Citrix Systems has announced the availability of Citrix XenServer 5.5, a free server virtualisation hypervisor based on the open source Xen project.
According to Citrix, the release comes 75 days after it made XenServer available free for unlimited production use which has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.
XenServer 5.5 claims new features to simplify virtualisation management and integration with other enterprise systems.
Features like consolidated backup, enhanced conversion and search tools, Active Directory integration and expanded guest support for most versions of Windows and Linux operating systems.
Citrix also released version 5.5 of Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V for advanced virtualisation management capabilities for customers using those hypervisors.
Citrix Essentials adds more storage integration, automated lab and stage management and dynamic workload balancing.
To coincide with the 5.5 release, Citrix has launched the XenServer Central community Web site to help users get the most our of the hypervisor.
XenServer Central will go live on June 19 at http://www.citrix.com/xenservercentral.
Senior vice president and general manager of Citrix Systems' virtualisation management division, Peter Levine, said making XenServer free was not a “one-time publicity move” but an integral part of the company's strategy to accelerate the rate of virtualisation adoption and address the more than 75 per cent of servers that have not been virtualised today.
The new XenServer 5.5 release is available for download at http://www.citrix.com/freexenserver. Citrix Essentials 5.5 for XenServer and Hyper-V is available for $2500 per server, regardless of the number of processors.