Pillar Data Announces Application-Aware Profiles Compatible with Citrix XenServer Platform

By VSM News Staff
published: Tuesday, November 25 2008

Certified for Citrix Ready Membership.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - November 25, 2008 - As a member of the Citrix ReadyTM Program, Pillar Data Systems, a leading provider of Application-Aware Storage Systems, today announced compatibility of its Application-Aware profiles with the Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure. Today's news builds on a series of certifications Pillar has made with the delivery of its Axiom Storage systems, which are now listed in the Citrix Ready catalog for XenServerTM  products.

The Pillar Axiom is the only storage system to allow administrators to provision storage uniquely tuned to the application need and priority running on virtual servers by using profiles. Storage can be provisioned in both a "thin" and "physical" context. The administrator simply selects an application profile from a drop-down menu in the AxiomONE management console. Once selected, the profile automatically configures the Axiom in a way that maximizes performance for the application running in a virtual machine by assigning greater priority, more cache, and faster spindles to those actions deemed most important.

"Citrix is a natural partner for us as the combined products fit together to optimize any virtual storage environment," said Bob Mannes, vice president, Marketing at Pillar Data Systems. "We are confident that our customers will be very pleased with the formal step we've taken to deliver a solution that helps them create efficiencies and reduce costs."

Pillar's Application-Aware systems alleviate the excess storage used to moderate the utilization and performance degradation associated with traditional storage systems in virtual environments. Pillar's profiles increase cost savings through the reduction of deployment time, management, and training costs, while providing as much as three times the disk utilization rates of competing storage systems. Additionally, the Axiom reduces storage administration complexity by automating data layout and volume allocation prioritization - even with applications that fluidly change due to virtual server resource scheduling and load balancing.

In addition to provisioning an array to provide optimal performance service levels to applications, the Axiom can dynamically assign or re-assign storage to improve performance for the applications deemed most important, allowing an increased amount of virtual machines to be placed on a physical server by clearing up back-end storage contention. This helps reduce or eliminate the server I/O bottleneck in high consolidation projects.

Through the Citrix Ready verification methodology, Pillar's Application-Aware profiles established compatibility with XenServer environments. This verification reinforces Pillar's longstanding commitment to providing application-centric storage services and helps users identify Pillar products that can be used with confidence within Citrix solutions.

The Citrix Ready program showcases and recommends solutions demonstrating compatibility with Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure. Through Citrix Ready, members' products and solutions receive exposure to more than 215,000 Citrix customers and 8,000 Citrix resellers. Citrix Ready participation generates new revenue opportunities, improves customer satisfaction, and increases mindshare leveraging the Citrix brand.

About Pillar Data Systems

Founded in 2001, Pillar Data Systems develops Application-Aware Storage systems for midsize and enterprise organizations. With the highest utilization rates in the storage industry, the Pillar Axiom solution is the most efficient storage system on the market today. The Pillar Axiom cuts administrative time and total cost of ownership by more than 50 percent as well as provides the only storage system that can differentiate services based on application priority. Designed from the ground up as the only true Application-Aware Storage system, the Pillar Axiom allows users to match multiple application characteristics to the appropriate service levels within a single storage platform. Pillar Data Systems is privately funded by Tako Ventures, LLC, the venture arm of Larry Ellison. The company is headquartered at 2840 Junction Avenue, San Jose, California 95134. The company can be reached on the Web at http://www.pillardata.com, by phone at 408-503-4000 or by email at sales@pillardata.com.