14 Feb 2008 01:30 PM EST

Ashlee Vance of the register has unfortunately mis-told the story about XenServer and Symantec Storage Foundation.  So just to ensure all the facts are out there, this is the story:

XenSource signed an important partnership with Symantec about 9 months ago, that would allow us to integrate Symantec Storage Foundation as an included volume manager in XenSource's XenEnterprise product.    The deal was based on the realities of the XenSource situation at the time - namely we were an independent company with our own routes to market.  The Symantec Storage Foundation would be included for customers at no additional charge, when they purchased XenEnterprise.  Also included in XenEnterprise is a standard Linux based volume manager, LVM, as well as storage repositories for VHD based virtual hard disks on NFS, and iSCSI "LUN per VDI" storage.

When Citrix acquired XenSource, our route to market changed - or rather was amplified - by the Citrix channel partners.  The Symantec agreement, which we still view as critical to our ability to address the massive installed base of storage without requiring customers to change their processes, training or technologies for storage management, is now being re-drafted to expand its scope and to ensure that there is complete alignment between Symantec and Citrix in the market.  A key part of this is ensuring that the channel is trained to distribute, install and support our product and all of its component technologies, including those of our partners where relevant.  Although our integration work against Symantec Storage Foundation is complete, we have not yet completed the work necessary to ramp the channel training, support and certification with the additional Symantec storage management capabilities, so it has been omitted from the XenServer 4.1 release. 

Ashlee inferred that this is all about Citrix trying to make money from the deal.  The contrary is true.  We're keenly interested in helping our partners make money from what we do with XenServer, because it divides the overall value pie more equitably across the ecosystem and thereby strongly incentivizes the channel and our partners to deliver more Citrix product. 

The omission of Storage Foundation from XenServer 4.1 should not be read as any change in the strength or strategic nature of our partnership with Symantec.  On the contrary, Symantec is possibly our most strategic ISV partner, because Citrix is not, and never will be a storage management vendor and Symantec offers one of the industry's most powerful capability sets for managing the diverse storage infrastructure used by our customers today.  Our product is built to take advantage of the powerful storage management products provided by our partners, and in the area of volume management, Symantec is the market leader and a key go-to-market partner.  Suffice it to say that as soon as we have nailed down the specifics of how to go to market with Symantec now that we are part of Citrix, we believe our solution will be much more compelling than the closed, proprietary storage architecture of VMware's, and we are going as fast as we can to get it finalized.

  

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Thanks for the update Simon, it looked like things were going dark with the Symantec integration. At this point I don't personally understand how this works and how it will impact our customers using other (or no) management tools, or of course storage side tools. Are there plans to support the SMI-S framework as well?

Posted by Jame Ervin at Feb 14, 2008 16:55 | Reply To This

Now, now, Simon. Did I infer or did you not say that this had shifted from a free to a fee product? I'll note that you never contacted me about this. Rather odd way to go about things, since I've spent an awful lot of time writing about your companies. AV

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 14, 2008 22:11 | Reply To This

Sure Simon!  The channel wasn't ready for the "features" you promised.  Come one, seriously?  If the integration is ready, ship it.  Don't blame the channel for Citrix's failure to figure out how to charge for something that was promised as a no-charge feature.  So your saying the channel was perfectly adept at absorbing all the other new features in 4.1 but Storage Foundations would have just been too much for us to handle?  I don't buy it.

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 15, 2008 18:35 | Reply To This

The sheer size and scope of the citrix channel requires alot of time, planning and training to rollout something this like this in addition to all the efforts required to integrate this existing product ino that channel. I am sure you can find something much more meaningful to attack citrix over than something like this.

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 17, 2008 13:40 | Reply To This

I can understand that the market has changed since Citrix has purchased XenSource but to say that the channel isn't ready to handle a new feature in a yet to be released product is crap. If the product offering has changed, then fine. At least be honest about it and don't blame those that sell the product for you. If anything, you've just hurt the channel and made XenServer a less attractive option comparatively. The longer Citrix waits with competitive advantage features, the harder it will be to compete with VMware.

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 19, 2008 09:34 | Reply To This

We were putting the XenServer and Veritas technologies together chiefly to address two specific issues: (a) multi-path access for shared storage and (b) testing and certification of storage systems.  We were not planning on leveraging the clustered file system, because (while we think files make decent encapsulation for moving virtual machines, and a decent lowest common denominator for file server based pooled storage) we think that people are paying for storage application value in their hardware -- even on low- and mid-range hardware -- and we don't believe that overriding the capabilities like snapshotting, thin provisioning, and fast cloning by putting a file system in the way is the right way to go.

You will see the capabilities we have always intended to deliver through this partnership -- multi-path and device support -- for free.  Capabilities that go beyond the basic foundation -- such as distributed storage virtualization -- will be a for-fee add-on, for reasons having as much to do with applicability and open source licensing as with channel or product strategy. 

When Simon says "the integration work is complete," in this case that's a lot like an engineer telling you the code is "done."  If it isn't fully tested and packaged for installation, it isn't done.  And from that perspective, it isn't done.

(And part of the approach we've taken as we've pulled back and re-examined it is a look at how to incorporate things like application-safe snapshots into the mix, as well as storage integration via standards such as SMI-S.)

Posted by Roger Klorese at Feb 19, 2008 19:20 | Reply To This

What do you mean by "free"? This will part of XenExpress? If not, then you can't say that it's free. The customer still has to pay for XenEnterprise. Just with any product, a company has to continue to add value if they expect the customer to but a SubA contract.

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 19, 2008 21:49 | Reply To This

Dear Brave Anonymous Commenter, Yes, you are right. It's not free. It is not, however, a paid add-on. While companies do of course need to continue to add value, that doesn't mean that every bit of value they add must be added for no additional cost. I was merely saying that this particular bit would be added with no extra cost. Others will be added with additional cost. Feel better now?

Posted by Roger Klorese at Feb 20, 2008 19:47 | Reply To This