Xyratex announced that the Xyratex F5412E RAID system is certified for VMware ESX Server 3.5. The Xyratex F5412E 4Gb FC-SAS/SATA-II RAID product joins the Company’s F5402 system as products certified for use in VMware virtualization environments. Xyratex also extended its membership in the VMware Technology Alliance -Partner (TAP) program.

“Certification for VMware ESX Server 3.5 demonstrates our commitment to helping our customers meet the changing demands of their evolving IT environments,” said Lisa Hart, vice president of marketing, Xyratex. “Companies continue to rapidly adopt VMware virtualization, and as a member of the VMware TAP program since 2006, Xyratex has established itself as a leader in compatible data storage products. Using Xyratex’s RAID system with VMware ESX Server makes it possible to achieve significantly higher resource utilization by pooling common infrastructure resources.”

The Xyratex F5412E system was added to the Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide for VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i after completing VMware’s pre-defined certification test program. To build a SAN environment, Xyratex teamed with Qlogic, leveraging its switch and HBA technology. Now, Xyratex customers migrating to VMware ESX Server 3.5 can experience the combined benefits of storage and server virtualization including reduced IT costs, simplified management, improved operational efficiencies and enterprise-class RAID functionality. Xyratex F5412E customers also benefit from the product’s combination of Fibre Channel connectivity with Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA) drive technology to deliver high reliability and scalability.

“Xyratex’s certification of the F5412E offers our customers another option when choosing networked storage systems,” said Parag Patel, vice president, alliances at VMware. “We look forward to continued collaboration with Xyratex in order to continue broadening the range of compatible devices that leverage VMware virtualization and bring its business benefits to our mutual customers.”

“As a Xyratex OEM customer, MPC Computers will be able to quickly leverage the benefits of VMware Certification extended to all Xyratex OEMS through our TAP membership. This certification will enable MPC to take our DataFRAME storage products to market sooner, increase revenue and offer our customers a solution that is thoroughly tested to work with the latest version VMware ESX Server,” said Greg Wolff, area vice president product marketing, MPC Computers.