Citrix is playing catch-up to VMware and Microsoft with the announcement of enhanced management software for XenServer and Hyper-V and a new version of Citrix XenServer.
The company announced this week at its annual user event Citrix Synergy an upgrade to Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V. The new version of Essentials assists customers in building more manageable data centers using XenServer and Hyper-V.
Essentials 5.5 allows integration with most storage infrastructures, arrays and backup systems. The release also adds the ability to fast clone and provision virtual machines, allowing customers to quickly recover physical and virtual resources.
Another new feature of 5.5 is automated storage management, which simplifies and speeds the process of testing and deploying applications on-demand. Useful for test/dev environments, the software lets customers create workflows that define the staging of virtual machines. In addition, 5.5 includes workload balancing capabilities that lets customers migrate virtual machines to the optimal location.
Citrix also introduced a new version of its free virtualization software, Citrix XenServer 5.5. The new features of 5.5 include a consolidated backup function that lets third-party backup vendors interact directly with XenServer to provide image level, full or incremental backups of virtual machines. The consolidated backup also supports GUI-based snapshots from the XenCenter management console. XenServer 5.5 also features a conversion utility that lets customers convert VMware VMDK files into the VHD format used by XenServer and Hyper-V.
XenServer 5.5 also allows customers to view, search and manage XenServer environments by a number of criteria including network name, VM name, server, location or snapshot time. It also supports Microsoft’s Active Directory and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, Debian 5.0 and RedHat/CentOS/Oracle 5.3.
Pricing starts at $2,500 per server, regardless of the number of processors.
