Storagelink is a feature of XenServer which directly talks to the SAN to do snapshots and other features. The only thing you guys would have to do is ask if citrix will integrate readynas features in the storagelink software
Expanded Storage Integration leverages the groundbreaking StorageLink™ technology in Citrix Essentials to ensure that XenServer and Hyper-V are certified to work seamlessly with virtually every third-party storage infrastructure, array and backup system on the market today. While other virtualization products attempt to replicate storage-related functions in their own proprietary management systems, StorageLink takes a far more open approach that lets XenServer and Hyper-V customers directly leverage all the native power of their existing storage investments at a fraction of the cost. The new 5.5 release also adds the ability to fast clone and provision virtual machines, giving customers a single backup solution that spans physical and virtual resources, and making it easy for third-party providers to deliver unified backup and snapshot capability for both Hyper-V and XenServer environments. More than 20 leading storage vendors have certified or will be certifying their products to work with XenServer and Hyper-V as a result of the new Citrix Essentials 5.5 release (see today’s separate announcement of the new Citrix Ready Open Storage Program).
It's not Citrix who has to integrate with ReadyNAS, it's the other way round. Netgear would have to write code to support the StorageLink API and its featureset.
Another thing is, I don't see that a large amount of customers would actually buy a ReadyNAS for this, StorageLink is part of Citrix Essentials for XenServer, it's a $3000 add-on per server (gives you other features as well) which you're then hooking up to a single point of failure NAS box. Surely if you need the flexibility and simplicity of storagelink you'll stick faster and proper redundant storage behind it.
Just an update. Xen 6.0 now supports this without use of StorageLink (similar to VMware)... although the NAS itself must replicate VM data to fully support DR.
If anyone has had this work using Xen 6.0 or VMware please post. I have some 4200's and 3100's I'd like to use for DR at several customers.
