DataCore Software, a provider of storage virtualization SAN software, today announced that its two storage virtualization solutions, SANsymphony and SANmelody, have been verified as Citrix Ready for XenServer 4.1.

The solutions are the first to earn the designation, company officials said.

DataCore SANmelody and SANsymphony SAN software runs on XenServer as a SAN Storage Virtual Appliance, as well as on physical servers.

The announcement was made by the company in anticipation of the Citrix Synergy conference, which opens May 20 in Houston, Texas.

Citrix Ready is a trademark of Citrix Systems Inc., a company which has been offering a comprehensive end-to-end infrastructure for application delivery that leverages server, application and desktop virtualization to make the entire IT infrastructure far more flexible and dynamic, company officials said.

Citrix XenServer, a Citrix Delivery Center family product, enables virtual server software companies to deploy high-performance virtual machines rapidly and effortlessly, company officials said. It proves be the most effective way to deliver dynamic data centers, company officials said.

The “Citrix Ready” designation is granted to third-party products that have successfully met verification criteria set by Citrix. By doing so, it makes partners products to work in Citrix environments, making it simpler for customers to identify solutions that can be used with confidence in Citrix environments.

“Now more than ever, storage virtualization is being adopted hand-in-hand with server, desktop and application delivery virtualization,” said George Teixeira, president and chief executive officer of DataCore Software.

Teixeira said, “Our storage virtualization software, which can be implemented as a virtual appliance or running on any standard physical software, creates a ‘storage usability layer,’ giving your storage the consolidation flexibility, simplicity, and utilization benefits of virtualization and the advantage of performing all your important storage services across all your physical storage as a single pool, instead of having to fuss with these devices individually.”

SANsymphony software, offered by DataCore, is an enterprise-class open storage networking platform that maximizes effective disk utilization and enhances productivity by eliminating storage-related downtime, company officials said. SANmelody is also a cost-effective solution that protects capacity expansion. This software is simple to operate and easy to install, company officials said. Further, it enables users to cost-effectively optimize, manage and protect data storage and disk space, company officials said.

Both implementations will support XenServer 4.1 virtual machines with virtual storage and advanced storage services critical to demanding virtual server environments. They include fail-safe data protection, high availability mirroring, disaster recovery replication, SANmotion data migration, thin provisioning storage pools and high-speed caching for performance acceleration.

This collaboration of DataCore virtual SAN solutions should be welcome news to Citrix, Sherron Associates, Inc., Digital Control, Integra Pacific Mortgage, Weishardt Group, Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls, DocuLegal and Douglas County, company officials said.

One customer in France, Weishardt Group, one of Europe’s largest manufacturers of gelatin used in the food production, life sciences, and other industries, has deployed SANmelody and Citrix XenServer in tandem.

According to their System Manager Philippe Ottin, “Our production environment is highly demanding, but we have met all our objectives with DataCore SANmelody and Citrix XenServer.”