Citrix Systems has rolled out XenServer 5 -- a next-generation server  platform that promises to reduce the complexity of virtualization deployments. To keep things simple, XenServer 5 integrates new configuration wizards and intuitive interfaces, together with point-and-click conversion of physical servers into virtual machines.
Even better, the platform's dynamic workload -provisioning capabilities will allow hundreds of workloads to be instantly booted and delivered from a single image with one click -- even when the target servers have no locally attached disk or hypervisor . According to internal company tests, the technology can immediately reduce the storage footprint required to run common enterprise tasks by as much as 80 percent.
"XenServer 5 is going to completely change the way a lot of people think about server virtualization," said Lou Shipley, general manager of the XenServer product group at Citrix Systems.
Recovery Support
The XenServer 5 platform -- which is based on the same open-source Xen hypervisor that powers most of the world's largest computing "clouds" -- has been validated through Microsoft 's Server Virtualization Validated Program for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems from AMD and Intel.
"We're working with Citrix to standardize on a common virtualization format, develop virtual machine interoperability and portability between XenServer 5 and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V , enable cooperative technical support, and use Microsoft System Center as a common management framework," said Zane Adam, senior director of integrated virtualization at Microsoft.
Together with support for replication and remote-mirroring architectures, Citrix said it has added more than 100 new virtualization-management features to XenServer 5. Moreover, the new platform's distributed-management architecture helps to prevent a single point of failure from bringing down all the servers across an entire data center, the company said. (continued...)
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