Server virtualization by Symantec

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced Veritas Virtual Infrastructure, the first solution to offer advanced storage capabilities for virtual server environments that effectively manage storage in large scale, x86 production environments. Expected to be available in the fall of 2008, Veritas Virtual Infrastructure combines new, advanced storage management capabilities from Veritas Storage Foundation with the flexible, high-performance Citrix XenServer virtualization technology from Citrix Systems. Veritas Virtual Infrastructure will allow users to fully benefit from server virtualization while both preserving current best practices in storage management from the physical environment and leveraging new opportunities provided by virtualized environments.

Server virtualization is transforming IT operations by reducing costs through higher resource utilization and reducing risk through increased operational flexibility. However, server virtualization makes storage management more complex and in many cases does not support capabilities available today in physical environments. Current x86 virtualization solutions have tried to solve this problem using a file system-based approach, but this architecture forces users to give up many of the advanced storage management capabilities they rely on today.

Veritas Virtual Infrastructure solves this challenge by preserving all of the key storage management benefits enterprise customers rely on in their physical environments, but are not available in current file-system based virtualization approaches, including:

• Direct control of block storage from a guest virtual server
  
• All block storage functionality including mirroring across heterogeneous arrays
  
• Proven, mature SAN multi-pathing to ensure data availability

Moreover, Veritas Virtual Infrastructure leverages the flexible, open architecture of Citrix XenServer to deliver new capabilities, including:

• Reduced storage costs by using common, shared boot images across multiple virtual servers
  
• Increased storage utilization by simplifying the provisioning of additional storage, thereby reducing over-provisioning
  
• Increased control by empowering administrators with one tool to seamlessly manage both virtual servers and storage

Veritas Virtual Infrastructure uses a new distributed volume manager specifically designed to deliver advanced storage management capabilities for virtual servers. Unlike current approaches that prevent virtual servers from directly managing storage, Veritas Virtual Infrastructure uses a client/server architecture that establishes a unique, individual relationship between each virtual server and its underlying storage, just as if it were a physical server. Furthermore, because it leverages Storage Foundation, users can realize all of these benefits from their existing, heterogeneous SAN storage.

Enterprise customers are increasingly recognizing the enhanced openness and scalability of the Citrix XenServer virtualization platform. Including XenServer as an integral component of Veritas Virtual Infrastructure gives IT organizations an enterprise-class solution that dramatically simplifies the interaction between server virtualization and storage management in an open and non-proprietary way. As a result, customers can accelerate their plans to deploy virtualization across heterogeneous enterprise environments with the confidence that they have a robust and highly flexible solution upon which to build a dynamic datacenter.


Symantec Virtualization Strategy

Symantec is committed to enabling IT departments to fully capitalize on virtualization, regardless of what platforms, architectures or systems they choose to use. In addition to working closely with Citrix, Symantec is also working with leading providers of virtualization including HP, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, RedHat, Sun and VMware to ensure that users can leverage the Symantec solutions across these platforms. Recent examples of this include Veritas NetBackup’s Best of VMworld Gold Award for Data Protection and Veritas Cluster Server’s unique ability to provide application availability in VMware ESX3 environments. Symantec is committed to industry-leading data protection, systems management, storage management, high availability and security for virtualized environments.


Pricing and Availability

Veritas Virtual Infrastructure is expected to be generally available Q4 2008 with proposed pricing starting at $4,595 per 2 socket server.

The solution combines new storage management features of Veritas Storage Foundation with the Citrix XenServer virtualization technology from Citrix Systems. Many companies are using server virtualization to leverage existing IT resources and save on operating costs. Other new features include the use of joint, distributed boot images across multiple virtual servers across the combination of multiple physical servers into logical, flexible server pools, and better resource utilization with reduced administrative overhead.