Main menu:
Solutions > Virtualisation
Citrix XenServer
Unlock the Power of Virtualization
Citrix XenServer™ enables businesses to deploy high-performance Windows and Linux virtual machines rapidly and easily, and to manage them and their related storage and networking resources from a single easy-to-use management console.
The foundation of the XenServer v4 Family is the open source Xen™ hypervisor, a proven and fully supported engine for server virtualization.
What is Xen?
Xen is a unique open source technology invented by a team led by Ian Pratt at the University of Cambridge and developed cooperatively by the world’s best engineers at over 20 of the most innovative data center solution vendors. With Xen virtualization, a thin software layer (known as the Xen hypervisor) is installed directly on the hardware, or “bare metal,” and is thereby inserted between the server’s hardware and the operating system. This provides an abstraction layer that allows each physical server to run one or more “virtual servers,” effectively decoupling the operating system and its applications from the underlying physical server. Xen’s paravirtualization technology is widely acknowledged as the fastest and most secure virtualization software in the industry and is enhanced by taking full advantage of the latest Intel VT and AMD-V hardware virtualization assist capabilities. The Xen hypervisor is exceptionally lean — less than 50,000 lines of code – which translates to extremely low overhead and near-native performance for guests.
Introducing Citrix XenServer
The inventors and lead developers of Xen, with the rest of the XenServer team, take this powerful virtualization engine and build out a full managed virtualization platform, designed for efficient management of Windows and Linux virtual machines. Citrix XenServer combines the performance, security, and openness of the Xen technology with XenCenter comprehensive management — a platform perfect for rapid adoption of virtualization for server consolidation, software development and test, and business continuity.
Citrix XenServer v4 is a native 64-bit virtualization platform with the scalability required by business-critical applications. The highest host and guest CPU and memory limits available, coupled with fine-grained resource controls for CPU, network and disk, enable it to deliver optimal quality of service.
Flexible Purchase Options
Three Citrix XenServer editions are available to meet every organization’s business needs:
All editions are fully compatible, with additional capacity and features enabled by license key, requiring no additional software deployment or downtime to upgrade between editions.
Dynamic Virtualization for Business Agility
With Citrix XenServer virtualization, businesses can increase server and storage utilization, reducing costs of equipment, power, cooling, and real estate. By combining servers and storage into resource pools that can be apportioned to the applications with the highest business need, IT operations can be aligned to changing demand and business priorities. With XenMotion, running virtual machines can be migrated to new servers with no service interruption, allowing essential workloads to get needed resources and enable zero-downtime maintenance.
Easy to Deploy and Integrate
The Citrix XenServer software installs directly on bare metal servers, requiring no dedicated host operating system. Open command-line (CLI) and programming (API) interfaces make it easy for vendors and enterprises to integrate XenEnterprise virtualization with existing processes and management tools, rather than requiring rip-and-replace reimplementation.
What’s New in Citrix XenServer v4?