Citrix recently unveiled a new free Express Edition to its Citrix Essentials™ for Microsoft® Hyper-V™ lineup.  The Express Edition is immediately available for download and includes the game-changing Citrix StorageLink™ technology for Hyper-V.  With StorageLink, Windows administrators running Hyper-V virtual machines can dramatically simplify their storage management processes with quick and easy storage configuration and provisioning for their Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center virtual infrastructures.  Citrix Essentials helps Hyper-V administrators take full advantage of powerful storage-based features like deduplication, thin provisioning, cloning, snapshots and replication.

Citrix has also partnered with Citrix Ready™ Open Storage Program partners to make virtual SAN appliances available to help IT organizations get started immediately with Citrix Essentials regardless of their existing storage architecture.

• Download the free Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V Express Edition
• Download the Virtual SAN Appliance for Citrix Essentials from DataCore™

“Storage best-practices are beneficial for virtual machines as well as non-virtualized workloads. Traditionally, the overwhelming majority of server virtualization implementations have aggregated VMs into a single file system, preventing a large percentage of applications from being virtualized due to inadequate performance and flexibility.  With Essentials for Hyper-V, customers can take advantage of the storage services they already have while dramatically improving I/O performance and reducing overall disk consumption.”

-  Gord Mangione, vice president, Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix Systems.

Designed for Windows IT Professionals
The new free Express Edition of Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V is designed specifically for Windows IT professionals in the early phases of Hyper-V adoption.  It will allow them to take advantage of the benefits of shared storage with Hyper-V and simplify storage management in virtual server environments.

The StorageLink technology featured in all editions of Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V provides Windows IT professionals with the tools necessary to easily manage Hyper-V storage in iSCSI and Fibre Channel (FC) SAN environments, enabling them to leverage advanced storage technologies from leading storage vendors that deliver powerful features for performance, storage efficiency, and business continuity.  Industry estimates have shown that by applying storage-saving technologies like deduplication and thin provisioning , Hyper-V customers can often shrink their storage footprint by upwards of 50 percent depending on the nature of their workloads.  In cases where virtual machines (VMs) are highly duplicated, like virtual desktop images, many have seen a nearly 90 percent reduction in Hyper-V storage consumption.

Upgrade to Enterprise or Platinum
The Express Edition of Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V supports up to two Hyper-V servers and one storage array.  Organizations that download the free Express Edition of Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V can easily upgrade to the Enterprise or Platinum Editions.  Listed at $1500 and $3000 per server, respectively, the Enterprise and Platinum Editions add dynamic server provisioning, automated lab management, automated stage management, and workflow orchestration.