With the launch of XenServer 8 behind us, it is a good time to take a step back and look at what we are trying to achieve with our great hypervisor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The number one question I get in customer and partner calls is \u2018Can you provide more color on what you mean by XenServer is the only hypervisor optimized for Citrix workloads\u2019 (Well to be honest, the most asked question after why the new version of XenServer is 8 and not 8.4 or even 9 \ud83d\ude01)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But to be serious, in order to answer that question,you need to look at the whole of a VDI solution. The goals of VDI solutions are often to improve security and user experience as well as increasing the agility of IT to be able to better serve the business. This all while bringing down the cost of managing the IT infrastructure for an increasingly distributed workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are exactly the same goals we have in mind when developing XenServer. If we start with cost, XenServer is very competitively priced compared to all other enterprise grade hypervisors on the market today. But the procurement costs for the hypervisor alone are typically not the major contributors to the total cost of running a VDI solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is more the infrastructure, maintenance and management of the workers, i.e. where the actual user sessions run, that represents the biggest costs. Citrix has developed two wonderful technologies to make the management of a huge number of VDIs as cost effective as possible, Provisioning Services (PVS) and Machine Creation Service (MCS). PVS heavily relies on the performance of the network, whereas MCS requires a performant storage infrastructure to work well. XenServer has developed unique solutions that further reduces the cost of these solutions, while increasing the performance, IT agility and user experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How? That we will uncover in a blog series over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it doesn\u2019t stop there. As with all things software, the hypervisor layer needs updating as well. The ability to do that in the most effective way, that causes the least amount of downtime as well as late or weekend work for the IT admins will further help drive down costs. This also contributes to user satisfaction, as well as the work-life balance of the IT admins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And while we\u2019re on the subject of the IT admin, we\u2019ve put a lot of work into making the management of XenServer as easy as possible, with an intuitive management tool that doesn\u2019t require weeks of training to be able to use. The main goal here is to enable the Citrix administrators to manage the whole stack themselves, and not having to depend on server, storage and network admin teams. This again, will help constrain the costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could go on, but I need to keep this blog within reasonable length, so we will continue this thread over the coming weeks. \u2018See you\u2019 there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the launch of XenServer 8 behind us, it is a good time to take a step back and look at what we are trying to achieve with our great hypervisor. The number one question I get in customer and partner calls is \u2018Can you provide more color on what you mean by XenServer is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":82,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[14,13],"class_list":{"0":"post-80","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured","8":"category-product-features","9":"tag-citrix","10":"tag-product-info","11":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\n