Citrix XenServer for Free; What does server virtualization for free mean for storage virtualization?

Opinion, more server virtualization projects will feed storage virtualization deployments. Is this a trend? Is server virtualization becoming a commodity?

The battle at the virtual server market is heating up and these are the questions being asked. So what just happened? Citrix is now making XenServer free since it has had a hard time making inroads against the giant VMware and Microsoft’s Hyper-V initiatives and pricing (see articles below). A benefit of the industry cost battle is that it helps fuel more virtualization projects…which obviously stresses the need for shared storage SANs but the high cost of the SAN (often the largest cost item - typically costing well over $75k) then becomes the major hurdle to virtualization deployments.

This virtualisation and consolidation of servers results in 2 major pain points - it concentrates I/O performance (slows it down) and since all the applications are running on fewer servers it magnifies the impact of interruptions on business continuity -the 'All the eggs in one basket' impact: InformationWeek - Virtualization Driving SMB/SME Storage . This battle at the virtual server level bodes well for DataCore high-availability SAN software solutions… since DataCore overcomes these critical pain points. Citrix XensServer is now Free (XenCenter, XenMotion, Resource Pools, etc. ). Check out this overview: http://www.virtualization.info/2009/02/citrix-xenserver-is-now-free-xencenter.html