So, after 5 weeks of beta testing by the public, Citrix have today officially release XenServer 5.5 and XenServer Essentials 5.5.
As promised by Citrix, XenServer is Free of Charge and comes packed with functionality showing a product that has matured and is catching up quickly with VMware.
The key features that are inherent in XenServer 5.5 and Essentials are:
- AD Integration
- Expanded Guest OS Support
- Improved Snapshot and Backup Support in XenCenter and CLI, one of the inital key players for backup is Symantec with NetBackup
- Further enhancements on fibre channel multi pathing
- Enhanced Search
- Folder Creation
- XenConvert 2.0
- Improved public reporting tracker
- Reduced Dom0 footprint.
XenServer Essentials offers additional functionality, that begins to level the playing field with VMware:
- Workload Balancing similar to VMware DRS
- Integration with StorageLink Services
- LVHD
- Automated Stage Management.
It will be interesting to see where this takes Citrix, and I for one will watch this with an eagle eye. We at Dataplex remain independent in our approach to virtualisaiton and believe that one solution does not fit all requirements, a properly architectured solution should cater for the growth of the business and fully align with the all important question - "What is your virtualisation strategy".