Citrix XenServer

Deliver the Dynamic Datacenter

Citrix XenServer™, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, is the simplest and most effective way to virtualize servers and deliver dynamic data centers that are responsive to the ever-changing demands of business. Using Citrix XenServer, companies can deploy high-performance virtual machines rapidly and easily, and manage them and their related storage and networking resources from a single easy-to-use management console.

The powerful provisioning capabilities now available in Citrix XenServer makes it the only platform than can integrate the deployment and management of virtual and physical servers into a unified dynamic virtualized infrastructure — a flexible aggregated pool of computing and storage resources.

Unlock the Power of Server Virtualization
A thin software layer (known as the Xen hypervisor) runs directly on the hardware and provides an abstraction layer that allows each physical server to run one or more virtual servers, breaking the “hard-coding” that normally locks the operating system its applications to the underlying physical server.  Each virtual server appears to users and to management software as if it were a separate physical computer, but in fact, many virtual servers may share one physical server — the density of consolidation is limited only by available resources.

XenServer’s virtualization technology is widely acknowledged as the fastest and most secure in the industry, and is enhanced by taking full advantage of the latest Intel VT and AMD-V hardware virtualization assist capabilities.

Citrix XenServer combines the performance, security, and openness of the Xen technology with XenCenter comprehensive management — yielding a platform perfect for rapid adoption of virtualization for server consolidation, software development and test, and business continuity.

Increased Agility at Lower Cost
With Citrix XenServer virtualization, businesses can increase server and storage utilization, reducing costs of equipment, power, cooling, and real estate. Virtualization-powered consolidation enables businesses to decommission older systems that are expensive to support and prone to failure, replacing several of them with a single newer, more supportable, less power-hungry system.  

By combining servers and storage into resource pools that can be apportioned to the applications with the highest business need, IT operations can be aligned to changing demand and business priorities. With XenMotion, running virtual machines can be migrated to new servers with no service interruption, allowing essential workloads to get needed resources and enable zero-downtime maintenance.

Easy to Deploy and Integrate
Citrix XenServer is installed directly on bare metal servers, requiring no dedicated host operating system. Open command-line (CLI) and programming (API) interfaces make it easy for vendors and enterprises to integrate virtualization with existing processes and management tools. The powerful provisioning capabilities make it possible to deliver new servers hosting new application services in minutes, with efficient use of storage resources.

Secure and Reliable
The centralization provided by Citrix XenServer - especially when combined with the optimized application delivery pipeline of the Citrix Delivery Center - leaves valuable data in the well-protected data center, rather than on the road or on open networks where it is more vulnerable to loss.  Internal networks and virtual firewalls can be used to make secure processes or back-end application tiers visible only to the systems that need access, rather than being open to the world.

Citrix XenServer’s management information is stored redundantly across managed servers, making the Resource Pool resilient in the face of failure of any one system. Workloads on a failed system can be restarted quickly on any other available server, dramatically reducing the downtime that can interfere with business. For planned maintenance, running virtual machines can be migrated to other physical servers without interruption of service — eliminating scheduled downtime.