Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

Citrix Systems

Citrix Systems And Intel Partner For Development Of Xen Client Hypervisor Technology

by Leave a Comment

Citrix Systems and Intel are working on developing technology to make desktop-as-a-service computing possible. The two companies said yesterday that they are collaborating to jointly deliver a hypervisor that will sit on end-user devices which will allow customers to have access to their virtual desktop PCs from any device without the need to boot up the device.

Under an agreement with Intel, Citrix plans to produce a new class of virtualization solutions that optimize the delivery of applications and desktops to millions of Intel Core2 and Centrino 2 processor-based devices, considerably reducing the cost of desktop management.

The new Xen-based client hypervisor resulting from the collaboration between Citrix and Intel will be optimized for bare metal virtualization and suited for delivery as an embedded, small footprint component of an enterprise laptop or desktop PC, and can also be installed on existing client systems that already have an operating system installed.

More perspective on the collaboration can be found on eWeek.

Citrix Releases XenApp 5, Will It Prove To Become The Application Virtualization Standard?

by Leave a Comment

Remember when Brian Madden pointed out that Citrix XenApp 5.0 would be delayed for several months? Well, he was right, technically. Anyhow, Citrix today announced the release of Citrix XenApp 5, and claims it “breaks through performance and operating-cost barriers, making application start times up to 10 times faster, dramatically improving end-user experience and lowering application management costs by more than 25 percent over previous versions”.

“XenApp 5 broadens the horizon of the end-user experience and accessibility by delivering an end-to-end virtualization solution that addresses the needs of both local and hosted applications,” said Mark Bowker, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “In addition, XenApp 5 is giving new and existing customers a welcome boost in performance at an attractive price-point, two highly sought-after requirements for companies investing in strategic technologies in today’s economy.”

XenApp, in combination with Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenServer, creates an end-to-end virtualization solution that spans servers, applications and desktops. The new XenApp 5 release is being featured on September 9, 2008 as part of a global, online launch event, called Citrix Delivery Center Live!

With the release of XenApp 5, Citrix claims it is raising the bar with significant new improvements to performance, user experience and cost savings. In total, XenApp 5 includes more than 50 new major enhancements, according to the official press release.

XenApp 5, which runs on the Microsoft Windows Server platform, leverages all the enhancements in Windows Server 2008 and fully supports Windows Server 2003. This enables existing Windows Server 2003 customers to immediately deploy Windows Server 2008 into their existing XenApp environments in any mix.

XenApp 5 will be available September 10, 2008. For North America, suggested retail pricing is per concurrent user (CCU) and includes one year of Subscription Advantage:

  • Advanced Edition – US $350
  • Enterprise Edition – US $450
  • Platinum Edition – US $600

Standalone pricing for client-side application streaming and virtualization begins as low as $60 per CCU.

Citrix Systems

Citrix Announces Public Beta of XenServer 4.2

by 1 Comment

Yesterday, Citrix released the public beta of the next version of XenServer, which may or may not be called XenServer 4.2 but is still being referred to as ‘Project Orlando’. Judging by the comments on the Citrix forum, the release was indeed scheduled for end of July, with a final version coming in September.

Citrix XenServer 4.2 comes with Xen 3.2, with Xen 3.3 remaining in final testing stage. On to the Xen.org blog, you can already post feature requests for Xen 3.4.

Virtualization.info broke the news about the release and lists the following additional new features:

  • Automated high availability
  • VM grouping, searching and tagging
  • Real-time and persistent performance monitoring
  • Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008, XP SP3, Vista SP1 guest OSes
  • Support for Novell SLES 9 SP4 / 10 SP2, Red Hat RHEL 4.7 / 5.2 guest OSes
  • Support for Fibre Channel / iSCSI multipath (configurable through XenCenter)
  • Support for alerts as email

You can enroll for the public beta program here.

Citrix Systems

IntervalZero Acquires Ardence Embedded Software Business From Citrix Systems

by Leave a Comment

IntervalZero, a new embedded software company led by a group of senior Ardence executives, today announced that it has acquired Ardence’s Embedded software business from Citrix.

The company, which is based in Waltham, MA, is headed by CEO Jeffrey D. Hibbard, an Ardence/Citrix executive with more than 20 years of software engineering, sales, marketing and management experience.

IntervalZero officially completed the acquisition on July 15 and will continue to market and sell the Embedded products under their existing names – RTX, ETS and Select. IntervalZero said worldwide Embedded Distribution/Reseller channels and Embedded Partner affiliations – notably the Partner relationships with Microsoft and Intel – remain in place.

Citrix, the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, acquired Ardence’s Enterprise and Embedded software businesses in January 2007. Although Citrix determined that the Ardence Embedded products were not a good fit for its Enterprise product portfolio, Citrix made an equity investment in IntervalZero.

“We believe there are significant opportunities in Embedded technology, but it is not a core business for Citrix. To continue to grow and succeed, the Embedded business needed both the focus and the investment that Jeff and the IntervalZero team are fully committed to delivering. Their approach to the market and their business model are sound, which is why we have maintained a stake in the IntervalZero,” said Lou Shipley, VP and General Manager of Citrix’s Xen Products Group.

Symantec Sets Up Virtualization Lab in Japan

by Leave a Comment

Symantec today announced that Symantec Japan has opened its new “Virtualisation Solutions Lab” for customers and partners, as the company continues to deliver on its virtualization strategy.

The Virtualisation Solutions Lab will enable Symantec Japan to test and optimize Symantec’s products for specific virtual environments quickly, and provide customers and partners with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience and see demonstrations of solution deployments for their environments. With this new facility, Symantec Japan claims it can better support its customers and partners who decide to implement virtualization solutions, as market needs for virtualization continue to grow rapidly.

The Virtualisation Solutions Lab is located within the Japan Engineering Center at Symantec Japan’s headquarters (Minato-ku, Tokyo), which is responsible for all technological verification required for Symantec’s products before their release into the Japanese market. With the launch of this new facility, the Virtualisation Solutions Lab will introduce comprehensive virtualisation solutions for data centres in VMware environments.

The line-up of solutions to be provided by the Virtualisation Solutions Lab is as follows:

  • Comprehensive backup solutions using Veritas NetBackup for VMware environments
  • Failover solutions with high availability of guest OS and VMware applications using Veritas Cluster Server
  • Backup and restore solutions for P2V (physical to virtual) system images using Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery
  • Deployment solutions for virtual servers using the Symantec Altiris platform

Symantec Japan plans to work closely with Citrix Systems and Microsoft to test virtualization solutions for Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environments at the Virtualisation Solutions Lab in addition to VMware Infrastructure 3. In addition, Symantec Japan plans to organize regular product familiarization seminars as it continues to expand its range of solutions for its customers and partners.

[Source: ITWeb]

Symantec

Citrix Aims To Make Creation of Hypervisor-Independent Application Workloads Easier with Project Kensho

by 2 Comments

Citrix today announced “Project Kensho,” which will deliver Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) tools that allow independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprise IT managers to easily create hypervisor-independent, portable enterprise application workloads. These tools will allow application workloads to be imported and run across Citrix XenServer, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX environments.

Citrix boasts this implementation will solve a multitude of interoperability issues between virtualization platforms while allowing automated provisioning and management of applications, rather than just virtual machines. Users will be able to easily install and use any OVF packaged application workload regardless of which virtualization platform they use – whether it be XenServer, Hyper-V, or ESX.

“XenServer delivers the benefits of fast, free, ubiquitous and compatible virtualization, whether from Citrix, Microsoft or VMware,” said Simon Crosby, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix Systems. “Project Kensho highlights the Citrix commitment to interoperability for virtualization, while maximizing price/performance and richness of features at the virtual infrastructure level.”

The OVF specification was originally co-authored by Citrix and VMware, with contributions from Dell, HP, IBM and Microsoft. The companies then jointly submitted the draft to the DMTF standardization process.

Project Kensho will support the vision of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, helping customers transform static datacenters into dynamic “delivery centers” for the best performance, security, cost savings and business agility. The tools developed through Project Kensho will be integrated into Citrix Workflow Studio based orchestrations, for example, to provide an automated, environment for managing the import and export of applications from any major virtualization platform.

A technical preview of Project Kensho tools is expected to be available for free download in September 2008.