In order to bring the economics and flexibilities of the cloud to the data centre, Citrix at its user show in Las Vegas, has announced a string of new products. The company has taken the wraps off its NetScaler VPX, new software based virtual appliance version of its NetScaler MPX hardware appliance product line. In the past, NetScaler has typically targeted large scale, mission-critical web applications via purpose-built equipment that required specialized networking expertise to deploy and manage. With the new release, the company says all of this new functionality will be available to customers in an easy, flexible, low-cost format that can be downloaded from the web and run on any standard server platform.
In another announcement, the company has made new upgrade to Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V, adding advanced virtualization management capabilities to the two growing virtualization platforms. Citrix has also announced a new 5.5 version of Citrix XenServer, adding a range of new features that enable easier management and broader integration with enterprise systems. To address storage, which is a thorny issue when it comes to server virtualisation, the 5.5 version of Citrix Essentials offers storage integration by leveraging StorageLink ethnology to ensure that XenServer and Hyper-V are certified to work seamlessly with third-party storage infrastructure, array and backup systems.
Furthering its cloud strategy, Citrix has also announced a variety of new offerings for its Citrix Cloud Center (C3) product family to further equip service providers with the infrastructure and product licensing needed to deliver successful cloud services to their customers. The company is now enhancing the C3 platform with the addition of Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenDesktop, enabling service providers to deliver Windows applications and desktops as a service.
Earlier during the day, Pat Glesinger, Senior VP of Intel, outlined Intel’s virtualization strategy to the audience. “We have reached the inflection point as far as virtualization is concerned because now we have the industry eco system ready to deliver these capabilities to the market. This is the year virtual machines outnumbered physical servers shipped , which in turn has created new challenges of managing these VMs. Our vision is 100 percent server virtualization, and we are working to change the system design point to elimination of virtualization performance overheads.”
Gelsinger added that the recently announced Xeon 5500 is at the heart of the company’s virtualization strategy. “This is the single biggest leap in server capabilities, ushering in dramatic changes in server procession platform. It delivers around 168% performance improvement in virtualization, apart from reduced power consumption.”
XenClient, which Intel is building in collaboration with Citrix, is expected to be available by the end of this year, making it the first Xen-based client hypervisor utilizing dynamic virtual client technology.
