Citrix XenServer
Unlock the Power of Virtualisation
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 virtualisation.
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 centre solution vendors. With Xen virtualisation,
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 paravirtualisation technology
is widely acknowledged as the fastest and most secure virtualisation software in the
industry and is enhanced by taking full advantage of the latest Intel VT and AMD-V
hardware virtualisation 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 virtualisation engine and build out a full managed virtualisation
platform, designed for efficient management of Windows and Linux virtual machines.
Citrix XenServer combines the performance, security, and openness of the Xen
technology with Xencentre comprehensive management — a platform perfect for rapid
adoption of virtualisation for server consolidation, software development and test,
and business continuity.
Citrix XenServer v4 is a native 64-bit virtualisation 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.
Dynamic Virtualisation for Business Agility
With Citrix XenServer virtualisation, businesses can increase server and storage
utilisation, 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
virtualisation with existing processes and management tools, rather than
requiring rip-and-replace reimplementation.
For more information about Citrix products or how SDT can help you implement or support a Citrix based solution contact us on 01344 870 062 or click
here to request a call back from one of our consultants.