What's new in Citrix Xenserver 6.1
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Citrix has recently released XenServer 6.1, I wanted to let you know about some of new features and functions to look out for in this release.
Version
6.1 features Cloud integration capabilities and a storage feature called Storage XenMotion that
will bring agility as it allows IT executives to freely move virtual machines without the need for
shared storage.
XenServer 6.1 is integrated with Apache CloudStack and Citrix
CloudPlatform to simplify cloud adoption for its users.
Among other features, XenServer 6.1 includes improved networking and security capabilities, increased supplier compatibility and automated virtual machine conversion tools as well.
Here's a quick look into each feature:
Storage XenMotion allows virtual machines that are currently running to be moved from one host to another. Including VMs
that are not on the same storage or even shared storage between hosts,
and between hosts that are not in the resource pool.
- Re-balance or move VMs between pools i.e. moving a VM from dev environment to production.
- Perform software maintenance i.e. upgrading/updating standalone hosts without VM downtime.
- Perform hardware maintenance i.e. upgrading standalone XenServer host hardware without downtime for the VMs on that host.
- Reduce deployment costs by using directly attached storage on the host.
Live VDI migration allows admins to relocate a VM’s virtual disk image without shutting down the VM.
- Move a VM from local storage to shared storage
- Move a VM from a dev environment to production.
- Move between tiers of storage when the VM is limited by your storage capacity
- Perform upgrades on your storage arrays
Networking Enhancements
Some of the networking enhancements include support for Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) – industry standard network bonding features to provide fault tolerant and load balancing of network traffic.
Source Load Balancing (SLB)
improvements like up to 4 NICs can be used in an active/active bond.
Whereby improving your total networking throughput and fault tolerance
in cases of hardware failures. The algorithm has also been changed to
reduce load on switches in large deployments.
Multi-Tenancy improvement
to allow admins to restrict a VM to send and receive traffic on
specific MAC address and a number of IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, without
needing to rely on vLANs and switch management. When these extensions
are deployed, VMs cannot impersonate any other VM, or intercept traffic
intended for another VM. The extensions will increase security in those
environments where VMs cannot be fully trusted.
vLAN scalability
removes a previous limitation which caused VM deployment delays when
large amounts of vLANs were is use. This does allow the admins to
deploy large numbers of vLANs quickly to your XenServer pools.
Emergency Network Reset
provides a simple mechanism to reset/recover a XenServer host’s
networking state, allowing your admins to revert to a known good state.
IPv6 Guest support will enable the use of IPv6 within guest operating systems, allowing the admins to plan appropriately for network growth.
Citrix XenServer Conversion Manager
Enhancements for the Guests is the inclusion of the Citrix XenServer Conversion Manager,
this will enable batch import of VMs created with VMware products into a
XenServer pool to reduce the costs of converting to a XenServer
environment.
Also included is a new mechanism for the installation of
XenServer tools, as the tools are delivered as industry standard Windows
Installer MSI files now. This will enable the use of 3rd party tools
to deliver and maintain the installation/upgrade of the XenServer device
drivers.
Guest OS Support
More guest OS support for Ubuntu 12.04, CentOS 5.7 and 6.x platforms,
Red Hat and Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.7 and 6.x, and experimental
support for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.
Further Reading:
Installing XenServer 6.1 as a VM in VMware Workstation (COMING SOON !!)
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