Citrix Is First To Release Bare Metal Client Hypervisor
May 13th, 2010 | 
Author: This week at the Citrix Synergy 2010 Conference in San Francisco, CA ,Citrix announced their new client hypervisor and established itself as the first to provide what some desktop virtualization experts believe is a critical missing piece in the VDI remote worker mobility puzzle. The bare metal XenClient was previewed introduced during the conference’s opening keynote session on stage in front of thousands of attendees.
Citrix describes the XenClient hypervisor as “a high-performance, bare-metal hypervisor that enables users to run multiple instances of an operating system simultaneously, side by side, and in complete isolation.” A key feature necessary for running virtual corporate desktops provided by a centralized IT department is the Citrix Synchronizer. According to Citrix, Synchronizer will “add centralized control, deployment, and backup of local virtual machines to your XenClient environment.”
Since I was not in attendance at the Keynote, it is unclear to me whether the version of XenClient available for download today is in fact a production ready release. It is available as open source and free to download for those that want to try it out.
There is only a short list of hardware supported, however.
Citrix lists the following general hardware requirements for XenClient:
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core i5, Intel Core i7
- Graphics: Intel integrated graphics GMA 4500, Intel® HD Graphics
- Memory: 4GB RAM recommended
- Disk: 160GB recommended
- Wireless Lan: Intel WiFi Link 5100/5300, Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6200, Intel® Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300
- Intel vPro: Highly Recommended
Systems currently on the XenClient hardware compatibility list are:
- HP EliteBook 6930p, 2530p, 8440p*
- Dell Latitude E4300, E6400, E6410*, E6500, E6510*
- Dell Optiplex 780
- Lenovo ThinkPad X200, T400, T500
From what I can tell, the promise of 3D graphics, video, and overall rich user experience for both personal and corporate desktop virtual machines running simultaneously on the local hardware does seem to have been successfully delivered.
Citrix has provided some screen shots of XenClient in action.
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Posted in XenServer, citrix, events, vdi, virtualization, xendesktop | 
Tags: citrix, citrix synergy, citrixsynergy, vdi, virtual desktops, virtualization, xenclient, xendesktop
Mokafive had bare metal hyper-visor June 2008, running it right now
Sol,
Thanks. I need to research and update this post.
Sean,
Thanks. Appreciate the info.
Sol,
according to the datasheet (http://www.moka5.com/papers/MokaFive_Suite_Data...) Maokafive needs a Windows or Mac OS..In fact, their walkthough video shows VMs opening in VMware's free Player running on an XP host.
If they do have a bare metal install hypervisor I missed please leave a link.
Thanks.
According to Virtualization.info this release is just RC, GA will be in Q3 2010: http://virtualization.info/en/news/2010/05/citr...
Thanks Doug
Rich, VirtualComputer were first to market in 2k8 with NxTop and this is a GA product that has just entered v2.0 Citrix's XenClient is still RC, futher NxTop has a very good management suite around wrapped around it now. That was the main reason they did not Win at VMworld last year.
Thanks Tom. I obviously missed NxTop over the last few years. I still need to check them out. Interesting how they seem to be below my radar …
Actually, I want to clarify a couple of things. First, there are two bare metal client hypervisors that have been shipping for well over a year. One is from my company, Neocleus, and we shipped our first generation in late 2008. This was fairly stripped down and was designed to run a secure web browser outside of the OS.
We've since released 3 generations of the client hypervisor in subsequent solutions. The latest generation also has a documented API (we call it a VPI) that allows developers to easily create VM-enabled apps that will exploit this new model of running multiple OS instances in the bare metal of a desktop or laptop.
For clarification, MokaFive is a Type 2 hypervisor. It's a very good product but is not designed to address many of the use-cases that customers are seeking to solve with a Type 1 (bare metal) solution such as NeoSphere.
Check out our website for demonstrations of the technology. Here's a link to the Bring Your Own PC demo:
http://www.neocleus.com/learn/video-byopcdemoon...
Thanks for the info!