What we expect from Citrix Xenserver future updates

By | November 2, 2009

As a loyal user of xenserver 5.5, i find the product as rock solid and find that vm’s run much faster on the xenserver platform than other platform’s,
I’m not saying that xenserver is the best, as other products Such as Vmware offer many incentives, added functionality and other operating systems, where citrix are still lacking behind,
However this article is based on Xenserver, i find that updates to operating systems are slow with xenserver,
I would like to see Xenserver support Windows 7, and have tools that install on windows 7, and windows 2008 r2, without waiting for the next Xenserver release
Also i think that Ubuntu is quickly becoming one of  the most distributed linux os’s i would really like to see it natively supported, and i think many users agree with me,
I remember in the past before xen was owned by citrix we had requested that centos be natively supported and they had done so,
On a positive note, the Active Directory integration, Snapshots and Latest features in the 5.5 edition are most welcome,
Also a Xencenter client for Mac OSX would be very usefull, and the possibilty to backup or export a vm without shutting down the instance would also be  a nice feature, i find that the Xencenter
client is also rather limited as most of the time one must go to the cli to enable advanced features.
Till then we Await news on the new Version of Citrix Xenserver when it is announced and the list of new features and added operating systems added.

3 thoughts on “What we expect from Citrix Xenserver future updates

  1. Uli

    Hello Isaac,

    we actually had problems with xenserver 5.5 and iscsi – (only on very very high iscsi load). The rest seems quiet stable.

    The good message is, that I installed Windows 2008 R2 without any problems. The install went even faster than SLES11 that we use as standard OS.

    Regards,
    uli

  2. Isaac Zarb Post author

    Hey Uli,

    Thanks for the input, are you using hardware assisted iscsi or software ? also is it on san or nas ? or maybe from openfiler? just trying to get a few details, in what the problem might be, Also when you got win2008 r2 running did you manage to install the xen tools? as i have not tried it yet, but i’ve been hearing the os blue screens when the tools are installed.

    Regards

    Isaac

  3. Nico

    Hi Isaac,

    By now Citrix has updated Xenserver with support for windows 7. Allthough i allready had windows 2008 r2 and windows 7 running on the system without any problem.

    We also use a xencluster with software iscsi multipathing to a SAN. I’m disapointed about the performance and would be interested in some info on how to improve it.

    Jumbo frames are not supported by Xenserver, wich is a shame. In your experience, would it be worth the risk to try and enable jumboframes?

    thx.

    Nico.

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