Citrix has announced the release of Xen Server 5, its latest server virtualisation product.
The application delivery infrastructure provider claims the new release is easier to use than first generation virtualisation solutions and adds more than 100 new management capabilities.
"XenServer 5 is going to completely change the way a lot of people think about server virtualisation," said Lou Shipley, vice president and general manager for XenServer product group at Citrix.
"We are excited to see the growing momentum around XenServer as customers around the world begin to experience a more powerful, open, easy way to build dynamic data-centres.
The new solution boasts major new advances in high availability and disaster recovery, in addition to core existing features such as live migration, resource pooling and workload provisioning.
Citrix XenServer 5 is available at a suggested retail price of $900 (501.44) per server, regardless of CPUs or sockets.
In a combined announcement, Citrix also unveiled its strategy for cloud computing, with the Citrix Cloud Centre (C3) product family. The company says that it is designed to give cloud providers a complete set of service delivery infrastructure building blocks for hosting, managing and delivering cloud-based computing services.
The solution consists of four key components: the Citrix XenServer Cloud Edition; Citrix NetScaler (to optimise virtual machine performance); Citrix WANScaler (which links cloud computing to existing enterprise-based infrastructures); and Citrix Workflow Studio for dynamically controlling and automating workflows.
Microsoft recently announced that it would be making it's Hyper-V virtualisation software available as a free download, in response to a similar move by VMware with its EXSi solution.
