The days are getting longer and the temperature is rising, at least up here where I’m spending most of my time. The temperature in XenServer is also rising as we are gearing up for a fully supported General Availability (GA) release of XenServer 8. The release date is still kept strictly under the covers but we are aiming towards the end of March – that is now just one month away!
XenServer 8 will be the long awaited successor to Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 and the first product release since XenServer became its own Business Unit under Cloud Software Group in 2023 .
Though we have had the Public Preview of XenServer available already for some time (and have received a lot of valuable feedback from that, thanks to all for submitting your findings) we still plan to have a few new features that will be revealed at launch.
That said – now is the perfect time to prepare yourself for XenServer 8, so that you can get off to a flying start when the product reaches full support. Getting started on XenServer has never been easier- first of all, you don’t have to register somewhere, create yet another set of credentials and then try to remember them to log in, now you just can go to xenserver.com/downloads and access all the components from there!
Second – the hardware compatibility is the same as Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 CU1 so if you have that hardware available, there is no need to consult the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). If you are installing on top of new, or HW previously used for other purposes it would be worthwhile to have a look at the HCL at hcl.xenserver.com/ to ensure your HW is listed. If your hardware isn’t showing up, there is a high probability that it will work anyway. And if it does, please consider asking your hardware vendor about certifying your hardware using the automated certification kits available here XenServer HCL Certification Kits.
If you want to see how easy the installation of a XenServer host is before you engage in the adventure yourself, you can check out the following video: Installing XenServer.
Though it is fully supported to update an existing Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 server, we recommend that you don’t upgrade any production servers with the Public Preview and wait instead for the GA declaration. If you have a test pool or server that you want to utilize for the testing, then please go ahead. Also, if you install the Public Preview, moving to the GA is as easy as installing a patch, no re-install necessary!
Once you have your server(s) installed, you need to install the GUI based management tool to manage your test setup. If you’re currently using any other hypervisor, you might notice that there is no need to import and configure a management appliance, or setup a cluster for that to keep it highly available. In the XenServer world you just install XenCenter and you’ll have an easy-to-use and highly intuitive management tool to administer your pool!
You don’t need any licenses to test out the functionality of XenServer 8 Public Preview, without any licenses it will simply default to Trial Edition. Trial Edition has the same functionality as the Premium Edition, with a pool size limitation of 3 hosts.
If you’re currently using VMware vSphere, you might want to test out our new and improved Conversion Manager to help you convert some test machines across from your vSphere cluster to the XenServer pool. As with XenCenter, we’ve tried to make Conversion Manager as intuitive as possible.
When you are testing, you might want to try out the Windows 11 and vTPM support as well as monitoring your pool with the newly added NRPE support. To a get a complete list of what is new since Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 CU1 (other than the name), the best place to visit are the comprehensive release notes in the XenServer product documentation.
Should you encounter any bugs in the Public Preview, please report them in the XenServer bug report tool. Any other feedback is welcomed using e-mail.
If you’re satisfied with your test installations – updating to GA will be just a patch away! With that I wish you happy testing and keep an eye on our new blog section – we will be adding more content here as we approach the GA!