XenServer 6.0 Released

September 30, 2011 by Pete Del Rey 0 Comments

Today Citrix announced the General Availability of XenServer 6.0, previously called the ‘Boston‘ release. One of the new points noticed is first XenServer 6.0 is based on the Xen 4.1 hypervisor. Some of the other interesting additions are full support for OVF imports which is nice for Appliance based products and vApps, no more Linux pack on the install which makes it easier and Microsoft System Center integration.

For full information on all the features and enhancements check the XenServer 6 feature list.

What’s New (from the Citrix Press Release)

Optimizations for Cloud and Service Delivery Networking – XenServer 6 includes full integration of Open vSwitch, a core technology used to build next-generation cloud networks based on the innovative OpenFlow standard. Tight integration with Citrix NetScaler® enables hardware-assisted network performance optimizations (SR-IOV) for NetScaler VPX™ and SDX™ service delivery products.
Optimizations for Desktop Virtualization– XenServer 6 includes HDX™ enhancements for improved TCO and optimized user experience for virtual desktops using highly graphical applications. With this release, physical GPUs can be centrally pooled and assigned to a virtual desktop, enabling direct access and optimal graphics performance. Additionally, the Citrix XenDesktop® and XenServer product teams have continued to innovate in reducing storage overhead in virtual desktop deployments, leveraging local storage where possible and reducing the storage costs dramatically for XenDesktop customers utilizing the XenServer IntelliCache feature.
“Ten to Xen”– In further simplifying the management requirements for XenServer, customers can still install the product and be up and running in a matter of minutes, while also employing powerful automation features to get the most out of their datacenter resources and ensure service availability and performance.
Full Support for Microsoft System Center 2012 – XenServer 6 now provides customers with the option of managing XenServer hosts and VMs directly from their System Center Management environment – integrating with both Virtual Machine Manager for ongoing machine operations and provisioning and Operations Manager for monitoring and troubleshooting. For more information refer to the Microsoft System Center 2012 beta page.
Powerful, Open Source Xen Hypervisor Engine – XenServer 6 incorporates Xen 4.1 hypervisor, the latest release of the industry’s most popular and secure open source hypervisor that resulted from 11 months of development across more than 25 organizations. The new version of the Xen hypervisor includes advancements for latency-sensitive workloads, improved support for very large systems, and many new security features. See the Xen 4.1 release announcement for a full list of what’s new.