Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V

Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V includes:

• Automated lab management - enables Hyper-V customers to develop, test and deliver applications faster by automating and simplifying the entire virtual machine lifecycle, including movement across virtualization platforms.
• Advanced storage integration - using Citrix StorageLink technology makes it easy for Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center customers to fully leverage all the native power of their existing array-based storage systems.
• Dynamic provisioning services - lets customers centrally manage a common set of master images which can be streamed on-demand into Hyper-V virtual machines or physical servers.
• Hypervisor interoperability - makes it easy for customers to manage virtual machines across heterogeneous Hyper-V and XenServer environments.

Citrix Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V provides server virtualization with a powerful set of advanced virtualization management capabilities that extend the enterprise management capabilities of Windows Server 2008 environments to help make Hyper-V and System Center more scalable, more manageable and more agile.

Citrix Essentials for XenServer

Citrix Essentials for XenServer includes:

• Automated lab management - enables Hyper-V customers to develop, test and deliver applications faster by automating and simplifying the entire virtual machine lifecycle, including movement across virtualization platforms.
• Advanced storage integration - using Citrix StorageLink technology makes it easy for Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center customers to fully leverage all the native power of their existing array-based storage systems.
• Dynamic provisioning services - lets customers centrally manage a common set of master images which can be streamed on-demand into Hyper-V virtual machines or physical servers.
• Hypervisor interoperability - makes it easy for customers to manage virtual machines across heterogeneous Hyper-V and XenServer environments.

Citrix Essentials for XenServer extends advanced server virtualization management capabilities to Citrix XenServer environments to help customers create highly scalable, manageable and agile virtual infrastructures. The solution supports the IT administrator throughout the application delivery lifecycle enabling optimized usage of computing resources through intelligent workload placement and rapid provisioning of new resources on demand. It also streamlines storage management in virtual environments with simple backup and maintenance through integration with existing storage platforms.

Citrix Essentials Editions

Platinum Edition:

For enterprise Hyper-V environments looking to streamline the management of virtual infrastructure from lab through production. The Platinum Edition includes lifecycle management tools, simplified storage management, dynamic provisioning services and workflow orchestration.

Enterprise Edition:

For Hyper-V environments with a need to simplify storage management, streamline the roll-out and maintenance of server workloads and automate IT workflows. The Enterprise Edition provides simplified storage management, dynamic provisioning services and workflow orchestration. 

Citrix and Microsoft Solutions – Better Together

Essentials for Hyper-V enables Windows IT professionals, storage managers and virtualization project managers to accelerate virtualization projects and move production workloads onto Hyper-V quickly, with less effort, and scale as business needs grow.

Essentials for Hyper-V is based on the Microsoft Management Console 3.0 and provides a consistent management experience for administrators by integrating with System Center Virtual Machine Manager and other Microsoft tools you already own.

Storage Management

Essentials for Hyper-V delivers deep integration with leading storage platforms to reduce the cost and complexity of managing storage in Hyper-V environments. One-click access to native storage devices provides simplified management through storage configuration wizards that leverage existing storage array-based services and technologies directly from within the Microsoft Management Console.

Essentials for Hyper-V supports all storage architectures and works with existing Windows storage management products to deliver faster virtual machine deployment and lower storage management TCO in virtual environments.

Lifecycle Management

Essentials for Hyper-V automates the management of virtual machine lifecycles to reduce the complexity, time and cost of developing and maintaining applications in lab and production environments. Take advantage of lab management tools within Essentials for Hyper-V to automate the setup and tear-down of application test beds. Develop, test and deploy production applications faster by sharing configurations, software images and pre-built production workloads from a central repository. Reduce virtual machine sprawl with fine-grained controls for managing the ownership and use of virtual machines, and retiring resources that are not actively used.

Provisioning Services

Essentials for Hyper-V accelerates the roll-out of server workloads, dramatically improves IT agility and simplifies ongoing IT administration by dynamically provisioning countless workloads from a single server image. With Essentials for Hyper-V, organizations can reduce both storage costs and the burden of patching, maintaining, testing and supporting dozens or hundreds of separate server images. Essentials for Hyper-V further improves IT efficiencies with its broad coverage for datacenter infrastructure. It can provision workloads to both physical and virtual servers, and to multiple hypervisor technologies, including Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. It even allows administrators to provision complete Windows Server 2008 images, including the hypervisor, to a bare metal machine, with or without internal disks.

Essentials for XenServer Platinum Pricing Promotion

Customers can now purchase an unlimited number of Essentials for XenServer Platinum licenses at a 40% program SRP discount when they purchase 100 or more XenApp licenses or 100 or more XenDesktop licenses. This offer will be in effect through the close of business December 31, 2009.

This promotion:

• Is valid only at time of purchase of the XenApp or XenDesktop licenses <br>
• Applies to the purchase of new and/or upgrade licenses for XenApp (Advanced, Enterprise and Platinum editions); and new and/or upgrade licenses for XenDesktop (Advanced, Enterprise and Platinum editions)
• Is good under all Licensing/Procurement programs (EASY, ELA, GELA, Education)
• Requires customers to renew SA at normal SAR rates