Citrix Hypervisor is an open source platform for cost-effective application, desktop, cloud, and server virtual infrastructures. Citrix Hypervisor enables organizations of any size or type to consolidate and transform compute resources into virtual workloads for today’s data center requirements, while ensuring a seamless pathway for moving workloads to the cloud.

New in Citrix Hypervisor 8.0 Premium Edition:

• New Citrix Hypervisor brand in product
• Support for VM Disks Greater Than 2TB
• Disk and Memory Snapshot for vGPU Enabled VMs
• Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2019
• Experimental guest UEFI boot for Windows VM

Citrix Hypervisor 8.0 is built on a new Xen platform, a new kernel and control domain (dom 0), bringing with it a wide variety of improvements and innovations from the underlying technologies.

Customer licensing for Citrix Hypervisor 8.0 remains the same as XenServer 7.6.

Citrix Hypervisor8.0 is a Current Release (CR). The Current Release model allows customers to consume new features at the earliest possible juncture. A Current Release contrasts with the Long Term Service Release (XenServer 7.1 LTSR), which guarantees stability in terms of the feature set.

Citrix Hypervisor 8.0 is available in the following editions:

• Premium Edition (previously Enterprise Edition)
• Standard Edition
• Express Edition (previously Free Edition)

New features and improvements in Citrix Hypervisor 8.0

Citrix Hypervisor 8.0 introduces enhanced features and functionality for application, desktop, and server virtualization use cases. All Citrix Hypervisor 8.0 features are available to all licensed Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenApp and XenDesktop) customers.

Platform refresh

The Citrix Hypervisor(XenServer) platform has been updated to use the following software:

• Kernel version: Linux 4.19
• Xen hypervisor version: 4.11
• Control domain operating system version: CentOS 7.5

As part of the update to the kernel version, the amount of memory allocated to the control domain (dom0) has increased. For more information, see Memory usage.

The kernel device drivers have also been updated to newer versions. Some hardware that was supported in previous releases might not work with the newer drivers. Check the Hardware Compatibility List before upgrading to Citrix Hypervisor 8.0.

In addition, the following appliances provided with CitrixHypervisor have been updated to use CentOS 7.5 as their base operating system:

• Citrix Hypervisor Conversion manager
• Workload Balancing virtual appliance
• Demo Linux virtual appliance

Changes to guest operating system support

The set of guest operating systems that Hypervisor supports has been updated. For more information, see Guest operating system support

Added

Citrix Hypervisor8.0 now supports the following additional guest templates:

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15
• CentOS 7.6
• Oracle Linux 7.6
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6
• Scientific Linux 7.6
• CentOS 6.10
• Oracle Linux 6.10
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.10
• Scientific Linux 6.10
• Windows Server 2019

Removed

We have removed support for the following guest templates:

• Debian 6 Squeeze
• Ubuntu 12.04
• Asianux Server 4.2, 4.4, and 4.5
• NeoKylin Linux Security OS 5
• Linx Linux 6
• Linx Linux 8
• GreatTurbo Enterprise Server 12
• Yinhe Kylin 4
• Legacy Windows

Changes to processor support

The following processors are now supported in Citrix Hypervisor8.0:

• Xeon 82xx/62xx/52xx/42xx/32xx CascadeLake-SP

The following legacy processors are no longer supported in Citrix Hypervisor 8.0:

• Opteron 13xx Budapest
• Opteron 23xx/83xx Barcelona
• Opteron 23xx/83xx Shanghai
• Opteron 24xx/84xx Istanbul
• Opteron 41xx Lisbon
• Opteron 61xx Magny Cours
• Xeon 53xx Clovertown
• Xeon 54xx Harpertown
• Xeon 55xx Nehalem
• Xeon 56xx Westmere-EP
• Xeon 65xx/75xx Nehalem-EX
• Xeon 73xx Tigerton
• Xeon 74xx Dunnington

For more information, see the Hardware Compatibility List.

Create VDIs greater than 2 TiB (Premium Edition)

You can now create virtual disk images larger than 2 TiB on GFS2 SRs.

Support for disk and memory snapshots for vGPU-enabled VMs (Premium Edition)

When a disk and memory snapshot of a vGPU-enabled VM is taken the state of the VM includes the vGPU state. This vGPU state is restored when the VM is resumed from the snapshot.

Web-based help for XenCenter and Citrix Hypervisor Conversion Manager

Documentation for XenCenter and Citrix Hypervisor Conversion Manager is now available online at the Citrix Product Documentation website.

This online documentation replaces the in-product help. Now, when you press F1 in the UI or choose to access contextual help, the relevant article opens in your default browser. These articles are also available as a PDF for offline viewing. Use the View PDF button to download the PDF.

These web-based articles offer you the most accurate and up-to-date content.

Experimental features

Citrix Hypervisor8.0 includes the following experimental feature:

• Guest UEFI boot

For more information, see Experimental features.