Citrix Extends Open Source Strategy with XenServer

Citrix announced the next step in its commitment to driving the development of open source platforms with the availability of a full featured, open-source, freely available XenServer® 6.2 offering. Citrix is also introducing a new XenServer.org community portal to foster innovation, collaboration and third-party integration from a diverse developer and partner ecosystem. Today’s announcement follows the recent contributions of the Xen hypervisor to the Linux Foundation and CloudStack to the Apache Software Foundation, accelerating the Citrix vision for building the best virtualization and cloud platforms based on a proven model of open source technology development.

A key part of the Citrix “Path to the Cloud” strategy – which spans servers, networking and desktops – is ensuring customers can seamlessly migrate their most important workloads to a cloud environment. With XenServer 6.2, Citrix is delivering the best open source virtualization platform and continuing the momentum of powering leading clouds across all major cloud orchestration platforms, including Apache CloudStack, Citrix CloudPlatform™ and OpenStack. XenServer 6.2 provides performance, scalability and density improvements for private and public clouds, as well as enhanced features to support existing and new desktop and server virtualization deployments for those customers who are still determining their cloud strategy and want to future proof for the cloud.

Highlights

XenServer 6.2 brings cloud-ready features, openness and simplicity with the following enhancements:

• Massive Horizontal Scale and Increased Performance – XenServer 6.2 delivers best of breed capabilities while running 500 virtual machines and 4,000 vCPUs per host, and significantly improving boot storm performance. As a result, customers can drastically improve their desktop virtualization density and performance, and more easily future proof their infrastructure for the cloud.
• Windows 8 and Windows 2012 Support – XenServer 6.2 leverages platform enhancements in Windows 8 and Windows 2012 to bring even greater server consolidation when virtualizing workloads.
• Desktop Virtualization Integrations – XenServer is already optimized for XenDesktop®, offering IntelliCache, Dynamic Memory Control, lowest TCO and best-in-class performance. XenServer 6.2 continues to be optimized for desktop virtualization, adding new Desktop Director alerts for low resources (memory, CPU, disk, network) and preemptive actions to prevent hosts from becoming unusable.

Availability and Pricing

A free, open source XenServer 6.2 option is available today to any user from the new XenServer.org community portal. Citrix also offers a fully supported commercial option of XenServer 6.2, downloadable on its website, which includes packaged updates and maintenance, 24×7 worldwide support and commercial license protections. Citrix XenServer 6.2 introduces new per-socket license pricing, and will enable existing server licenses to be easily converted to socket licenses for free.