Blog posts tagged with 'xenserver'

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all of the virtual machines running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (a simple search), or the ones running Windows that have outdated versions of XenServer Tools  (a complex search), or all of the physical servers with over 32GB of memory (a search on non-VM resources), you can construct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,

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.

There's been a lot of noise recently about the complexities of patch management in a virtualized world -- a lot of jockeying for last place, as it were, in the "Whose Patch Tuesday is Biggest" contest.

XenServer has had a relatively small number of patches, and in the case of security advisories, we've been consistently able to announce the fix for an issue very quickly, or in one case, even before the vulnerability was publicized.

But it's true that virtual platforms can add complexity to patch management.  While other Citrix technologies -- Provisioning Server, for instance -- can reduce the impact of patching significantly, the maintenance of the virtualization server platform itself is an major concern.

We don't talk about future features very often, but here's one area of the next release of Citrix XenServer -- which is in closed beta with Citrix employees and partners now -- that is worth crowing about.

Pool-wide patch management has been integrated into the product, and, in conjunction with a wizard in XenCenter, will allow you to:

• Check the Citrix XenServer website for updates
• Download any pending updates to your XenCenter system
• Choose which servers in your managed pools you wish to apply the patches to
• Put each server in maintenance mode (with their VMs kept online on another server via XenMotion)
• Apply the patches
• Bring the server back online and move VMs back to it automatically

...All in a single guided process.

 Just another step to help you feel more secure about security (and stability and performance and manageability).

Watch the web for public beta availability and more info.