XenServer Tech Preview TP3 is out
This Citrix XenServer Technical Preview TP 3, offers enhanced features and functionality for application, desktop and server virtualization use cases.
In addition to significant scale and performance improvements, the Tech Preview includes support for:
- Installation of I/O drivers through Windows Update
- Intel GVT-g virtual GPU for Windows – Citrix continue to collaborate with their partners, in driving innovation in the virtualized-graphics domain. Within this Tech Preview, Citrix now showcase Intel’s virtual GPU; a graphics acceleration solution that requires no additional hardware:
1.Uses the Intel Iris Pro functionality on Broadwell and Haswell processors equipped with the C226 chipset.
2.Utilizes a standard Intel GPU driver, installed within the VM.
3.Simply RDP into a Windows 8.1 VM and run a graphically demanding application. - The latest innovations in hardware-accelerated graphics processing (Intel GVT-g and NVIDIA GRID 2.0)
- AVX and AVX2 instructions, for improved performance of software that supports these registers
- SMB storage – SMB storage (ubiquitous in many Microsoft environments) can now utilize SMB as their XenServer SR, and therefore may need no additional storage for their XenServer environment, enabling significant potential cost savings
- Improved heterogeneous pools – Enables new hosts to be added to existing resource pools, irrespective of the underlying CPU type (as long as the CPU is from the same vendor family). VMs can now freely migrate within and across pools, irrespective of the particular CPU features the VM may be using. These enhanced agilities are delivered without recourse to any command line expressions and do not require any hosts to be rebooted.
- Software-boot-from-iSCSI for Cisco UCS
- Migration from recent VMware vSphere versions, including vSphere 6.0 enabled.
- Enhanced Workload Balancing and XenServer Conversion Manager appliance functionality.
-
Experience high performance and enhanced 3D graphics – Representing a new form factor for virtualized graphics, Intel GVT-g enhanced graphics are based on the embedded Intel Iris Pro GPU within the Intel Xeon E3 chipset. This opens up new hardware opportunities for virtualized application and desktop environments. NVIDIA GRID vGPU support has been added enabling customers to trial NVIDIA functionality while leveraging other TP platform enhancements.
-
Improved Performance & Scale
Citrix continue to deliver ever greater performance and scalability, enabling customers to realize economies of scale and processing efficiencies. These include the following enhancements:
Increased Host Memory
Support for up to 5 TB of system memory, accommodating even the largest workloads.
Support for up to 1.5TB of Memory per VM
For memory-hungry VMs4, such as those running databases, we now support up to 1.5TB of memory.
Improved Dom0 Responsiveness
The responsiveness of Dom0 has been significantly improved when subjected to heavy VM load.
Support for 288 CPUs
Support for up to 288 physical CPUs, accommodating even the most powerful servers.
Support for 32 vCPUs per VM
Maximum number of virtual CPUs supported per VM has increased to 32
Increased number of VBDs
Maximum number of VBDs per VM has increased to 255
Increased number of VBDs
Maximum number of VBDs per host has increased to 4096
Learn more at XenServer What’s New.
Terms of access and use
- The Tech Preview is only available to existing customers, and requires a Tech Preview license key. The license key is available from this page and needs to be installed on a Citrix License Server.
- This preview is intended only for existing Citrix XenServer, XenApp or XenDesktop customers.
- The previewed features and enhancements are being considered for inclusion in future versions of XenServer. They have not yet been fully integrated or productized, and there may be debugging code in place.
- This is not a fully featured release, is not intended for use in any environment other than test or development, and should not be used for production workloads. Citrix does not guarantee that any preview features or functionality described here or within the downloadable product will be made available in a future releases.
Click here to download XenServer TP3 ( requires a valid mycitrix.com account)