Free Citrix XenServer includes XenCenter, XenMotion, Resource Pools and Storage Management
February 23rd, 2009 | 
Author: Rumored last week to be one of the early major non VMware announcements of VMworld Europe 2009, today Citrix has officially announced it’s next version of XenServer will be free. Obviously a strategic move to bolster production deployment of the XenServer hypervisor, Citrix is also confident that today’s move will ultimately provide a low cost enterprise class virtual infrastructure alternative, improve hosted cloud services already using Xen Server (such as Amazon EC2), and enable cost effective private cloud infrastructure. XenServer will also apparently be included with XenApp solutions in the future as well.
Citrix plans to make the new release available for download around the end of March 2009. You can download a free trial version today at http://www.citrix.com/freexenserver.
New management and automation products, such as Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V which were also announced today, are expected to generate revenue for the Citrix virtualization products.
Citrix is not holding back on the features available in the free release either, thus immediately making VMware’s free ESXi
a distant second in my opinion as a virtualization solution when considering free hypervisor choices. From the official announcement:
“The new Citrix XenServer release provides customers with a robust, scalable, feature-rich virtualization platform that is exceptionally powerful, yet incredibly easy to learn and use. Core features of XenServer include the following:
- Powerful Centralized Management enables full multi-node management for an unlimited number of servers and virtual machines; includes easy physical-to-virtual and virtual-to-virtual conversion tools, centralized configuration management and a resilient distributed management architecture
- Live Motion and Multi-Server Resource Sharing incorporates powerful XenMotion™ technology that allows virtual machines to be moved from server to server without service interruption for zero downtime; also includes optimal initial virtual machine placement and intelligent maintenance mode
- Proven Hypervisor Engine powered by the 64-bit industry standard Xen open source hypervisor developed jointly by more than 50 leading technology vendors, enabling users take full advantage of the latest performance, security and scalability enhancements in next-generation servers, operating systems and microprocessors
- Fast Bare Metal Performance supports an unlimited number of servers and virtual machines with industry-leading consolidation ratios, near native performance on the most challenging application workloads, and virtually zero overhead in both Microsoft Windows® and Linux environments
- Easy Setup and Administration features familiar interface with easy wizard-driven configuration, intuitive Web 2.0 style search, and built-in auto-help that makes the learning curve for new administrators a snap
- Integrated Storage Management that supports any existing storage system; includes built-in storage management features such as host-based logical volume management, and dynamic multi-pathing capabilities”
The following XenServer versus ESXi comparison chart is available on Citrix’s XenServer web page and shows how Citrix now clearly offers an advantage in features as a free virtualization platform.
Another interesting twist to this announcement is that XenApp, Citrix’s flagship server based computing solution used by most enterprise companies today, will also include the XenServer hypervisor.
“As a result of this move, XenServer will also now be included as a core feature of Citrix® XenApp™, the company’s flagship application virtualization product line. Adding XenServer as the base platform under XenApp increases flexibility and helps customers consolidate the number of physical servers in production with virtually no overhead. More than one million servers in enterprise datacenters today are running XenApp.”
Finally, Citrix, along with the upcoming 9.10 version of Ubuntu Server, has become the second free Xen based cloud computing option for companies interested in taking advantage of both hosted and private Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) solutions.
“The new free XenServer release is also great news for cloud providers, the vast majority of whom use the open source Xen hypervisor today as a core component of their platforms. By upgrading to the full XenServer product, these cloud vendors not only gain a far richer virtual infrastructure platform at no cost, they also get instant native support for Windows guests in addition to the Linux guests they offer today. This will also make it easier for Linux OS vendors who currently include Xen in their products to move to the full XenServer, giving their customers far more value and focusing their development efforts on adding differentiated services on top of the virtualization platform.”
As a consultant and Citrix partner providing virtual infrastructure design and architecture primarily to small to medium businesses (SMB), this news creates some interesting alternative design possibilities for many of my current and potential customers.
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