Best Free Tool 5: Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V, Express Edition

Citrix hasn't traditionally been known for free software, but in recent months, it has been changing its pricing for virtual products. After announcing that it would make its flagship virtualization product XenServer free, Citrix has upped the ante by recently announcing a limited version of its virtualization management product Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V.

Why use this product over Hyper-V's management tool sets? Simply put, Citrix is known for its high-end management systems. Now that hypervisors in virtualization software are approaching feature parity, many in the industry are asking, "How do I best manage my virtual infrastructure?" Citrix has offers enterprise-ready solutions that wrap around existing systems to improve management workflow.
The Express Edition of Citrix Essentials will support up to two servers, which are both connected to a single storage array. It adds capabilities for the easy provisioning of storage through Citrix's StorageLink technology for iSCSI and Fibre Channel storage.