DataCore Software has teamed up with Citrix to promote the combination of virtual servers and virtual storage.

Citrix is going to distribute a free-to-try downloadable DataCore Virtual SAN Appliance alongside its Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V and XenServer.

To make this possible, DataCore has released a Citrix StorageLink adapter to integrate its storage virtualization solutions with Essentials.

It's meant to remove a barrier to Hyper-V and XenServer virtualized infrastructure deployments - shared storage SANs.

Through StorageLink, DataCore says it presents Essentials with virtual disks that are well behaved, non-stop, lightning fast and waste-free, even though the physical storage behind it may come from a variety of manufacturers and be of different prices, ages and quality.

Essentials adds server virtualization management.

The eval iSCSI shared storage SAN can pool up to 1TB of disk space, thin-provision storage to virtual machines, speed up application performance and create snapshots for instant volume cloning and fast disk-to-disk backups.

The DataCore Virtual SAN Appliance and StorageLink Adapter can be downloaded at http://www.datacore.com/virtualSANappliance.

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