StoneFly announced that all of its IP SAN configurations have completed Citrix Ready compatibility verification testing for use with server virtualization solutions from Citrix Systems.

StoneFly's High-Availability Storage Concentrator (HSC), Integrated Storage Concentrator (ISC) and OptiSAN Storage Concentrator product lines have been optimized for Citrix XenServer server solutions, which are designed for virtualizing application workloads across any number of servers in the datacenter.

"Efficient, highly available storage is a vital component in every virtualization scenario, and is often underestimated," said David Roussain, group VP of product marketing, Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix Systems. "With Citrix XenServer virtualization, StoneFly's customers can increase server and storage utilization, while reducing expenditures on equipment, power, cooling, and datacenter space. StoneFly is a great addition to our growing list of ecosystem partners."

The compatibility bolsters StoneFly's existing support for fast integration of networked storage with virtual servers -- available via StoneFusion, the company's IP-based, block-level provisioning platform. StoneFly pioneered storage virtualization over five years ago with StoneFusion, which centralizes storage management, control and monitoring of logical storage volumes.

According to Bahman Jalali, director of product management for StoneFly, the certification comes as market demand has risen dramatically for consolidated server and storage resources, amidst a growing need to provision storage and server resources centrally. "Now, we can leverage our relationship with Citrix to build upon our mature storage virtualization platform while also providing our customers with a higher level of XenServer expertise," he said.

XenServer compatibility allows StoneFly to further simplify IP SAN deployment for its customers: StoneFly's support for network boot technologies (both software and hardware initiator based) in diskless virtual server environments saves IT administration time, and streamlines operations. Customers can also reduce datacenter costs and consolidate resources by using IP SANs to facilitate the use of diskless servers and virtual servers.

By taking advantage of the strength within the Citrix channel, StoneFly's reseller network will also benefit from this announcement, according to Ken Friend, channel and OEM director for StoneFly. "We are looking forward to our continued work with Citrix XenServer teams via our joint channel partners as we help solution providers strengthen their understanding of how they can benefit from combining IP SANs with XenServer deployments," said Friend. "To that end, our internal support and professional service teams have been refining their expertise in Xen virtualization practices in order to optimize our capabilities in this fast-growing area."

StoneFly is planning further enhancements over the coming months to its integration with Xen environments to build upon the seamless storage/server experience that it is providing to customers.