Citrix opens beta of next XenServer April 14, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Server Virtualization.Tags: Citrix, virtualization, XenServer
add a comment
Citrix has just opened the beta program for the next version of XenServer.
The new product is codenamed Project George (but the final name will be XenServer 5.1 according to our sources), and features some interesting capabilities:
-
Active Directory integration. Specify the AD domain to use for authentication by the pool and use your AD credentials to connect to the pool via XenCenter and ssh. You control which AD users/groups are allowed access.
-
Workload balancing. Guest and host performance metrics are used to create star ratings for individual VM placement and balancing recommendations for resource pools to achieve optimal performance.
-
LVHD. Fast cloning and snapshots are now supported on all Storage Repository types through integration of our software VHD stack and LVM-based Storage Repositories (SRs).
-
StorageLink integration. CLI-only support for a new StorageLink Gateway SR that adds native standards-based support for HP MSA, HP EVA, EMC Clariion, and NetApp storage arrays over iSCSI and Fibre Channel with automated initiator/fabric/array management.
-
Expanded guest OS support. RHEL 5.3, Debian Lenny, and SLES 11 Linux guests.
Citrix says that the RTM code is expected for the end of April. It’s clear that the company is anxious to have it ready for the Synergy 2009, to be held in Las Vegas in early May.
You can download the beta via MyCitrix.
From Citrix XenServer to Citrix Essentials … the implications April 8, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Server Virtualization.Tags: Citrix, Citrix Essentials for XenServer, XenServer
add a comment
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.
Citrix XenDesktop Design Handbook [Part I] April 7, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Data Center Management, desktop virtualization.Tags: Citrix, Daniel Feller, Marathon Technologies, SQL, Thomas Berger, VDI, XenDesktop, XenServer
add a comment
Now that VDI is top-of-mind, more an more people ask us about design consideration, architecture, who can we VDI (if VDI would be a verb), … Most VDI vendors have some sort of guidelines or handbook and now Citrite Daniel Feller (senior architect) and Thomas Berger are “writing” the Encyclopedia Brittanica on XenDesktop: “the XenDesktop Design Handbook”.
The first part (of a multi-chapter handbook) has been released to the support-site of Citrix. This part focuses on ‘operating systems’, application and virtual desktop delivery design decisions. Over the coming months they will expand the series into different design dicision areas.
Some recommendations:
- Use provisioning services for ‘device collection’ for better organization of the devices and start with a minimum of different vDisks.
- Configure the SQL database in a fully redundant matter …. XenServer + Marathon Technologies everRun VM
- What about storage … page 4
- Where to store the write cache …. page 6
- …
Virtualization & Cloud Industry News [30.03.09] March 30, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Cloud Computing, Data Center Management, File Virtualization, I/O Virtualization, Memory Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage, datacenter, desktop virtualization.Tags: Apple, Citrix, Gartner, HP, ICA, iPhone, XenServer
add a comment
Citrix released the technical preview kit for the Apple ICA client to the Apple iPhone App Store, if you are looking for more technical information visit the following review by Michael Keen or go get your ICA client at the Apple Store.
Parallels is launching “Parallels Workstation Extreme”, a desktop workstation virtualization offering developed jointly with HP and NVIDIA (more).
Neterion Launches Third Generation I/O Virtualized X3110 10 GbE Server Adapter to the World-Wide Channel (more).
HP SNMP Agents for Citrix XenServer Retail Available (more).
Gartner predicts that the hosted virtual desktop (HVD) market will accelerate through 2013, reaching 49 million units (read the report)
Citrix Open Sources Their VHD Implementation February 20, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Server Virtualization.Tags: Citrix, XenServer
1 comment so far
Simon Crosby announced that Citrix has open sourced their optimized VHD support. This means that XenServer’s robust VHD implementation is now available to any developer under the BSD license. In case you don’t already know, VHD is the same virtual disk technology Microsoft uses in Hyper-V, and which Microsoft is using even more extensively in future versions of Windows.
In my opinion, this is an excellent move. It addresses the perception of failing to give back to the open source community, and it puts what appears to be a valuable piece of technology into the open source world. Making XenServer’s VHD implementation available for other open source developers to use in their projects puts VHD on the fast track to being the de facto virtual disk standard. Assuming that other virtualization platforms adopt VHD support—and I’m not sure why many of them wouldn’t adopt VHD support, except for VMware—we’ve now removed a huge barrier to interoperability. That’s a good thing.
Not being a lawyer, I’m a bit worried about the compatibility of the BSD license—which is generally regarded as quite generous—and the Microsoft Open Specification Promise, but I’ll leave that for others to hash out.
It will be interesting to see if Citrix also open sources some of their other XenServer-related technologies. Time will tell…
More information can be found here.
Virtualization Olympics: Vendor bitchslapping event February 3, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Server Virtualization.Tags: ESX, Hyper-V, XenApp, XenServer
add a comment
Following our post on December 19th last year on virtualizing XenApp on XenServer, VMware and Citrix are at it again. VMware recently posted an article on the performance of XenApp on ESX and XenApp on XenServer.
It may not be a suprise that the VMware findings were boldly in favor of ESX and not in favor XenServer. It would be one step to far in this world that vendors confirm that their product might not be a good a fit to virtualize a specific application. Following the VMware post, Simon Crobsy (CTO Citrix) took his pen and opened the virtualizing-olympics with the following statement and challenge:
So I’ve decided to issue an open challenge to VMware CTO Stephen Herrod: Steve, it’s time to rein in the monkeys behind the keyboard, end VMware’s indefensible EULA restrictions and allow independent performance comparisons of your products with others, by third parties with a vested interest in accuracy and independence.
Both posts resulted in a flood of responses of the virtualization-community, but there are some general correct remarks in all these responses from the community:
- Why virtualizing XenApp? It obviously performs better natively (even proven by the VMware tests)
- Benchmarking should be done by independent companies/organization like http://www.virtualrealitycheck.net (2 experience system engineers working with Citrix and VMware)
- Selecting a virtualization platform for your XenApp, if you decide to do so it is not only abou performance, decissions will aslo be influenced by investement in the virtualization layer, automation, management, …
One thing however keeps me wondering … why virtualizing everything? Todays server come (in most cases) with 2x 4 cores, offering 8 cores which enables you to provide XenApp to more than a decent number of users. When adding virtualization to the stack for sure you will lose some performance (wether it is hyper-v, xenserver or esx).
I strongly believe that for those users that haven chosen to work with XenApp as a strategy a minimum number of XenApp servers should be physically, use a virtualized XenApp as escape-mode when something goes wrong. Furthermore keep in mind that when it comes to automation you might require an automatic launch system to rollout new servers in second.
Perhaps both CTOs need to read a report released by Aberdeen today on the advantages of virtualization and what about business critical applications, a quote from a researcher: (full report)
“Even though organizations could experience significant cost savings from conducting virtualization projects, these benefits could diminish if they don’t have capabilities in place for effective management of application performance. One of the key challenges for these organizations is that the effective management of application performance in virtualized environments requires a set of capabilities and functionalities that were not required when these organizations were looking to achieve same performance goals in physical environments. Understanding what these capabilities are is making the difference between success and failure of virtualization projects as measured from business prospective,” said Bojan Simic, research analyst, Aberdeen.
VMware & Teradici threaten Citrix? January 26, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Application virtualization, Server Virtualization, desktop virtualization.Tags: Citrix, VDM, virtualization, VMware, XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer
add a comment
Tom Valovic posted an interesting article about an interview with Stuart Robinson of Teradici on the purported benefits of Teradici’s PC over IP protocol licensed by VMware. Tom reports on a Teradici claim that PC over IP has a lead over ICA in that it has an ability to dynamically adjust the bandwidth needed by the remoting protocol, in response to available network bandwidth. Specifically, Robinson (who actually knows better) claims that ICA has no such ability.
Another Microsoft Licensing Policy Update: What’s Good? What’s Left? January 23, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in Application virtualization, Server Virtualization, desktop virtualization.Tags: Hyper-V, Licensing, Microsoft, virtualization, VMware, XenServer
add a comment
Last Friday, Microsoft’s latest round of licensing changes were released to the public as two documents:
- “Licensing Windows Server 2008 to Run with Virtualization Technologies“
- “Licensing Microsoft Server Products in Virtual Environments“
There is definitely some good news here. CAL requirements for “indirect access to Windows 2008″ were lifted. So organizations will only need CALs for Windows guest OSs and the applications that run within them. The previous policy impacted customers running Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor and did not affect licensing on any other hypervisor.
Xen-based hypervisors push performance limits – Citrix XenServer 5.0 Top Finisher January 21, 2009
Posted by Yves Peeters in I/O Virtualization, Server Virtualization.Tags: Citrix, ESX, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Novell XEN, Virtual Iron, virtualization, VMware, Xen, XenServer
add a comment
Tom Henderson and Brendan Allen of Network World Lab Alliance conducted an extensive performance testing of Citrix XenServer 5.0, Novell’s Xen 3.2 and Virtual Iron 4.4. Two other vendors — Sun and Red Hat — were invited to participate but because of varying timing problems, declined to participate.
The testing confirmed that open source Xen is a formidable challenger to the closed code VMware and Microsoft hypervisors. When the performance of business transactions running on top of the hypervisors was measured, Citrix’s XenServer 5.0 was the top finisher in nine out of 12 test runs.
Citrix VMs are tops in transaction processing, Novell’s in I/O speed.
Read the full article here.
Virtualization & Cloud Industry News [20.01.09] [Additions] January 20, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: AMD, Citrix, Cloud Computing, Egenera, Intel, Obama, PANmanager, processors, Replicate Datacener Analyzer, Replicate Technology, SaaS, SaaSPlex, XenCenterWeb, XenServer
1 comment so far
Intel cuts prices of its processors due to increased competition and econocom downturn (more)
Citrix releases XenCenterWeb-edition (more)
Obama envisions Federal Cloud (more)
Egenera releases PANmanager 4.2 (more)
Replicate Technologies announces Replicate Datacenter Analyzer 1.2
SaaSPlex have launched WorkClouds, the world’s first true SaaS Marketplace. WorkClouds is designed to enable small and medium sized companies to create a ‘cloud’ of SaaS applications to run their business (more)
Virtualization Industry Survey – Part 1 [virtualization.info) January 20, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Cloud Computing, Data Center Management, File Virtualization, I/O Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage, datacenter, desktop virtualization.Tags: Hyper-V, report, VMware, XenServer
add a comment
Virtualization.info conducted a research on ‘the state of the sector’ in October last year, they have released the first results on their website:
Seen the number of respondent we must say that it has been an extensive study, approximately there was a 50/50 rule between the US and EMEA. The size of the companies -however- does not always reflect the real world, more than 64% of the respondents was working for a company with more than 1000 users.
One thing was a little bit “surprrising” in the TOP3 of ‘used platforms’ you get VMware, XenServer and Hyper-V, as one would expect. But Hyper-V is way above VMware, which is little strange seen the ‘time’ it has been on the market. Another explanation comes from the size of the companies in the survey.
Largest Singaporean Cloud Provider moves to XenServer January 5, 2009
Posted by Roel Gydé in Cloud Computing.Tags: Alatum, Cloud Computing, SCS, XenServer
add a comment
In an interview between Bridget Botelho and Lim Jee Yen of SCS (Singapore Computer Systems, Mr Yen discloses why they have moved the Alatum cloud to Xenserver. Alatum is the largest commercial cloud in Singapore and operated by SCS. Some points:
- SCS was looking for a product with features and benefits built-in instead of self-coding software
- Cost-effective price due to the integrated features
- Integration with existing management software through APIs
- Support for ‘open virtualization format” (OVF)
- Open partner ecosystem
- Cloud iniatives such as C3
Some things become clear out of this story, there is a possible trend from open source hypervisors, which are often used by cloud providers to more packaged solutions and there is room for system integrators and VARs as cloud provider (cfr. our post on VARs and integrators in the cloud).
The full interview can be found here.
Microsoft aims at VMware with Citrix Management Tools [Project: Encore] December 22, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Citrix, Encore, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Vmotion, XenServer
add a comment
At present Microsoft is not offering ‘live migration’, as of the first quarter of 2009, it will … thanks to Citrix. This will catapult Hyper-V to the same leagues as XenServer and VMware vSphere.
What will happen: the Citrix XenServers management tools will also work with Hyper-V according to Lou Shipley (GM and Group VP of Citrix Management Group). The product is dubbed ‘Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V’, it will likely include a number of xEnServer management features for Hyper-V such as live migration, multiserver management and creation of resource pools, which are standard features of XenServer Enterprise.
Especially the live migration features is much welcomed in Redmond as it has been put on the Hyper-V roadmap for 2010 with 2008 R2.
At the time of writting of this article, no one was available for comment at Citrix or Microsoft. One thing for sure, if the customer has Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V it will clearly a product with which you will be able to manage Hyper-V and XenServer systems. Story to be continued ….
Virtualizing Citrix XenApp December 19, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Server Virtualization.Tags: XenServer
1 comment so far
There has been a lot written on virtualizing Citrix XenApp, depending on the source you can get 35% more users on a Citrix XenApp which is virtualized on Citrix XenServer than on another server virtualization product. Get the inside details on XenApp on XenServer in this video-on-demand.
VMware loses to Citrix on fault tolerance December 17, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Server Virtualization.Tags: Sullivan, VMware, XenServer
add a comment
Bridget Botelho reports on Sullivan Group (an important human resources outsources) who moved from VMware to Citrix XenServer due to the fact that VMware HA did not meet the criteria, furthermore the better pricing of XenServer was a nice to have. Read the full article here
Virtualization Industry news November 11, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Application virtualization, Cloud Computing, Data Center Management, I/O Virtualization, Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage, desktop virtualization.Tags: Asigra, Atmos, BlueStripe, Citrix, Egenera, EMC, FactFinder, Hulk, IBM, Lanamark, Lotus Foundation, Oracle, Veeam, VirtualIron, vmBuilder, VMware, vReady, XenServer
add a comment
Product news:
- BlueStripe software releases FactFinder 1.1 enabling enterprises to stage, deploy and manage business critical applications. (more)
- EMC shows the next generation of storage in the cloud as ”Atmos,” the software portion is designed to manage petabytes of information across tens or hundreds of geographic location. It runs with VMware or with EMCs Hulk (x86 server with high-capacity-low-cost SATA discs) (more)
- IBM will release IBM Lotus Foundation that can integrate with VMware
- Lanamark releases VReady, a virtualization readiness assessment service without upfront costs. The service enables customers to capture desktop and server workload trends, measure data center utilization and determine warranty coverage of existing servers (more). The free service is limited to 500 nodes (desktops running MS or LX and MS servers) per customer
- Veaam releases Veaam Configurator 2.0, helps to ensure that an ESX server configuration complies with corporate policies and standards across a VI3 (more). The product is licenses per socket with a maximum of 4 cores per socket. Pricing starts at 250 USD with a special release price of 150 USD till the end of 2008
- Asigra Televaulting Teams with Virtual Iron’s Server Virtualization Software, bringing agentless information recovery to virtual server environments
- Egenera ships PAN vmBuilder 2.1 – the software seamlessly integrates with Citrix XenServer virtual machine (VM) management technology, allowing administrators to fully manage virtual and physical server environments unencumbered by the complexities of individual management tools. The software is available as an add-on to PAN manager
Citrix XenServer certifies on Oracle November 11, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Server Virtualization.Tags: Oracle, XenServer
add a comment
Citrix today announced that Citrix XenServer has achieved integration validation through Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture for Partners initiative.
Citrix XenServer Achieves Oracle Validated Integration for Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise, Siebel CRM, and Oracle E-Business Suite Applications. (more)
Securing Citrix Web Interface? November 3, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Web Interface, XenApp, XenServer
add a comment
An interview with Andrew Innes has been published on the Citrix blog. Andrew is the Platform Architect for user interaction components of XenApp and XenDesktop, notably Web Interface and the desktop integration clients. His job entails finding creative ways to improve the usability and security of these products, and helping strike the right balance between them. The article focuses on securing Web Interface.
Full article on Citrix blog.
Citrix XenServer on Intel Xeon 7400 November 3, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Server Virtualization.Tags: Intel, XenServer, Xeon
add a comment
Did you know XenServer leverages the full value of Intel’s newest chipset and completely supports both the 4- and 6-socket editions? With this increased level of support and interoperability, Citrix is currently conducting additional testing with Xeon and anticipates success in supporting their 8-socket platform in the very near future.
Lou Shipley, filmed onsite at the Citrix office in Bedford, MA, discusses the relationship between Citrix and Intel and the value of Citrix XenServer working with latest Xeon processor. Click here to view the video: http://www.intel.com/references/isv/video/Intel_Donnington_Citrix.wmv?iid=isv_sols+body+citrix_vid
Marathon & Citrix with Exchange 2007 October 15, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: everrun VM, Marathon, XenServer
add a comment
Benchmark tests have proven that Exchange on XenServer combined with Marathon Everrun VM is the best virtualization platform. Learn more on November 11th at 11:30 EDT, subscribe here.
Citrix goes all the way for OVF … project Kensho for XenServer & Hyper-V October 15, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Server Virtualization.Tags: Citrix, Hyper-V, OVF, XenServer
add a comment
Citrix Drives Adoption of Virtual Appliance Portability Standard for Enterprises and Clouds. Project Kensho is now publicly available, this project offers you portability of VMs based on the OVF standard.
The project consists out of 2 components: the OVF tool (for importing and exporting in OVF format) and a CIM interface for interaction with the XenServer.
The requirements for using Kensho on XenServer: a PC with XP or W2K3, Citrix XenServer 4.1. It also works with Microsoft 2WK8 with the Hyper-V role. As you will be extraing and importing OVF files, you need a share to store them.
Datacore & XenServer 5 October 15, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage.Tags: Datacore, XenServer
add a comment
Datacore has released a document confirming that both SANmelody and SANsymphony now can be configured to present iSCSI or Fiber Channel virtual volumes to XenServer 5.
Full technical details can be found here.
Citrix Xenserver with Netapp storage – considerations October 10, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Data Center Management, Server Virtualization, Storage Virtualization & Storage, desktop virtualization.Tags: Citrix, Netapp, storage, XenServer
add a comment
As you might know Citrix XenCenter gives you the ability to manage your Netapp storage boxes through a ONTAP connector. On the Citrix site there is an interesting article on the integration, the sorts of installs supported, … read the report.
Microsoft SVVP … Cisco, VMware October 6, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: ESX, Hyper-V, KVM, SVVP, WAAS, Xen, XenServer
add a comment
For those who do not know what Microsoft SVVP means, it stands for Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program.
Mcirosoft SVVP and Cisco Systems
Wednesday last week, Microsoft and Cisco announced the Microsoft Server on Cisco WAAS. This solution enables branch offices to be equiped with one device offering networking services and basic Microsoft services such as DHCP, DNS, Printing, AD. The appliance will be available at 10.000 USD.
Immediately a lot of comments, postings saw the light within the blogging community. The big question that remains at present is which virtualization solution Cisco will use. When reading the press release it states
“ … Cisco will embed a virtualization component within its Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) appliance family that will help customers to host Windows Server 2008 …”
This sparked the discussion wether it would be Xen, KVM, XenServer, Hyper-V or VMware. When looking at the announcement we strongly believe that VMware will not be onboard this device seen the recent ‘well understanding’ between Microsoft and VMware.
This leaves KVM, XenServer, Xen or Hyper-V. Seen the good relationship between Microsoft and the open source community, we strongly believe that KVM or Xen will not be included, altough that Cisco has indicated its ‘fondness’ of KVM. This leaves Hyper-V or XenServer.
The Citrix Branch Repeater (also a combined development between Microsoft and Citrix) offers (currently) more features than the Microsoft Server on Cisco WAAS and is almost a head-to-head competing product. Based on this simple mathematics we strongly believe that the device will run Hyper-V.
Yet the device will host a W2K8 server to offer the necessary services to the branch. So this device will be the point of entry and exit to the branch or to the WAN. What would be the need to offer the capcity to rollout multiple VMs on an appliance, that has one goal, reducing the number of servers at the branch while reducing maintenance on the branch?
Story to be continued.
Addition 7.10.8 – On a slidedeck used by Cisco when proposing the solution, it shows that it will be a Linux kernel, so there goes Hyper-V, remains: Xen and KVM
Microsoft SVVP and VMware:
A few weeks ago Microsoft announced that VMware ESX had passed the SVVP (so Microsoft Server will run fluently on ESX), however it seems to be that VMware ESX is only certified on AMD processors and not on Intel processors.
XenServer 5 has been certified with a maximum of 8 CPUs, 30GB RAM and both on AMD and Intel processors
Peeking at HA with XenServer 5 September 17, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: XenServer
add a comment
XenServer 5 contains a lot of technology from Marathon Technologies, but what is actually in it that makes the high availability embedded in Xenserver really good. Get an insight here.
New Citrix XenServer 5 Includes Built-In High Availability “Powered by Marathon” September 15, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: Marathon Technologies, XenServer
add a comment
Citrix Systems, Inc., (NASDAQ: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure and Marathon Technologies, the only provider of fault-tolerant, high availability (HA) software for physical and virtual servers, today announced that the XenServer HA capabilities highlighted in today’s Citrix XenServer™ 5 virtualization software announcement were jointly developed by Citrix and Marathon. The significance of this announcement for the industry is threefold:
- Citrix XenServer Enterprise and Platinum Edition customers now get auto-restart high availability – built by availability experts – as a standard component.
- Because the XenServer HA capabilities were developed jointly, Citrix XenServer and Marathon everRun® VM are fully integrated for fast installation and easy configuration and management of virtual machines at three levels: basic HA, component-level fault tolerance and system level fault tolerance (available Q1 2009).
- The combination of Citrix XenServer 5 and everRun VM is the only solution available on the market that provides selectable availability and fault-tolerant protection for applications running in virtual machines.
Citrix could be announcing “Citrix Cloud Center” today September 15, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: C3, Citrix Cloud Center, XenServer
add a comment
Citrix will probalby annouce today: Citrix Cloud Center (C3) and XenServer 5.
More information to come.
Microsoft will validate XenServer 5 September 14, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: W2K8, XenServer
add a comment
Following up on our post regarding the new name for XenServer, which probably will be released on Sept 15th as XenServer 5.0, Microsoft has confirmed they will validate XenServer 5 for W2K8.
XenServer 5.0 … out on Sept 15th? September 8, 2008
Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.Tags: XenServer
add a comment
And some new features we heard about …
- Automated high availability and disaster recovery capabilities
- Support for new guest operating systems
- XenConvert utility for physical to virtual (P2V) server conversions
- Achieved Microsoft Certified Hypervisor certification
- Ability to stream Windows Server 2008 workloads to physical or virtual servers
- XenServer Storage Delivery Services adapter for Dell EqualLogic storage arrays
- Integrated with the Xen 3.2 hypervisor
More info here (in Dutch), according to some postings on the Citrix forum the new version (beta) should be available on mycitrix.
But what has happened with the numbering? Everybody believed it would be 4.2. Now that XenApp 5.0 will be released shortly, XenServer 4.2 becomes 5.0 … would this mean that XenDesktop 2.x will become 5.0?
