Virtualization news for the channel community and you !

In March Citrix announced some major changes in the XenServer productline. We provide the following information, so that everything becomes a clear for those active installations and for future installations.

Changes in products:

No much changes within the products on feature-level, although that VM Lifecycle Management, LabAutomation, extended historical performance reporting, StorageLink and workflow orchestration have been added in the new versions of XenServer: Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise and Citrix Essentials for XenServer Platinum.

Full product-feature-overview

Products have been rebranded and have some met the end-of-life date:

• Exit XenServer Express
• Exit XenServer Standard
• Exit XenServer Enterprise
• Enter XenServer at 0 USD (including multi-server-management, xenmotion, ..)
• Enter Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise
• Enter Citrix Essentials for XenServer Platinum

For product information we kindly refer you to a Citrix Solution Advisor. Of course you can always reach us for more information through this blog.

Pricing

Citrix Essentials for XenServer (ENT/PLAT) is available in an ‘annual license’ and a ‘perpetual license’. Seen the fact that XenServer is cloud-ready, annual licenses can be best positioned within cloud-computing environments with a volatile usage. As soon as you are looking for an implementation that will run more than 12 months go for the perpetual license.

The perpetual license includes 1 year ‘Subscription Advantage’ which enables you to connect to the latest version of the Citrix Essentials for XenServer during the SA period. If your edition falls out of SA, you always have the opportunity to move your license again under SA with a small additional fine.

There is a pricing promotion on Citrix Essentials for XenServer Platinum: 3.000 USD instad of 5.000 USD, probably till the end of June, 2009. The financial uplift from Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enteprise to Citrix Essentials for XenServer Platinum has ben reduced to a minimum, one would be ***** not to go for the Platinum edition of Citrix Essentials for XenServer.

The S.A.R-program for Citrix Solution Advisor remains in effect, but only when this partner has been certified.

Support

The free version of XenServer will not be supported by technical support of Citrix without a technical support contract. The contracts are available through Citrix Solution Advisors. For those customers running an old version of XenServer (Std, Ent, Plat) and who migrate to the last version of Citrix Essentials and have an active technical support contract, can get technical support under the old contract for the new Citrix Essentials version.

Upgrades

from Citrix XenServer Standard (purchased before 23/2/9) with SA to Citrix Essentials: can migrate for free to Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise. If you are not interested in the upgrade to Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise you can always opt for the free XenServer edition. For those Citrix XenServer Standard editions purchased after 23/2/9, there is a free upgrade path to the free XenServer edition or a payable upgrade to Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise. There is no direct upgrade path from Citrix XenServer Standard to Citrix Essentials for XenServer Platinum.

from Citrix XenServer Enterprise with SA to Citrix Essentials: are eligible to receive a Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise

from Citrix XenServer Platinum with SA to Citrix Essentials: are eligible to receive Citrix Essentials for XenServer Platinum, there is no downgrade-path to Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise

from Citrix Essentials for Xenserver (Ent/Plat) Annual to Perpetual: not possible

from Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise to Citrix Essentials for XenServer Platinum: yes

We will try to post more on these changes in the following weeks.