Citrix vs WMWare: Citrix Storagelink tips the scales

I recently attended a webinar hosted by Linux Magazine on Citrix XenServer. It was an excellent presentation. One of the most significant revelations of the presentation was Citrix Storagelink. Those of you who regularly work with virtualization technologies know the many frustrations and concerns surrounding providing a proper storage infrastructure for virtualization. In particular, we often spend top dollar for high-end storage arrays from companies such as EMC in order to gain the support and high availability that these arrays offer. However, much of what makes these arrays high-end winds up being wasted in the implementation of these arrays for virtualization.

Enter Citrix Storagelink. You can read more about the benefits of this technology in this whitepaper. Citrix Storagelink enables the communication between virtual infrastructure and storage infrastructure in a way that allows the storage infrastructure's core and high-end features to continue to function. This is groundbreaking innovation in the virtualization space.

So, as my company deals with the recent acquisition of Virtual Iron by Oracle by evaluating other alternatives, storage management is an important component. With VMWare leading the industry, you may find it difficult to convince upper management that VMWare may not be the best solution. Virtual Iron, as well as Citrix, uses the underlying Xen engine so my first choice for replacement, apart from the storage issue, is Citrix. Perhaps with this additional information regarding Storagelink, you will also be successful in lobbying for Citrix over VMWare.

Tell us about your own virtualization woes and experiences. Have you considered this storage issue previously? Are you upset with the direction Oracle has taken with Virtual Iron? Do you prefer Xen-based virtualization solutions or are you content with VMWare? If so, why? We would love to hear from you.