Open source
server virtualisation company XenSource will OEM Symantec
Corp.'s Storage Foundation Suite, gaining an important strategic
and technical boost against virtualisation giant,
VMware .
Starting this autumn, XenSource XenEnterprise users will get
data storage management capabilities,
including volume management, dynamic multipathing and
point-in-time copies from Symantec's Storage Foundation Suite,
embedded into the XenEnterprise hypervisor at no extra cost.
"Until now, we've come at VMware from below with a basic Linux
and Windows offering," said John Bara, vice president of marketing
at XenSource. "This deal gives us enterprise-class data center
features that bring us closer to them."
More specifically, XenEnterprise embeds Symantec's Veritas Volume
Manager (VxVM), a host-based tool that provides a single, logical
volume management layer over physical disk drives across
heterogeneous storage arrays. It will be centrally managed by
XenCenter. VxVM allows users to failover across different paths to
LUNs on storage arrays from different vendors, a feature not
available yet from VMware's Virtual Machine File System (VMFS).
"Veritas spent a lot of time certifying across every piece of
Fibre Channel gear on the market … By embedding their product, we
are able to leapfrog this certification hurdle saving resources and
time," said Ramana Jonnala, vice president of engineering at
XenSource. He added that VxVM has been on the market for 10 years
and has a huge installed base of customers.
On that point, Mark Bowker, senior analyst with Enterprise
Strategy Group, said XenSource will indeed be able to take
advantage of all the existing storage in place. However, he noted
that many companies looking at server virtualisation are getting
into networked storage for the first time. "People are looking at
infrastructure differently now, so this might not be as big of an
advantage as it seems."
XenSource has relocated several engineers to Symantec's labs who
will work permanently on joint offerings, including XenEnterprise
HighAvailability, for failover of virtual machines and
certification on Veritas NetBackup. No timeline was given for these
offerings. The companies have set up a joint help desk to simplify
customer support.
"This is a big strategic move and gives significant new
credibility to XenSource," according to James Staten, principal
analyst at Forrester Research. "For Symantec, it's a counter move
to the EMC VMware juggernaut and a move the industry has been
waiting for," he said. Furthermore, he sees the announcement as a
"first step" in a tighter relationship between the two companies.
Staten predicted an OEM deal going the other way at some point,
under which NetBackup and other Veritas products could be deeply
integrated with XenEnterprise beyond basic certification.
Still, he said XenSource has a long way to go to catch VMware,
which is believed to have anywhere from 50% to 75% of the market,
depending on which reports you believe. "It doesn't put XenSource
on an equal footing with VMware by any means, but it lends them
credibility and points them in the right direction," Staten
said.
XenSource claims to have 600 customers, although was unable to
provide any that we could talk with by press time.