Last week Citrix announced the public beta of its premium management solution for the Microsoft hypervisor: Essentials for Hyper-V 5.5.
The main new feature of this version is the support for Hyper-V R2 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 (plus Windows 7, for the OEM’ed VMLogix Lab Manager), but it also introduces the StorageLink Site Recovery technology for Hyper-V.
StorageLink Site Recovery allows the Hyper-V administrators to control the replication features that their SAN arrays offer without using multiple consoles, and allows to test the recovery process by restoring the protected VMs in isolated, test networks.
The technology may become the foundation of a new product able to compete with VMware Site Recovery Manager, and now Citrix is in the position to offer it to its customers and the Microsoft ones.