VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘XenServer’

XenServer 5 is ready for the Enterprise. That’s been one of the flavors of the partner “kool aid” flowing here at Citrix Summit 2008 this week. Customer adoption will gauge this statement over the next year, but from a feature stand point Citrix’s latest version of XenServer now has the “bells and whistles” necessary to compete for market share in the number one strategic technology for 2009 (according to Gartner), virtualization. Citrix is not just promising future releases and roadmaps either (although there is some of that happening here too), but partners are seeing demos and participating in hands on labs for product capabilities already available.

I was told over 100 new features and enhancements have been added to XenServer 5.0. I can’t say that I have experienced all 100+ of them this week personally, but I’ve seen enough to know the changes are obvious and impressive.

Click through this SlideShare.net presentation for new feature technical details and images provided by Barry Flanagan on his Citrix Community blog. Read the rest of this entry »

Like almost all of the virtualization vendors these days, Citrix has their own set of technologies in development that will enable a highly scalable and dynamic cloud server infrastructure. I attended a Citrix Summit 2008 breakout session yesterday about one of the new Citrix products at the heart of the Citrix Cloud Center (C3) portfolio; Citrix Workflow Studio.

Citrix describes Workflow Studio as an orchestrator of products and processes that allows all the technologies in Citrix’s version of the cloud to be automated and controlled. Combined with the virtualization and consolidation made possible by Citrix XenServer, Workflow Studio will enable administrators to turn virtual infrastructure into a dynamic delivery platform by: Read the rest of this entry »

Since my company is a Citrix Partner I have the opportunity to become a Citrix Certified Administrator (CCA) for XenServer Enterprise Edition 4.1 (version 5 classes are still in development). I just received the instructions for signing up for the training and redeeming the vouchers for the online partner course and labs (here is the link to non partner instructor led courses). I am also attending the Citrix Summit Partner Conference in Orlando, FL at the end of this month (Oct. 26 – 29), so look for some more XenServer and XenDesktop content here on VM / ETC in the upcoming weeks/months.

For now, here is the CCA XenServer Enterprise Edition Exam and various test and certification details for anyone that is interested (and for my future reference!). Read the rest of this entry »

Building on my previous post about the XenDesktop Hands On Lab training I attended last week, this post is dedicated to the real magic of Citrix XenDesktop. Ardence, a software streaming solution aquired by Citrix in December of 2006, is now Citrix Provisioning Server for Desktops with the amazing ability to deliver desktops from a single disk image. Provisioning Server, coupled with the Desktop Delivery Controller as the VDI Connection Broker, delivers complete Microsoft Windows, SUSE Linux, and Red Hat Linux operating systems images from networked storage. These OS images are quickly brokered to bare metal user’s desktops at Active Directory Domain log on. With VDI, the bare metal desktop happens to be the virtual hardware of virtual machines hosted on either XenServer, ESX Server, or Windows 2008 Server Hyper-V.

The Provisioning Server home page (linked above) explains the advantages achieved with the Ardence technology. Read the rest of this entry »

John Troyer from VMTN has hosted the first podcast episode of VMware Communities Roundtable and has posted a summary of the call notes at VMware Communities Roundtable podcast #1 | VMTN Blog. I am honored to have one of my “things that make you go hmmmm” (on the Quick Migration vs VMotion discussion) posts listed as a reference for one of the topics of the episode.

John announces the new series and the objective of the Roundtable podcasts with the following summary:

“Each week, we’ll bring together experts and leaders from the VMware Communities and virtualization blogs to discuss the interesting topics in virtualization. Think of this as if it were a group meeting up at VMworld over a pint to chat about the latest news.”

The episode lasts somewhere between 50 minutes to an hour and is a recorded call between John and an attendee list consisting of some of the virtualization community’s top minds from all over the world. VMware Community profiles of the individuals contributing to episode 1 are:

• Steve Beaver – sbeaver
• Tom Howarth
• Alex Mittell – mittell
• Eric Siebert – esiebert7625
• Edward Haletky -Texiwill
• Dave Mishchenko

Go to John’s VMTN post to listen or download the podcast, but the following is my quick summary and take-aways from the call. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week’s post about Dell’s embedded hypervisor options and the Help Me Choose: Hypervisor page sparked some reader discussion about whether XenServer can be used with shared storage. The answer to that question is that it depends on which version of XenServer you order. Dell is offering either XenServer Express or XenServer Enterprise versions as embedded options. Express is a limited version and can not use shared storage while Enterprise is fully featured and capable of using a SAN.

Citrix also offers a XenServer Standard edition, but apparently that version is not an option as an embedded hypervisor when ordering Dell hardware.

updated 05.17.08 – image updated to reflect changes to Citrix’s product comparison page after this post was publihsed and to show the 4 versions of XenServer. The table below has not been updated and does not show the Premium Edition. Click on the image for a larger version.

The image in this post and the following table were copied from the Citrix XenServer v4 web page. They offer a quick overview of the differences between the 3 versions.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was researching Dell’s latest announcement, Dell Unveils Virtualization Blockbuster – From Servers and Storage to Software and Services and trying to find definitive proof of the $99 price for embedded ESXi or the $299 price for embedded Citrix XenServer Express as reported by virtualization.info. Although I did not find the pricing in the announcement, I was able to find it by going through the process of using the Dell Online Store to build a R805 server. By clicking the green “customize it” button I was eventually able to see the Optional Virtualization Offerings section with the pricing for the embedded hypervisors. See the screenshot to the right. (click for larger view)What surprised me during this process was the “Help me Choose” link in this section. Clicking that link took me to a Help Me Choose: Hypervisor page from Dell that is basically accurate and helpful for comparing high level features of ESX 3.5, ESXi, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Here is a screenshot of the comparison table from Dell’s page. Read the rest of this entry »