VM /ETC

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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