Citrix Enables Business Continuity for Microsoft Hyper-V Customers

Extending its strategic virtualization partnership with Microsoft, Citrix today announced a new version of its virtualization management solution for Microsoft Hyper-V. The new Citrix Essentials™ 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V will now include Citrix® StorageLink™ Site Recovery, a powerful set of tools that make end-to-end business continuity accessible, affordable, and easy to deploy. Citrix will make the solution available in both an Express edition, to provide customers an easy way to test and deploy disaster recovery, and as part of a full-featured Platinum edition.

As virtualization becomes more broadly deployed in corporate datacenters, companies of all sizes are increasingly moving mission-critical applications into virtual machine environments, enhancing the need for proven and reliable disaster recovery systems. Site recovery solutions for virtual environments, however, have remained complex and expensive to implement.

Now, with the new StorageLink Site Recovery capability from Citrix, customers will be able to setup, test and manage disaster recovery services, including utilization of storage hardware for replication, through a single console, using a set of intuitive operations. In addition, new features in StorageLink Site Recovery allow customers to test “what-if” disaster recovery scenarios, ensuring confidence that systems can be restored in the event of an outage. Customers can also choose to integrate recovery services directly with their existing systems management applications, making it easier than ever to protect key assets. In total, StorageLink Site Recovery provides customers with a comprehensive end-to-end solution that orchestrates the implementation, management, testing and failover processes – at significant savings when compared to alternate solutions.

Citrix Extends Microsoft Server Virtualization, Minimizing Risk in Deploying Disaster Recovery Services
As a result of this collaboration, Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center customers are able to minimize risk in introducing disaster recovery services by gaining immediate access to StorageLink Site Recovery Express, which is part of Citrix Essentials 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V Express edition. This edition allows recovery of unlimited Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines on up to two host servers at no additional charge. Organizations that require protection for more than two host servers can easily upgrade to the broader Platinum edition of Citrix Essentials 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V.

StorageLink Site Recovery Enhances Full Citrix Essentials Solution
The new StorageLink Site Recovery technology available in the Citrix Essentials 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V offers advanced virtualization management capabilities that extend the benefits of Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center. These capabilities include dynamic provisioning services for deploying physical and virtual workloads from a single consolidated image, workflow management to automate IT processes, and lab and stage management for automating the lifecycle of software development processes. StorageLink Site Recovery adds disaster recovery services to these existing capabilities.

Pricing and Availability
StorageLink Site Recovery is available immediately with Citrix Essentials 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V Platinum edition. The StorageLink Site Recovery Express edition will be available for download on December 23, 2009, as part of Citrix Essentials 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V Express edition.

Customers can download Citrix Essentials 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V Express edition free of charge. Citrix Essentials 5.5 for Microsoft Hyper-V Platinum edition is available for download at the following suggested list price.

• Express edition – available as a free download
• Enterprise edition – $1,500 per physical server
• Platinum edition – $3,000 per physical server