Virtualization.com

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

xenserver

SteelEye Ships Protection Suite for Citrix XenServer

by Leave a Comment

SteelEye Technology, a California-based provider of business continuity solutions that focus on data protection, data replication and disaster recovery, has started shipping its Protection Suite for Citrix XenServer in addition to an existing product for VMware Infrastructure.

SteelEye Protection Suite delivers real-time LAN and WAN replication of XenServer virtual machines. It integrates with XenMotion and XenCenter to fully support manual movement of replicated VMs within a server pool. SteelEye Protection Suite is a host-based, storage repository replication solution that provides continuous data protection (CDP), change-only replication, integrated compression and a highly optimized replication engine.

SteelEye Protection Suite for XenServer is available immediately through SteelEye’s global network of value-added resellers and OEM partners. Customers that want to use the Protection Suite for a single migration of virtual machines can purchase a time-limited license for either 15 days ($495) or 90 days ($1,495).

Customers that wish to use SteelEye for continuous replication of their VMs, can make use of a permanent license that supports an unlimited number of VMs per XenServer host. SteelEye pricing is set at $2,495 for XenServer Standard Edition and at $3,995 for XenServer Enterprise or Platinum Edition.

SteelEye also announced it has joined the Citrix Ready Program, an initiative designed for organizations that have demonstrated product and solution compatibility with one or more Citrix products.

[Source: Marketwire]

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.

Citrix Pushes Embedding XenServer With Extended OEM Incentive Program

by Leave a Comment

Citrix has extended its Citrix Advisor Rewards program today to pay channel partners on sales of Citrix XenServer software that ships as an embedded feature in servers from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like HP.

The program, originally introduced in 2004, pays Citrix Solution Advisors for designing and delivering solutions based on Citrix application delivery products, even if a different channel partner ultimately fulfills the order. Extending the program to include embedded versions of XenServer eliminates any potential channel conflict with OEM partners and ensures strong incentives across the board by compensating partners that influence embedded XenServer deals as well as those who fulfill them.

Citrix has announced several OEM agreements in recent months to embed XenServer in servers from systems vendors such as HP. As a result of today’s announcement, the Citrix Advisor Rewards program now pays channel partners on sales of these products, effectively eliminating potential channel conflict and focusing the extensive expertise of Citrix Solution Advisors on delivering the best possible solutions to customers.

“Customers want to implement virtualization with reduced risk, and HP understands that the channel is essential to meeting those requirements,” said Scott Farrand, vice president, Industry Standard Server Software, HP. “Citrix’s new channel program enables partners to offer a comprehensive virtualization solution that integrates the power of HP ProLiant servers with the rich functionality of the Citrix XenServer HP Select Edition from a single, reliable source.”

INetU Powers Virtualized Dedicated Hosting With Citrix XenServer

by Leave a Comment

Managed web hosting company INetU recently announced it has selected, after extensive research and testing, Citrix Systems’ XenServer for the launch of its new virtualization offering. INetU will be managing virtual servers for clients running Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Linux.

INetU

Dev Chanchani, President and CEO of INetU noted,

”We selected Citrix XenServer for a variety of factors. Some of those factors included strong Industry support from Microsoft and HP, along with impressive benchmarks and appealing management features. We feel strongly about the benefits virtualization brings within a managed hosting environment. Our support of virtualized environments allows our clients and prospects to start taking advantages of virtualization. For example, clients can quickly deploy additional servers to increase scalability or quickly migrate their virtualized servers to newer hardware without the hassle of reconfiguring a new server setting by setting.”

[Source: TheHostingNews]

“Benchmarking” The Citrix / XenServer Combo with Ian Pratt (Video Interview – Part 4)

by Leave a Comment

During the Fosdem 2008 conference, we had a chance to sit down (on a bench) with Xen Guru Ian Pratt. Below is the fourth and last part (see part 1, part 2 and part 3) of our exclusive interview, where Ian shines his light on Citrix Xenserver, relocating virtual machines (VM), VM-mirroring, OVF, page tables algorithms, open source community involvement, management frameworks, the Citrix take-over, Virtualization marketing with OS-enlightment, FUD-tactics by VMWare, self-healing servers, Xen embedded in firmware, why Amazon goes with Xen, the Xen GPL license, OracleVM, xVM (Sun), Parallels and the future of virtualization…

We cut the interview into 4 digestable pieces, which we publish one at a time (see part 1, part 2 and part 3). As said, this is the final part (soon, you’ll also find a written transcript below for your convenience):

The video is also up on YouTube and Steamocracy.

Stratus Technologies Releases Avance, Integrates With Citrix XenServer for Software-Based High-Availability Solution

by 1 Comment

Stratus Technologies has announced (PDF) its Stratus Avance software, the company’s first software-based high availability (HA) product. Using embedded virtualization and running on ordinary x86 servers, Avance claims to provide levels of availability superior to, and without the complexity of, high-availability cluster solutions for Linux and Windows applications.

Stratus Technologies

Stratus’ new software-based solution targets the SMB market as well as “edge” applications in large distributed networks where IT-staff support is minimal or non-existent. Prospective customers include medical practices, retail chains, small companies, branch banks, remote office or departmental computing, or distributed warehouses, distribution hubs or manufacturing facilities, for example.

Unlike other high-availability solutions, Avance HA positions itself as instant and automatic. Processing takes place on one server and data is simultaneously written to the mate, which can seamlessly assume
processing duties at any time should the primary server go out of service. If that happens, the affected server is removed from the network, alerts go out to user-defined recipients, a repair is made, and the server is brought back online to resynchronize with the active node with no downtime or data loss.

Avance is integrated with Citrix XenServer, and the U.S. list price for Avance software is $2,500 per server (including the license for Citrix XenServer). Avance software is available from Stratus channel partners and distributors, and in volume purchases directly from Stratus.