Citrix XenServer 4.1 Storage Delivery Services

Citrix this morning announced XenServer version 4.1 and XenServer Platinum Edition.

This is the first release after the Citrix acquisition of XenSource several months back and contains several very useful capabilities including Provisioning Server which ships with the XenServer Platinum Edition and is provided as a result of the Ardence acquisition made by Citrix on December 2006.

Provisioning Server allows a single Golden Image (Xen VM or VMware VM) to be simultaneously broadcasted to hundreds of devices. Actually, the number Citrix claims is 1000.

Another important aspect of this announcements is around XenServer's Storage Delivery Services. SDS provides tight integration with NetApp arrays and allow XenServer customers the ability to take advantage of NetApp's rich set of data management features from within the XenCenter management console including FlexClones, Backup and Recovery and Thin Provisioning.

At this point, XenCenter only supports NetApp arrays (FAS, V-Series & StoreVault) with this type of integration via the implementation of a NetApp specific"Adapter" that translates NetApp APIs to XenAPI operations.

Opening up the various server virtualization management consoles, easily allowing for integration with the various storage vendors and providing end-end data management capability is a good thing for the IT folks as it cuts down the complexity and simplifies the day to day management and provisioning tasks.

Here's is a Flash Demo showing the capabilities of the NetApp Adapter in XenServer.

Comments

[Terry]

This is great news as we are looking at an alternative to VMware. Will NetApp also support XenMotion?

[Nick Triantos]

The NetApp integration with XenCenter by Citrix does not impact XenMotion which is already supported.