtualizing CPU, cache and network resources, so they can reap greater rewards on their virtualization investments.”

The Citrix-integrated Pillar Axiom

• The XenServer Profile is a drop-and-click priority policy that maximizes Axiom resource utilization, enabling storage and performance services matched to each application transaction’s business importance. The Axiom then assigns its cache resources, CPU resources, appropriate drive type, and spindle striping algorithms according to XenServer best practices and application importance.
• Pillar’s AxiomOne Path Manager for Citrix XenServer provides dynamic multi-path load balancing and failover capabilities to increase availability and performance for critical virtual machine infrastructure.

Pillar Axiom in Virtualized Environments

• The Pillar Axiom’s unified storage architecture allows users to consolidate SAN and NAS from a single storage pool within a single system, and its ability to be provisioned in a similar way as virtualized severs make it ideal for any virtualized environment. It’s the only unified storage system in the industry that can be automatically and dynamically optimized for server virtualization environments.
• The Pillar Axiom is the only storage system that allows administrators to provision storage uniquely tuned to the application need and priority, running on virtual servers. Storage can be provisioned in both a ‘thin’ and ‘physical’ context.

Citrix StorageLink
StorageLink supports all third party storage architectures and delivers deep integration with leading storage platforms allowing users to switch seamlessly between XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V platforms.