The release of the free enterprise-ready XenServer virtualization infrastructure in February lowered the adoption barriers for a full managed platform, and the subsequent release of XenServer 5.5 last week has kicked the excitement up a notch.

One of the things we have noticed, though, is that some new XenServer users have had a difficult time navigating our web presence and finding all of the XenServer-specific information. The fact that we offer the compete Citrix Delivery Center solution, with powerful end-to-end delivery of all types of applications, offers a powerful set of capabilities -- but all that information can make it difficult when what you're trying to do is find all of the product information, news, and support resources for one product.

So we are now launching XenServer Central - a home on the web for all things XenServer.

You'll find everything there from pointers to product information and documentation to the latest press releases and articles to white papers to informational videos... even an easy way to follow our XenServer Army feed on Twitter (as well as other Twitter posts about XenServer).  

You'll even find some surprises, like our "How I Found Xen" contest rules.

Check it out, bookmark it, and stop back often.  It's the quickest and easiest way to stay up-to-date on all things XenServer.

We hear from many of you every day, in person, by email, by Twitter, in your own blogs -- and even some ways I can't think of -- I bet some testimonials have washed up on the beach in bottles! -- about how virtualizing your business, your lab, or your own services on Citrix XenServer and Citrix Essentials for XenServer have saved you money, made your environment more responsive, and simplified management.

Now we're going to put a little bit of our money where your mouth, or keyboard, is.

Let us know how you and your company have "attained Xen" -- and we'll choose a few of our favorites each month and give them a gift to thank them.  We'll pick anywhere from one to three of them each month and give the winner a gift credit of US$100 or equivalent at Amazon, iTunes, or a major online retailer in their local area. 

Send us anywhere from fifty to 500 words.  Be creative, be specific, and let others know what XenServer has done for you.  (If your creativity runs more to the visual, we'll also be announcing a video contest in the next month or two.)

Mail your entry to findxen@citrix.com. At the end of every month, the XenServer/Essentials marketing team will choose its favorites and we'll notify the winner (or winners) by the middle of the following month.

There's a catch, of course -- we ask for the rights to use your testimonial.  (See the fine print below for details.)  At a minimum, you'll need to tell us your name and email address, so we can contact you if you win. To be considered, you'll also need to specify your company, industry, and company size, as well as your job role.  If you only want us to use your job role, industry and company size, that's fine -- but if you give us permission to use your name and your company's, we'll double the prize to US$200 or equivalent. Whether you win or not, we retain the rights to use your testimonial under the terms you choose, either anonymous or named.

It's a small token of how we value your support. 

And now, the "fine print."

ELIGIBILITY

This Contest is open to individuals who have used Citrix XenServer or Citrix Essentials for XenServer. By submitting a testimonial entry, Contestants acknowledge that their entry may be showcased on the Citrix Web site, and may also be utilized in part or in full in media stories. Entries must be submitted by an individual who is at least 18 years of age.  Void where prohibited.

HOW TO ENTER

Contestants must mail their entry to findxen@citrix.com, and in 50 to 500 words, submit their entry explaining how using Citrix XenServer or Citrix Essentials for XenServer has benefited the Contestant or the company the Contestant works for. E-mail is the only medium to enter this contest and no other means of entrance will be accepted. All entries must be submitted in English. Contest timeframe is limited and can end at anytime, as deemed by Citrix.

SELECTION OF WINNER

Each entry will be judged by a Committee designated by the Citrix XenServer/Essentials Product Marketing team. Judging will be based on the unique perspective and interesting anecdotes Contestant provides in their testimonials about how Citrix XenServer and Citrix Essentials for XenServer have enhanced the Contestant's or Company's IT infrastructure. The decisions of the Committee will be final.

CONDITIONS OF PRIZE AWARD

The top one to three selected Contestants each month will be notified by e-mail that their testimonial has been selected; a gift credit for the desired online retailer will be delivered to their e-mail address.

Failure to comply with any term or condition in these Official Rules, or if prize is returned as non-deliverable, may result in prize forfeiture, in whole or in part, and selection of an alternate potential winner. Prizes will be shipped approximately 2 to 3 weeks after each month's Contest end. Citrix will post the names of the winners  after the prize is awarded, except where prohibited by law. Winners are responsible for any applicable federal, state, or local taxes.

COPYRIGHT AND PUBLICATION

All entries and submissions become the property of Citrix. Citrix will not return any entries. By submitting a Contest entry, a Contestant: (a) assigns to Citrix all copyrights and moral rights in and to the Contest entry arising under stature and common law, and all other rights derivative therefrom, (b) grants to Citrix permission to publish, copy, and disseminate all or part of the Contest entry; and (c) grants to Citrix permission to use the Contestant's name for advertising or promotional purposes all without any royalty, compensation or other consideration to Contestant, except where prohibited by law. Contestant agrees that e-mail shall satisfy any writing requirement which may apply to intellectual property waivers, transfers, and licenses.

GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS

This contest is subject to all applicable federal, state, and local laws. Void where prohibited or restricted. Participation in the Contest constitutes Contestant's full and unconditional agreement to and acceptance of these Official Rules.

Citrix is not responsible for lost, late, stolen, delayed, damaged incomplete, illegible, misdirected, or unreceived e-mails and Contest entries; for failed, partial, or garbled computer transmissions; for technical failures of any kind related to the Web site or the administration of the contest; or for any technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines, computer on-line systems, servers, access providers, computer equipment, or software. Citrix reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or modify the contest, if fraud, technical failures, viruses or bugs, beyond the reasonable control of Citrix, corrupt, impair or destroy the administration, security, fairness or integrity of the contest as determined by Citrix in their sole discretion without liability to any Contestant. Entries are subject to verification and will be declared invalid if they are illegible, forged, falsified, altered or tampered with in any way or if they violate any provision of these Official Rules.

As a condition of entering this contest, Contestant agrees that Citrix and affiliates, officers, directors, employees and agents shall not be liable for injury, loss or damage of any kind resulting from participating in this Contest or from the acceptance or use of any prize awarded. The exclusive warranty for any prize, if any, is from the manufacturer as set forth in the product documentation. All issues and questions concerning the construction, validity, interpretation and enforceability of these Official Rules, or the rights and obligations of Contestant and Citrix in connection with the contest, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of the State of Florida, U.S.A. without giving effect to any choice of law or conflict of law rules or provisions.

VMware has released a series of KB articles outlining the requirements and best practices for installing vSphere, upgrading to vSphere, and upgrading ESX 3.0 virtual machines to ESX 4.0 hardware.  (Quoting them.)

So I'm guessing this should simplify the process, right? I know there were a few bumps in the update process for XenServer 5.0 Update 3 until we fleshed out the directions to be explicit about HA. Surely they've learned from this, and simplified their update process.

So let's see how they've focused on ease-of-use...

 4. If a SAN is connected to the ESX Server, detach the fiber before continuing with the upgrade.

 Walking from machine to machine in your data center pulling fiber connections, and reconnecting them after the upgrade?  Now that's automation.  That's ease-of-use.

We hear from many of you every day, in person, by email, by Twitter, in your own blogs -- and even some ways I can't think of -- I bet some testimonials have washed up on the beach in bottles! -- about how virtualizing your business, your lab, or your own services on Citrix XenServer and Citrix Essentials for XenServer have saved you money, made your environment more responsive, and simplified management.

Now we're going to put a little bit of our money where your mouth, or keyboard, is.

Let us know how you and your company have "attained Xen" -- and we'll choose a few of our favorites each month and give them a gift to thank them.  We'll pick anywhere from one to three of them each month and give the winner a gift credit of US$100 or equivalent at Amazon, iTunes, or a major online retailer in their local area. 

Send us anywhere from fifty to 500 words.  Be creative, be specific, and let others know what XenServer has done for you.  (If your creativity runs more to the visual, we'll also be announcing a video contest in the next month or two.)

Mail your entry to findxen@citrix.com. At the end of every month, the XenServer/Essentials marketing team will choose its favorites and we'll notify the winner (or winners) by the middle of the following month.

There's a catch, of course -- we ask for the rights to use your testimonial.  (See the fine print below for details.)  At a minimum, you'll need to tell us your name and email address, so we can contact you if you win. To be considered, you'll also need to specify your company, industry, and company size, as well as your job role.  If you only want us to use your job role, industry and company size, that's fine -- but if you give us permission to use your name and your company's, we'll double the prize to US$200 or equivalent. Whether you win or not, we retain the rights to use your testimonial under the terms you choose, either anonymous or named.

It's a small token of how we value your support. 

And now, the "fine print."

ELIGIBILITY

This Contest is open to individuals who have used Citrix XenServer or Citrix Essentials for XenServer. By submitting a testimonial entry, Contestants acknowledge that their entry may be showcased on the Citrix Web site, and may also be utilized in part or in full in media stories. Entries must be submitted by an individual who is at least 18 years of age.  Void where prohibited.

HOW TO ENTER

Contestants must mail their entry to findxen@citrix.com, and in 50 to 500 words, submit their entry explaining how using Citrix XenServer or Citrix Essentials for XenServer has benefited the Contestant or the company the Contestant works for. E-mail is the only medium to enter this contest and no other means of entrance will be accepted. All entries must be submitted in English. Contest timeframe is limited and can end at anytime, as deemed by Citrix.

SELECTION OF WINNER

Each entry will be judged by a Committee designated by the Citrix XenServer/Essentials Product Marketing team. Judging will be based on the unique perspective and interesting anecdotes Contestant provides in their testimonials about how Citrix XenServer and Citrix Essentials for XenServer have enhanced the Contestant's or Company's IT infrastructure. The decisions of the Committee will be final.

CONDITIONS OF PRIZE AWARD

The top one to three selected Contestants each month will be notified by e-mail that their testimonial has been selected; a gift credit for the desired online retailer will be delivered to their e-mail address.

Failure to comply with any term or condition in these Official Rules, or if prize is returned as non-deliverable, may result in prize forfeiture, in whole or in part, and selection of an alternate potential winner. Prizes will be shipped approximately 2 to 3 weeks after each month's Contest end. Citrix will post the names of the winners  after the prize is awarded, except where prohibited by law. Winners are responsible for any applicable federal, state, or local taxes.

COPYRIGHT AND PUBLICATION

All entries and submissions become the property of Citrix. Citrix will not return any entries. By submitting a Contest entry, a Contestant: (a) assigns to Citrix all copyrights and moral rights in and to the Contest entry arising under stature and common law, and all other rights derivative therefrom, (b) grants to Citrix permission to publish, copy, and disseminate all or part of the Contest entry; and (c) grants to Citrix permission to use the Contestant's name for advertising or promotional purposes all without any royalty, compensation or other consideration to Contestant, except where prohibited by law. Contestant agrees that e-mail shall satisfy any writing requirement which may apply to intellectual property waivers, transfers, and licenses.

GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS

This contest is subject to all applicable federal, state, and local laws. Void where prohibited or restricted. Participation in the Contest constitutes Contestant's full and unconditional agreement to and acceptance of these Official Rules.

Citrix is not responsible for lost, late, stolen, delayed, damaged incomplete, illegible, misdirected, or unreceived e-mails and Contest entries; for failed, partial, or garbled computer transmissions; for technical failures of any kind related to the Web site or the administration of the contest; or for any technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines, computer on-line systems, servers, access providers, computer equipment, or software. Citrix reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or modify the contest, if fraud, technical failures, viruses or bugs, beyond the reasonable control of Citrix, corrupt, impair or destroy the administration, security, fairness or integrity of the contest as determined by Citrix in their sole discretion without liability to any Contestant. Entries are subject to verification and will be declared invalid if they are illegible, forged, falsified, altered or tampered with in any way or if they violate any provision of these Official Rules.

As a condition of entering this contest, Contestant agrees that Citrix and affiliates, officers, directors, employees and agents shall not be liable for injury, loss or damage of any kind resulting from participating in this Contest or from the acceptance or use of any prize awarded. The exclusive warranty for any prize, if any, is from the manufacturer as set forth in the product documentation. All issues and questions concerning the construction, validity, interpretation and enforceability of these Official Rules, or the rights and obligations of Contestant and Citrix in connection with the contest, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of the State of Florida, U.S.A. without giving effect to any choice of law or conflict of law rules or provisions.

Citrix Essentials for Microsoft Hyper-V provides customers with a powerful set of advanced virtualization management capabilities that extend the enterprise management capabilities of Hyper-V and System Center to help make virtualized environments more scalable, more manageable and more agile.  

Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V includes:

• Automated lab management enables Hyper-V customers to develop, test and deliver applications faster by automating and simplifying the entire virtual machine lifecycle, including movement across virtualization platforms.
• Advanced storage integrationusing Citrix StorageLink™ technology makes it easy for Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center customers to fully leverage all the native power of their existing array-based storage systems.
• Dynamic provisioning serviceslets customers centrally manage a common set of master images which can be streamed on-demand into Hyper-V virtual machines or physical servers.
• Hypervisor interoperability makes it easy for customers to manage virtual machines across heterogeneous Hyper-V and XenServer environments.

You'll find the beta software here. (If you don't have a My Citrix account, you'll be asked to create one first; if you have one, you may be asked to log in.)

Support for this beta release is being provided via an online forum where you can share your experiences with Citrix personnel and other users. To access the Essentials for Hyper-V Early Release forum send us an email with forum in the subject line to #CVSM_support@citrix.com. Please include your My Citrix username in the email.

Please check out the advanced capabilities of Citrix Essentials for your Microsoft Hyper-V environment, and help us deliver the best virtualization management experience we can.

The new free Citrix XenServer will be posted in late March, and Citrix Essentials will be available in early April.  But... why wait?

You can complete a request form and download XenServer 5 and a license key that will enable all of the features of the new free XenServer plus a few of the features (including high availability and advanced StorageLink support for NetApp and Dell EqualLogic) of Citrix Essentials.  When the new bits are posted, there will also be an updater that will allow you to quickly transform your installation into the new free XenServer, or (with an appropriate edition key) the host-based capabilities of Citrix Essentials.

If you're already running Express Edition or Standard Edition, all you need is the license key on that download page.

Once the new free XenServer is available, if you're a user of Express Edition, upgrade and install the centralized multi-server management, resource pools, and XenMotion that now comes for free.  If you're a Standard Edition user, you can continue with the new free XenServer, or step up to Enterprise Edition and pay for Enterprise at your next Subscription Advantage or annual license renewal.

Either way, you'll get a powerful enterprise-class cloud-proven virtualization platform -- for free.

Get it now -- because, well, who wants to wait till tomorrow?

(Today seems to be "Stealing Titles from Authors" day for me -- thanks to Carrie Fisher for a line from POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE.)

As you've probably heard, today is the day the game changes for server virtualization, with Citrix offering XenServer for free and introducing advanced management for both XenServer and Hyper-V in the form of Citrix Essentials.

One question I've been asked has been: how did we determine what should be in the free virtualization platform?

Simple. We start with this proposition: XenServer = not just a free hypervisor, but the basic management capabilities 100% of or users require to make use of it in production,  pre-production, and production support scenarios. Citrix Essentials = the advanced management capabilities that add value to advanced scenarios -- mainly business-critical production, but also high-end production support and pre-production scenarios.

(By "pre-production" I mean development, test and staging.  By "production support" I mean technical support, demo, and training.)

We survey users of our products to find out why they bought the edition they bought, and what they'd like to see that is available in higher-end editions, among other things.

100% of Enterprise Edition users said they bought that version instead of the dearly departed Standard Edition because of XenMotion live migration, resource pools with shared storage,  and centralized multi-server management. 100% of Standard Edition users said those were the features they would like to be able to add.

So we put them into the new free XenServer, because they are the baseline of management that 100% of our users are looking for.

As we go down the list, percentages fall off a bit of a cliff.  The next most-requested feature is high availability, at about 30-40%. Despite others' best efforts at promotion, only a few companies implement high availability on 100% of their virtualized servers, and of those, far fewer protect all workloads.  So we included high availability for XenServer in Citrix Essentials, Enterprise Edition -- so the 30-40% of customers who want availability protection for their 10% or 20% (or more) of their workloads they consider business-critical can pay for the ability only on the servers they want to protect -- and run the majority of their workloads on the new free XenServer.

Similarly, our advanced StorageLink technology -- currently offered for NetApp and Dell EqualLogic storage, but delivering deep integrated management for more storage in a near-future release. Basic storage integration with logical volume management and VHD support for everyone - advanced StorageLink technologies for Citrix Essentials users.

So: if every user needs it to go beyond free hypervisors to a free virtualization platform that every server needs -- it's in the new free XenServer.  If it adds value to specific server roles, hardware, or other integrations -- it's in Citrix Essentials.  It's that simple.

(Apologies to John Irving and Nicholas Meyer for the titles.  The original versions come from books that are well worth a read.)

For the latest updates on Citrix XenServer -- what's new, who's doing what, how to get things done -- follow @XenServerArmy on Twitter -- and watch the skies.  We'll be offering regular updates very soon.

http://twitter.com/xenserverarmy

As I've posted in the past, use of tags for XenServer resources is a powerful organizing tool for keeping track of what your virtual machines are running and who they belong to. Tags bring a dynamic, flexible "web 2.0" approach to identifying and finding your resources.

But you may find that you want to make a more global extension to your configurations.  You may wish to identify all hosts with their physical location, for instance, or label the cost center and applications running on all of your virtual machines.

It's easy to add that sort of structured information too.

Simply select your server or virtual machine (or other resource) and choose the "Properties" option on the XenCenter right-click menu or appropriate top-level menu.  You'll see a tab for "Custom Fields."

Add the custom field, then give it a value.  It will show up on the General tab, it will be available in the configuration of searches, and it will be visible on the Custom Fields property tab of every resource.

Once they're set, you can even access the custom fields via the command line:

   xe vm-list other-config:XenCenter.CustomFields.Owner=Foo --multiple

...will find all virtual machines whose "Owner" field is set to "Foo".

Custom Fields enable organizations not only to find and manage their resources more effectively, but to organize and report on them as well.

Whether you attribute the original quotation to Benjamin Disraeli, Mark Twain, or your old Uncle Sol, you're probably familiar with the old adage about how the interpretation of statistics can be used to make the truth, er, pliable.

A great recent example of this is the interpretation by Parallels' Corey Thomas of a recent IDC report tracking software virtualization revenue.  In his analysis, he takes great pride in the fact that Parallels ranked ahead of Microsoft (and Citrix) in the report -- and second to VMware,  once you are "eliminating mainframe and UNIX players IBM and HP."

But this particular view of the world is designed to support a skewed interpretation.  Why?  Let's see...

• First, the elimination of IBM and HP doesn't necessarily hold water. It's not clear if they are on the list because they offer hypervisors for mainframes and UNIX boxes -- or if it's because they offer products like HP's Virtual Machine Manager (which supports Citrix XenServer, among other virtualization platforms) and other management tools.
• To move Parallels to the top five, one has to decide that certain platforms are relevant (not only PC desktops and servers but Mac desktops and servers too), but others are not (mainframes, SPARC, Itanium, Power).
• More important, one needs to determine that certain types of virtualization are relevant (not only server virtualization and client/endpoint virtualization, but also server-based OS virtualization -- but NOT the huge sales and installed base of server- and client-side application virtualization represented by Citrix XenApp.

When you look at the real picture for IT organizations -- server virtualization, desktop virtualization, and application virtualization on industry-standard x86 servers -- a different story emerges.  But it's not one that looks particularly strong for Parallels, since their strengths are in the hobbyist and developer market (for Parallels Desktop for Mac) and in the hosting provider market (for Virtuozzo -- and who knows what else -- are they counting control panels like Plesk and Sphera?)... While they've announced server virtualization products, they've only released on the Apple XServe running MacOS X, hardly a mainstream enterprise technology.

The choice, then: consider the hundreds of thousands of enterprises using key virtualization technologies -- server, desktop, and app virtualization on the industry-standard x86 platform -- from Citrix... or, like Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty, work the numbers by working the definition of "virtualization" -- as long as "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

OK, the title is a little bit hyperbolic and owes more than a little bit to recent sci-fi television.  But that's not to say the true importance is overstated.

As announced today, Citrix, HP, and Intel have banded together to ask government and industry IT users to make a little change to their work habits on that day: when you leave work for the day, turn off your PCs, monitors and printers. And we're donating our own savings to the American Red Cross of the National Capital area, to put our power savings to use bringing resources to those who might need them in an emergency.

When you go home from work on the 27th, think about what you've just done as a start. If powering off PCs and printers at night can yield savings, that got me thinking about other things IT can do to green up. Of course, my ideas started with the Citrix Virtualization spectrum.

For example, instead of powerful PCs on every desktop, lighter-weight machines with XenApp hosted or streamed applications can save lots of power - and reduce management costs as well.

And many users can take the next step - moving them to XenDesktop desktop virtualization will enable you to replace their PCs with low-power thin clients, or at least to remove the power-hungry disk drives from their systems. Moving the workloads to new, efficient servers in data centers with well-managed and predictable power requirements can yield further efficiency.

What about server workloads? Consolidation based on XenServer virtualization can enable dramatically higher utilization, and savings in power, cooling, and real estate - did you know that for every dollar you spend to power a server, you spend as much as 80 cents cooling it?! The workload delivery capabilities of XenServer Platinum can deliver not only a dynamic one, but a greener one - reducing storage requirements by 90% or more, and eliminating even more of those spinning power-hogs.

Looking forward, the future offers even greater savings, by taking advantage of the resources in the cloud to reduce your own company's investment in IT infrastructure and in the electricity that powers it. This isn't just a pipe-dream, it's a reality: Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is powered by Xen, and the 10,000 Xen-powered servers in the cloud mean another 90,000 that don't need to be purchased, shipped (more fuel!), racked, provisioned, and managed. And let's not forget about the environmental impact at their end-of-life. Amazon's multi-megawatt savings can keep the lights on in a small town. Think of that times a hundred, or a thousand, as cloud computing becomes an even greater reality - powered by Xen.

Remember: turn that PC off on the 27th... and see if you can't get a few ideas to turn on that light bulb over your head about green IT through virtualization.

How big is a 32MB hypervisor?

Obviously, the size that's important is the memory footprint of the virtualization software when it's running.

Apparently, 32MB is 415MB in size, based on the attached screenshot from VMware ESXi 3.5.  This is a 4GB Dell 2950 -- one of the two models on which ESXi Installable is, er, installable.  While there is one virtual machine created, it's powered off.

And, as you see, it's consuming 415MB.  Which is approximately 13 times 32MB.

Must be the New VMath™.

EDIT: It's been pointed out that in the last few weeks, VMware has been explicit about changing the ambiguously-worded "footprint" to "disk footprint."  This moves the discussion from the realm of the interesting-but-inaccurate (a tiny memory footprint might indeed have some advantages) to the level of a stunt, and an uninteresting one at that (I have a t-shirt with more than 32MB of memory -- the cost difference between the 32MB USB keys used for trade-show giveaways and the 1GB USB keys used for real distributions of XenServer Embedded and ESXi is of negligible impact to any real server platform).  So, oops, and, so what.

...Not the city, of course, and not the Virginia Woolf book, though I'm sure you can gain a lot from either of these endeavors.

No, it's time to download and check out the new features, enhancements and improvements in the next version of Citrix XenServer, codenamed "Project Orlando."  The public beta release is available now.

Highlights of the release include:

• Automated high availability
• Windows Server 2008 guest support
• Persistent performance statistics and metrics
• Fully integrated Fibre Channel multipath support with configuration via XenCenter
• VM grouping, searching and tagging
• Email alerts
• Disaster recovery for VM metadata
• Active/active NIC aggregation
• Xen hypervisor updated to version 3.2
• XenConvert P2V migration tool
• Wider hardware support
  ...and many more. 

For more details, the release notes are available with the download.

To download the software, you'll need to log in at citrix.com using a My Citrix account.  If you don't have one, you'll need to create one.

Then click on the Downloads link at the top of the page, and choose Citrix XenServer -- it's the last one in the list.  Then you'll see the link to the beta software.

To discuss the beta software, for support, or to report issues, use the new XenServer "Project Orlando" beta forum.

We're proud of this latest step forward in the evolution of XenServer, and look forward to hearing from you.

For today's look at a XenServer "Project Orlando" feature, let's consider performance. 

Yes, there are a number of performance improvements in this release -- from storage and network I/O for Windows guests, to enlightened Windows Server 2008, to  memory usage for scalability.  But I'm not just thinking about performance -- I'm thinking about how we think about performance.

In previous releases, XenCenter displaced a 15-minute window into server and virtual machine performance.  And those numbers were local to the interface -- if you quit and restarted XenCenter, the counters went away.

Starting in "Project Orlando," XenServer manages performance data at the server, so it's not bound to a XenCenter session.  And it's stored in a self-scaling Round Robin Database (RRD) format, with sampling and reporting every:

• 5 seconds for the past 10 minutes
• one minute for the past 2 hours
• one hour for the past week
• one day for the past year

Statistics can be collected over HTTP in an XML representation, too, so you can import them into your favorite performance management and reporting tool. See the SDK Guide for more details.

Now it's even easier to tell what's going on on your XenServer boxes... and what has been going on, which is at least as important.

In our latest feature-a-day preview of XenServer "Project Orlando," let's deal with the issue of taking existing server workloads and bringing them to the XenServer platform.  While there are great third-party physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration offering out there, many users want a quick out-of-the-box solution to get started.

This beta release includes the first beta of a new tool, XenConvert.  Users can run XenConvert on their Windows server or desktop systems and export the workload as a VHD format file or as an XVA appliance file, or  they can directly import it into a running XenServer instance.  Registry and device conversions are handled in the process.

Most common versions of 32-bit and 64-bit Windows are supported; the complete list will be in the XenConvert release notes that will accompany the beta.

For production migrations, many customers  may find that the capacity planning features, greater release support, etc. that existing partner products (such as PlateSpin's PowerRecon and PowerConvert, or HP's ProLiant Essentials Server Migration Pack) offer may be an even better solution.  But XenConvert makes it easier to get started, and is a great solution for many users.

We're on to the next stop on our trip to Orlando (Project Orlando, that is, the next version of Citrix XenServer).  Keeping with our road-movie theme, I'm reminded that many of the great road films involve searching for oneself and for truth.  In our journey, our search requirements are more prosaic -- we're looking for resources that have some things in common, so we can manage our growing virtualization environment.

That's where the new search and tagging capabilities in XenCenter come in.  If you want to find all of the virtual machines running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (a simple search), or the ones running Windows that have outdated versions of XenServer Tools  (a complex search), or all of the physical servers with over 32GB of memory (a search on non-VM resources), you can construct those searches as easily as filtering your inbox. You can name them and save them. And you can export them and send them to someone else who can then import them to their copy of XenCenter and use them.

What about grouping your resources in ways we at Citrix haven't predicted -- by application, by location, by cost center, by owner, by lifecycle stage?  Easy!  Every configuration entity -- physical and virtual machines, physical and virtual networks, storage repositories, virtual disk images, and more -- can be given any number of arbitrary tags, based on any schemes you choose.  Then you can build searches based on the tags, too.

Searching and tagging make it possible to view and manage your data center resources more easily and with greater scalability,  enhancing operational agility. And they're available in XenCenter for every edition of XenServer, from the free Express Edition to the dynamic delivery enhanced Platinum Edition.

We'll end today with a reminder: we're going to be making the beta download available via the download section of citrix.com.  Instead of a separate download request form, you'll need to log in with a My Citrix account.  If you already have one, you're cool.  If you don't, please create one, so you'll be ready to rock the download when the software is available.

See you tomorrow with another set of enhancements in Project Orlando.

No, the title of this post does not refer to a trip to the Mouse Kingdom.  And it's not the lost Bob Hope/Bing Crosby movie.

Project Orlando is the code name for the next release of Citrix XenServer.  Companies don't just use code names because we think it makes us sound mysterious.  Actually, it's because it allows us marketing types to change the release numbers at the last minute for all sorts of arcane reasons, arousing the ire of engineers and release managers everywhere.

We are within a very short time of releasing the public beta of Orlando.  So between now and then, I'm going to write about one or two significant new capabilities or enhancements in XenServer that you'll find in Orlando.  Then, on the big day, you'll find the announcement here.

One more thing before I do, though: this time around, we're going to be making the beta download available via the download section of citrix.com.  Instead of a separate download request form, you'll need to log in with a My Citrix account.  If you already have one, you're cool.  If you don't, please create one, so you'll be ready to rock the download when the software is available.

OK, that's enough housekeeping.  Let's get down to the goodies.

The first major enhancement to XenServer in Orlando is the availability of automated high availability (HA). The infrastructure of XenServer has offered the ability to script or manually manage availability, and the replicated configuration database has removed the potential single point of failure imposed by external management servers.  But customers have been looking for more automation, and here it is.

You will be able to take the virtual machines in a resource pool (on Platinum and Enterprise Editions) and identify whether you want the virtual machine to be restarted in the event that the server it's running on fails.  You can even identify how high the priority for each one is, so in the case of multiple failures putting resources under stress, your most critical workloads will be returned to service.

We'll also protect the master node of the resource pool, and if it fails, automatically designate another node as master -- no need for manual intervention there either.

In this release, you'll need shared SAN storage to be available -- either Fibre Channel or iSCSI -- to be used in addition to a network connection as the "heartbeat" that determines if your servers are up.  (While it's technically possible to store your VMs on NFS and to configure a separate small iSCSI or FC SR as the heartbeat disk, that approach can potentially cause issues if the connections to the VM storage fail while the heartbeat connection does not.)

The built-in HA capability isn't your only option, of course.  Our partners will continue to provide solutions that also incorporate application-level protection, replication, remote protection, policy-based management, true continuous availability, and more.  But there will be a powerful HA capability that will meet the business continuity needs of most IT organizations right in the box.

(One other improvement will come along as a side-effect: the "automatic placement" capability -- start a VM on any available node -- will get smarter about which system is the best place to start a VM.)

And automated HA is just one of a list of new features and enhancements.  Check in tomorrow for the next stop on the road to Orlando,

If you've followed the development of XenServer for the past year-plus, you've noticed that one of the most important themes we've talked about is this: storage is important.  And while it took us a while to begin to deliver on the idea, users of XenServer 4.1 have seen the first step: the integration of native storage hardware capabilities into XenServer, allowing server administrators to take advantage of the advanced storage functionality (thin provisioning, fast cloning snapshots, replication) of the hardware will allowing servers to concentrate on virtualization, and managing it all from a single server.  We've delivered our storage adapter for NetApp storage, and you'll see more capabilities as well as more storage vendor integration coming later this year.

Some of you have wondered what was going to come of our announced partnership with Symantec, and when.  The first deliverable is here, and it's quite something.  Today at their Symantec Vision user conference (the descendant of Veri.Con, the first of which I had the pleasure of co-managing a long time ago), Symantec announced Veritas Virtual Infrastructure, the integration of Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition and Veritas Storage Foundation, plus high availability, central management, and more.  It takes the marriage of server and storage virtualization to a level no other virtualization offering has delivered before.

As for the future, and how some of Symantec's capabilities will be available to Citrix's own XenServer users... watch this space.

In the great film THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, a newspaperman says, "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."  I guess the new slogan over in Palo Alto is "When the facts don't fit your strategy, print the spin." 

VMware responded to Citrix's announcement of the XenDesktop edition family with the expected spin and FUD, making reference to outdated pre-release pricing and packaging information, and playing their usual "if we didn't invent it, it's the wrong way to do it" hand.   I'll get to that shortly.  But what's notable is that they've slipped from spin and FUD over the line - and it's time to call them on it. 

They said, "Both Citrix and Microsoft have stated that Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor will replace XenServer." 

Wrong, nope, uh-uh, fail, fiction.  Never happened.   Isn't happening. 

I understand where that comes from, of course.  Both we and Microsoft have stated that we intend to make the added virtualization and dynamic infrastructure services in current and future versions of XenServer, including...

• the flexible storage repository architecture that makes it possible to mix DAS, SAN, and NAS storage and manage them compatibly

• the storage delivery services adapter interfaces that allow administrators to take advantage of integrated one-click storage setup and use the capabilities of intelligent storage instead of masking them and stealing host cycles from doing the real job of virtualization

• the storage savings and software management advantages of streaming workload delivery, and more
  

...and making them available on Hyper-V as well as on the Xen hypervisor.  

 And we've both stated that, for the enterprise-scale management console, we would plug XenServer as well as Hyper-V into Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).  

And we've both stated that we would make Hyper-V and XenServer run plug-compatible virtual machines, so users could have a choice - or even apply the same dual-vendor strategy to their virtual infrastructure that many major enterprises apply to their physical infrastructure. 

But we've never said that Citrix would drop Xen in favor of Hyper-V.  And Microsoft has never said so either.  Shame, shame. 

Citrix has a long history of delivering solutions that add value in a supplier-agnostic way to Microsoft and Citrix's own technologies.  It's worked well to the tune of over a billion dollar a year and continues to grow. In that picture, for RDP/ICA/XenApp, you can now substitute Hyper-V/Xen/XenServer.  

I understand how this idea of choice confuses VMware.  After all, while they've said the value of virtualization going forward is in the services that run above the hypervisor, they seem to believe they should only add value if it's their own hypervisor. 

They're free to refuse to work with your choice of underlying virtualization technology, of course.  But Microsoft and Citrix both think you should have a choice.  That's why SCVMM will manage Hyper-V, XenServer... and VMware ESX. 

And that's also why XenDesktop gives you choice, rather than being a one-size-fits-all, inflexible solution that disregards the different ways in which companies build their infrastructure and assign and resource their employees. One way is the virtualization technology in it.  XenDesktop includes XenServer licenses... but you can use it with Hyper-V if that's your choice.  Heck, you can even use it with VMware ESX!  You'll still have to pay the VMware First-Generation Hypervisor (In)Convenience Tax, of course, so the economics go out of whack. 

The other main area of choice is how you deploy and provision virtual desktop operating systems and applications.   For operating systems, the VMware approach is simple: for every virtual machine, allocate a separate virtual disk, with its own software stack.  Sure, they can use their cloning capabilities and the deduplication in some storage systems to add space-efficiency (reactively), but they still need to create a separate virtual disk for each virtual machine.  And update it.  And hotfix it. 

Guess what?  XenDesktop can be used that way too.  But lucky for our customers that it doesn't have to be - they can take advantage of the operating system streaming capability of the Provisioning Server component of XenDesktop, and gain not only storage savings, but the management savings of shared "golden-master" images, where you patch once and the changes are automatically delivered at reboot to tens, hundreds, or thousands of users. It's a choice - though our recommendation is an obvious one. 

What about applications?  If you do it the VMware way, you can install them into every image.  Again, a thousand copies of a dozen installed apps means 12,000 things to patch and update.  (Though someday soon, once their acquired client-side-only app virtualization acquisition exits beta and is in the market, they'll have to figure out what The Right Way for their users is...) 

Guess what?  XenDesktop can be used that way too.  But lucky for our customers that it doesn't have to be - they can take advantage of the application streaming capability of XenApp (included in some XenDesktop editions), and get access to a new, pristine desktop and all their apps every time.  Or they can even use hosted applications inside that environment.   The complexity of installed applications or the flexibility of both server-side and client-side app virtualization: again, a choice - though it's clear what we'd recommend AGAINST... 

VMware also cited a blog post whose real contents showed pricing advantages for XenDesktop... but used it to imply that the pricing was too high!  And they implied that XenApp was required in a XenDesktop configuration... which it isn't. 

They also claimed that trial users are leaving XenDesktop for VMware.  Well, Diane Greene did say that "2008 is the year of pilots for VMware VDI." Hmmm, what about the 10,000-seat customer who switched from being an intended reference for VMware to give us an order on the first day our product was released, for instance?  Sounds like a VDI "pilot" that's been grounded. 

Oh, and here's a look at a ballroom-full of customers and partners at Citrix Synergy who are showing how they really feel about the "uncertain future" of XenDesktop by protesting.  Sitting, listening attentively, and applauding is how you protest, right? 

 The bottom line, then: the my-way-or-else choice?  Or real choice? It's not that the Virtualization Empress Has No Clothes - it's just that they're "one size fits all" - and that approach never works.

PS: I've spent so much space clearing the air that I barely have room to tell you that, in addition to being a great virtualization platform in XenDesktop solutions and general-purpose server virtualization workloads, XenServer provides the lowest overhead for virtualized XenApp delivery, as low as less than 8%, and point you to this white paper. Compare it to other virtualization solutions yourself, using your own XenApp workloads.

In his blog, Ken Hess talks about how some companies complain that they're not realizing the savings in hardware, software and management that they hoped to from server virtualization. While he eventually points out that they can, in fact, benefit from "greening" (power, cooling and real estate) and service contract savings, he misses the fact that companies can realize significant savings in each of these areas -- if they implement the right solution.

• He says: "You don't save money on licensing the commercial Operating Systems you run in virtual machines."  Let's look at the obvious candidate, Windows Server. (We'll look at WS2008 -- but the numbers are similar for WS2003.)  It's certainly true that if you took ten servers with Standard licenses and 5 CALs and moved them to ten virtual machines on one server, you'd still pay (10 * $999 =) $9990. But you could also license that same configuration with a two-processor Datacenter Edition license ($5998), which supports an unlimited number of virtual machines on one box, plus 50 CALs (two 20-CAL packages at $799 each plus two 5-CAL packages at $199 each, or $1996) -- for a total of  $7994.  That's a savings of $1996, or 20%.  Add an affordable virtualization platform, like Citrix XenServer Standard Edition, and you're still ahead of the mark.  (NOTE: these prices have been corrected based on the per-processor licensing model of Datacenter Edition.)
• Next: "You don't save money on the host hardware---it is typically a very high-end server running into significant money territory." But that assumes that (a) organizations will run their business on bare-bones kit and (b) there's no excess capacity.  But, of course, a consolidation strategy depends on excess capacity, and most businesses buy decent servers even for their lower-end deployments.  And, for that matter, the price of "very high-end servers" isn't what it used to be.  You can get a pretty beefy box -- dual quad-core processors, 32GB memory, 3TB internal storage -- for about $7K, and consolidate ten or more servers onto it.
• And furthermore: "And you won't save any money by getting rid of system administrators---since those virtualized systems still need patching, software installation, user account maintenance, security sweeps, and so on." Well, most companies wouldn't admit to anyone other than the occasional shareholder that they're looking to get rid of system administrators -- but what they will admit, and what really drives the savings, is that they're spending a higher percentage of their IT budgets than ever before on maintenance and management of existing systems (many companies are reporting that the number is approaching 80%), and that they'd like to be able to free up IT staff to innovate their systems and use IT to drive the business faster. And that's not an easy one, for the most part -- it's true that in most cases ten virtual machines still means ten things to patch and manage... But... That doesn't take into account innovative approaches such as the provisioning capabilities in Citrix XenServer, Platinum Edition.  With Platinum Edition, multiple virtual servers (and physical ones, too) can be streamed from a single pristine golden master, with applications streamed into the virtual machine. One golden master means one image to patch and maintain -- and significant reductions not only in storage costs but in management costs as well.

The benefits are there -- you just have to know how to realize them.  Consider the best approach for you -- or make a Citrix Solution Advisor your trusted partner in developing your solution.

 Do the math.