XenCenter

Permanent URL http://community.citrix.com/xencenter

Citrix XenCenter is the Windows-native graphical user interface for managing Citrix XenServer.

Features include:

• Full virtual machine installation, configuration and lifecycle management.
• New in XenCenter 5.5: Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (Lenny) support.
• New in XenCenter 5.5: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 support.
• Access to VM consoles: VNC for installation-time, Xvnc for graphical displays on Linux, and Remote Desktop for Windows.

• Remote storage configuration, including NetApp and DellEqualLogic StorageLink, and HBA (Fibre Channel and hardware iSCSI) support.
• Host networking management, including VLANs and internal networks, bonded and dedicated NICs.

• XenSearch: searching, sorting, filtering, and grouping, using tags and custom fields.
• New in XenCenter 5.5: Folders and the Folder View
• New in XenCenter 5.5: Simplified "Search for" in the XenSearch Query panel.

• Complete resource pool management.
• High availability configuration.
• New in XenCenter 5.5: Active Directory integration, for user authentication and revocation.

• New in XenCenter 5.5: VM snapshot management.

• New in XenCenter 5.5: Workload Balancing, for pool-wide load balancing recommendations.
• New in XenCenter 5.5: Workload Reports, giving performance views over time and across the datacenter.

• Performance metrics display.
• Long term metrics gathering and analysis.

The current version is XenCenter 5.5. It is capable of managing all versions between XenServer 4.1 and 5.5.

Also included in the installer is an older version of XenCenter, should you need to manage XenServer 4.0.

XenCenter is available as a Windows Installer package (.msi) from three places:

  the XenServer product CDs, in the client_install directory;
  on HP and Dell embedded editions of XenServer, from XenServer itself, at http://<server>/XenCenter.msi;
  from http://www.citrix.com/xenserver/download.

In XenCenter 5.5 it is possible to add custom menu items or even whole tabs to the main window. You might do this as an ISV to integrate your own product with XenCenter, or as an end-user to integrate with your company's existing inventory management, for example.

A menu item can run a Microsoft PowerShell script or even an arbitrary executable on the client machine. Tabs are populated with a web page, and can call out to other services on your network or to your VMs.

This is a technology preview for XenCenter 5.5, and will be fully supported in future releases. We welcome your feedback of course, and would love to hear of any use cases that you have.

The plugin specification and some tutorials can be found on the XenCenter Plugins page. Please leave your comments there too.

Debian Lenny: Now supported in XenCenter 5.5.
XenServer Support Forums
XenServer 5.5 Knowledge Center