XenServer 6.2 now available
XenServer 6.2 is now available to download, with the availability of the XenServer “Project Clearwater” Release. Below is an overview of what’s new in this XenServer release. XenServer has shifted home, and you can now download it from www.xenserver.org
The big news is:
- XenServer 6.2 is available as a free open source virtualization platform for all users
- Citrix is also introducing a new XenServer.org community portal
- Citrix provides a paid version of XenServer the includes support and maintenance
- New CPU socket licensing
- New simplified packaging and pricing
The big, big news of the day is that Citrix moves to open source XenServer as part of Citrix’s commitment and strategy towards enabling the best platform for providing their customers a path to the cloud. Leveraging their experience as the leader in desktop virtualization and as the dominant virtualization platform in the public cloud, Citrix says it’s focused on ensuring a seamless path for customers to migrate their most important workloads to a cloud environment. The first part of this strategy already took place back in April when Xen was moved from Xen.org to the Linux Foundation and became the Xen Project.
XenServer 6.2.0 includes the following new features and ongoing improvements:
Licensing Simplification
In this release the introduction of XenServer 6.2.0 which replaces the previous XenServer Free, Advanced, Enterprise, and Platinum editions. Functionality previously available within premium versions of XenServer is now available free of charge. With this simplification Citrix has also introduced per-socket* licensing. Licenses no longer enable specific XenServer features, instead they signify that a XenServer is under a valid support contract. XenServer 6.2.0 no longer requires a license server or licence file to enable features, as all features are enabled for free in unlicensed mode. Licenses are only required to receive Citrix Support and to enable the use of XenCenter for the installation of security and feature hotfixes. Hotfixes can continue to be installed on unlicensed hosts using the xe command line.
*A socket is a physical CPU socket on the motherboard and not a core or thread.
Performance and Scale
Significant performance and scale improvements; given a server of sufficient capacity XenServer will scale to:
1. 650 Linux VMs per host (bootable and operational)
2. 500 Windows VMs per host (bootable and operational)
3. 3250 vCPUs per host (Windows)
Performance improvements include:
1. Reduction in the amount of traffic between a VM and the Control Domain (Dom0).
2. Automatic scaling of Dom0 memory and vCPUs based on physical memory and CPU capacity on the host.
Monitoring
The XenServer 6.1.0 Performance and Monitoring Supplemental Pack is now fully integrated and extended for XenServer 6.2.0. This provides detailed monitoring of performance metrics, including CPU, memory, disk, network, C-state/P-state information, and storage. Where appropriate, these metrics are available on a per host and a per VM basis. These metrics are available directly through the RRD interface, or can be accessed and viewed graphically in XenCenter or other third-party applications.
It is now possible to export the performance information directly as a Comma Separated Values (.csv) formatted stream enabling the use, or easy development, of third-party tooling.
New system alerts can be seen in XenCenter and XenDesktop Director and optionally sent by e-mail. Alerts are notifications that occur in response to selected system events, or when CPU, memory usage, network throughput, storage throughput, or VM disk activity go over a specified threshold on a managed host, VM, or storage repository.
Clone on Boot
This feature supports Machine Creation Services (MCS) which is shipped as part of XenDesktop. Clone on boot allows rapid deployment of hundreds of transient desktop images from a single source, with the images being automatically destroyed and their disk space freed on exit.
New and Improved Guest Support
1. Microsoft Windows 8
2. Microsoft Windows Server 2012
3. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP2 (32/64-bit)
4. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.8, 5.9, 6.3, 6.4 (32/64-bit)
5. Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 5.8, 5.9, 6.3, 6.4 (32/64-bit)
6. CentOS 5.8, 5.9, 6.3, 6.4 (32/64-bit)
7. Debian Wheezy (32/64-bit)
8. VSS support for Windows Server 2008R2 has been improved and reintroduced
Other Improvements
1. Improvements to logging in Dom0: logs cannot over-consume Dom0 resource, increasing host stability
2. Live Storage Migration is now possible from the VM Storage tab in XenCenter
3. Support for additional CPUs (AMD Piledriver, Intel Haswell-DT)
4. Updated in-box device drivers
5. Minor Hypervisor upgrade (Xen-4.1.5)
6. Updated DM Multipath (0.4.9.56)
7. Support for alert severity filtering in XenCenter
8. Updated XenServer alert severity levels for consistency
Best of Both Worlds Free Software, Commercial Support Available
With the change to open source, XenServer is now available for free to everyone on the new XenServer.org Community. The new stuff is that Citrix will provide support for distribution of XenServer. This is very similar to leading open source enterprise products like Red Hat Enterprise Linux verses what CentOS Linux does. By purchasing Citrix XenServer support licenses you get:
- Citrix Premier 24×7 worldwide support offering unlimited-incident worldwide technical support in nine languages across the globe.
- Commercially packaged and certified product that goes through rigorous testing and provides certified product lifecycles and guaranteed support statements.
- Simplified patching and updating via XenCenter management console that enables automated GUI driven patch application and upgrades. In contrast, free XenServer requires patches and updates to be installed from the command line, but both include XenCenter for overall server management.
- Indemnification and license protection that protects customers from any liabilities stemming from the open source code.
- Citrix knowledgebase & My Account Portal for access to the expanded inventory of technical articles and a simple-to-use portal for product downloads and license management.
Click here to download -> https://xenserver.org/overview-xenserver-open-source-virtualization/download.html
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