XenServer server prop up Si jie "two cloud"

Recently, think of a High-profile release server virtualization New XenServer6.1, and in the Beijing office of Si Jie Media communication will be held.

Cloud computing era, do front-end virtualization Jie in the mobile office, BYOD and other areas of development, however, this too dazzling light seems to play down the role of XenServer in the back-end market, coupled with Microsoft in the field of server virtualization increasingly close cooperation, Let many observers begin to jie the strategic imagination of the server virtualization market.

Recently, think of a High-profile release server virtualization New XenServer6.1, and in the Beijing office of Si Jie Media communication will be held. At the communication meeting, Zhang, director of the server virtualization and cloud computing business development in Greater China, introduced XenServer6.1 's three enhancements, and took the opportunity to further highlight Jie's development in server virtualization and XenServer's position in the cloud strategy of Citrix.

Zhang China server virtualization and cloud computing business development Director

XenServer the "Two clouds" of Si Jie

Zhang took over more than a year ago to take over the Citrix Server virtualization team, and he himself often thought about the role of--xenserver in the Citrix strategy. Because no one cares more about the problem than he does.

Recently, Zhang's thinking on this issue is becoming clearer, he told reporters, "Si Jie in the cloud computing era, the main advocacy is two cloud-free office and cloud IT services, in addition to what you can see based on a variety of equipment free office, a very important concern is how to make IT services cloud?" The first step in the cloud of IT Services is server virtualization. Therefore, starting from the cloud strategy of Si Jie, XenServer plays a very important role in Si Jie's two clouds, XenServer provides support for Si Jie's two cloud mainly in three aspects: optimized for enterprise data center, optimized for virtual desktop and optimized for cloud platform. ”

"Si Jie will continue to strengthen the development of xenserver in the future, the Asia-Pacific region will set up a dedicated team, it is worth mentioning that in Nanjing, specifically set up for the XenServer test support team." At Cambridge University, the Xen development team is also growing. Zhang said that in the cloud computing era, XenServer's technology update direction will focus on three areas:

First of all, based on Enterprise Server virtualization optimization, the main emphasis on enterprise management characteristics, including workload balance, HA, livemigration and so on.

Second, because the traditional xenserver is to do the front-end virtualization origin, so the future will continue to the virtual desktop of this unique workload is optimized, such as the GPU path through technology, intelligent cache (Intelligent caching technology), etc. Greatly improve the performance of virtual desktops, reducing the cost of virtual desktops.

More importantly, Xen comes from an open community, and Xen's founders made cloud computing an important development direction for Xen at the beginning of its inception, mainly in extensibility, including network expansion, server expansion, and optimization for platforms such as Cloudplatform.

XenServer6.1. Three major improvements to meet user needs

XenServer 6.1 is a product after XenServer 6.0, compared to XenServer 6.0, XenServer6.1 has not changed much in architecture, but it combines users to virtual desktops, next-generation data centers, and the development trends such as cloud computing, have enhanced a number of features that specifically include three aspects:

The first is to enhance integration with cloud platforms such as Cloudstack. XenServer6.1 can integrate directly with Apache Cloudstack and Citrix Cloudplatform using Apache Cloudstack Technology, and of course, XenServer6.1 can also support the OpenStack platform. The main enhancements in this area are embodied in the support of the network's visibility, network security, and network extensibility, for example, by enhancing the functionality of the XenServer based firewall, which can support VLANs within a library, so that it can more effectively reflect the concept of multi-tenant and isolation of cloud computing.

The second aspect is that the technology implements a "no sharing" storage real time migration. Zhang, this is mainly for the future of the virtualization of the data center of the trend to enhance, but also many enterprises are looking forward to. The new XenServer employs a new storage technology xenmotion that enables IT staff to migrate virtual machines that are running in real time without the use of any shared storage. This means that virtual machines are free to migrate between different storage types, taking into account the migration of the cloud's available zone to another available zone, which greatly increases the scalability of the cloud.

Third, the XenServer transformation Manager implements bulk conversions from VMware to XenServer. Surveys show that more than 40% of the world's corporate users have used more than one hypervisor technology, a variety of hypervisor brings performance and management costs down, but will lead to increased maintenance costs, one of which is the conversion between virtual machines in different formats. Despite the OVF format of the original technology, but the traditional conversion method efficiency is relatively low. The XenServer transformation Manager is an easy-to-use tool that converts VMware virtual machines to XenServer virtual machines automatically and in bulk, making conversion more efficient and flexible.

In addition, Citrix offers a variety of upgrade modes to ensure that users can be smoothly upgraded to version 6.1 without disruption to the business.

New competition in server virtualization market--the Battle of management platform

As mentioned above, for enterprises, from the performance and management cost considerations, Multi-hypervisor has become an inevitable trend, so the difference between the hypervisor has not much meaning, more critical is the upper management platform of comparison, and whether the virtualization platform can be well integrated with the management platform that users use.

The competition in the server virtualization market has moved from hypervisor competition to a higher level of management platform. Because of this, the major server virtualization vendors began to enhance their own platform and the upper management platform of the combination of ability, trying to use the upper management platform to shuffle the server virtualization market. Currently, System Center can manage not only hyper-V, but other hypervisor as well. VMware is also trying to manage some of Microsoft's Workload,citrix from the virtual machine and management platform two aspects, and continuously enhance their competitiveness:

At the virtual machine level, the integration of Citrix XenServer with other management platforms is continuously enhanced, including system Center, OpenStack, and Cloudstack. Citrix XenServer itself by providing an open API, that is, a variety of management platforms can manage the XenServer by using this open API.

In the management platform, in addition to providing a free XenServer management platform, but also based on the open source Apache Cloudstack, provides Citrix Cloudstack platform, can be different hypervisor management. Zhang stressed that cloudstack compared to other open source platform, the biggest difference is the only one through the actual business application evaluation platform.

Conclusion：

Finally, a saying goes--every successful man has a smart woman behind him. If think of the front end virtualization is the successful man, XenServer is like the smart woman behind, from 2007 was thought Jie "married" since the door (2007 XenSource acquisition), XenServer has been silently supporting the forward and development of Si Jie. In the future, she will also continue to play an indispensable role in the cloud strategy of Si Jie.