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Instant Insight September 18, 2008 |
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Citrix Announces XenServer 5 Citrix Systems has announced
Citrix XenServer 5, the latest version of its server virtualization product
line that is powered by the Xen hypervisor, and a key component of the Citrix
Delivery Center product family, a comprehensive datacenter-to-desktop system
that targets organizations wishing to transform their traditional static
datacenters into dynamic “delivery centers.” This latest offering adds 100+
virtualization management features including what the company states utilizes
the industry’s most advanced High Availability, auto-restart, failover, and
disaster recovery technologies that can be upgraded to full fault tolerance
for the most mission-critical applications. This is achieved in part by
XenServer’s distributed management architecture, support for replication and
remote mirroring architectures, and built-in replication for virtual machine
metadata information to provide easy and reliable virtual machine and
application recovery for site failure scenarios. According to Citrix,
XenServer 5 is the first server virtualization platform to be validated for
both AMD and Intel 32-bit and 64-bit systems through Microsoft’s Server
Virtualization Validated Program, which validates vendor’s virtualization
software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions. XenServer 5 features an open architecture
that helps organizations leverage their existing storage and datacenter
management investments. The open storage APIs allow organizations to access
directly from within the XenServer management console advanced functions such
as snapshotting, cloning, replication, de-duplication and provisioning in
storage systems from vendors including EqualLogic and NetApp. The XenServer 5
management console supports most storage environments including NAS, DAS, and
SAN implemented through fiber channel and iSCSI as well as support for 8GB
HBAs from QLogic and Emulex. XenServer 5 includes new
configuration wizards, intuitive interfaces, and easy point-and-click
conversion of physical servers into virtual machines. New enhancements
include a Web 2.0-style tagging and searching capability which allows IT
professionals to track and locate virtual machines through powerful searching
and sorting capabilities based on application type, QoS requirements,
department, cost center, location, etc. There are also enhanced performance
monitoring, reporting, and alerting dashboards that assist IT professionals
through realtime and historical views of virtual machines and physical host
performance. Pricing and Availability Citrix XenServer 5 is available
immediately through Citrix’s worldwide network of Solutions Advisors and
channel partners. XenServer 5 pricing begins with a SRP of $900/server, and
there are no additional CPU or socket fees. Pricing includes XenCenter
management technologies and a one-year Citrix Subscription Advantage
membership. XenServer Express, a production-ready, single-server version of
XenServer with unlimited virtual machine and memory support capabilities, is
also available for free download at www.citrix.com. Net/Net This announcement is interesting
as it represents more than just the latest version of a virtualization
offering; it illustrates the potential for transforming application delivery
environment that we posited last year when Citrix acquired XenSource. With
XenServer 5, Citrix has signaled its desire to achieve a more strategic
position in its customers’ datacenters by delivering a solution that
potentially will allow organizations to fundamentally transform how they view
their datacenters. Despite the considerable marketplace infatuation with
virtualization, for the most part it remains viewed in a rather narrow
fashion focused on simply reducing the number of servers supporting an
organization’s workloads. Although the stereotype has progressed beyond that
of generic white-box x86 servers running Linux, the reality is that most
organizations are barely making their first steps towards a strategic
virtualization path, one that would transform legacy data centers from static
bastions of siloed applications and information into a dynamic, flexible, and
much simpler application delivery infrastructure. The acquisition of XenSource by
Citrix was much more than a land grab for ownership of virtualization
hypervisor. The combination of Citrix’s existing technology and the
virtualization potential of XenSource broadens virtualization beyond the
relatively simple task of server consolidation to include a much more
holistic view of network application delivery and its associated impact on
storage, networking, and client consumption devices. In effect, Citrix is
offering a new view of the future datacenter. This new view is one in which
most all physical aspects of servers, applications, and network functions are
largely transcended by a virtual service bureau through which needed IT
resources are delivered to users largely without concern as to their physical
or even virtual location within the infrastructure. The operational
distinction between a physical server and a virtual one has increasingly
become cosmetic and there are few reasons why IT professionals who are tasked
with application and information delivery should even be concerned. By building upon its existing
live migration resource pooling and workload provisioning capabilities Citrix
is seeking to transform assumptions about how datacenters are configured,
deployed, and managed. This completely virtual view is one that will
potentially yield benefits with respect to space requirements, cooling,
energy efficiency, and the requisite IT personnel. The ability of the
XenServer Management Console to directly interact with the common storage
environments permits organizations to continue using existing data center
tools and skill sets just as they have with physical servers. Hence,
sophisticated storage technologies should be as easy to access from either
physical or virtual servers, without mandating two skill sets to support it.
Further, XenServer 5’s workload provisioning makes it possible for
administrators to boot servers and deliver multiple workloads from a single
image to target servers, even servers that lack any local storage or
hypervisor. This could be of considerable interest to power constrained data
centers or those who are investing in highly consolidated blade-centric
server solutions. These storage centric capabilities illustrate how Citrix is
looking to provide much more than simple server virtualization in addition to
its application delivery technologies. While this latest release of
XenServer will not change its customer’s datacenters overnight, it does offer
a data center strategy that seeks to remove most dependencies on physical IT
attributes and shifts the focus onto applications and information. This
increased abstraction of physical elements from applications is well
positioned to assist organizations in their quest to deliver dynamic
applications to increasing numbers of local and remote users while
simultaneously improving the efficiency and cost effectiveness of IT
investments. Although there is still much work to be done, the scope of
virtualization and application delivery finesse being offered by Citrix
places the company in a leading, if not unique, position in the marketplace
that bodes well for the company, and more importantly, its customers. |
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