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“What will be done for the existing XenServer customers?”

On February 28, 2009, in Featured, by René Vester
1

Reading all the latest buzz Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V and XenServer and how XenServer is now free i began to think about what kind of impact this would have on the customers who have already invested in the XenServer Platform.

I checked in with Citrix as i thought it was relatively fair question, i was afraid there was no plan but luckily Citrix was prepared and knew exactly what was going to happen to existing XenServer Customers, this is the message:

Customers who purchased XenServer Standard Edition prior to February 23rd, 2009 and are current on Subscription
Advantage will be offered a free license upgrade to Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition. In addition,
future support and Subscription Advantage renewals will be based on the applicable rates for Citrix Essentials for
XenServer Enterprise Edition. Customers who choose not to accept the free upgrade to Citrix Essentials for
XenServer Enterprise Edition can instead opt for the free XenServer download with optional support. They will have
until the renewal date of their Subscription Advantage to make a final decision.

Customers of XenServer Standard Edition who purchase after February, 23rd 2009 can choose a full price upgrade
to Citrix Essentials for XenServer, Enterprise Edition or accept the free XenServer download with optional support.

Customers who have purchased XenServer Enterprise licenses and are current on Subscription Advantage as of the
April product release date will be eligible to receive Citrix Essentials for XenServer, Enterprise Edition.

Customers who have purchased XenServer Platinum licenses and are current on Subscription Advantage, as of the
product April release date, will be eligible for the Citrix Essentials for XenServer, Platinum Edition.

So looking at the feature matrix of the Citrix Essentials Enterprise and Platinum product, this seems to be a benefit to everyone, and one fact i love more than any other is the fact that all existing customers and new customers, for a small fee, will have access to the Citrix Provisioning Server and thereby add the flexibility to the infrastructure that i think Citrix would like to see..

Features as i know it the Citrix Essentials for XenServer/Hyper-V:

Enterprise:

  • Advanced storage integration featuring Citrix StorageLink™ technology fully leverages all the native power of third-party array-based storage systems making it easy for customers to manage advanced storage features directly from their virtualization management environments.
  • Dynamic provisioning services reduces costs and optimizes datacenter infrastructure by letting customers manage a common set of master workload images centrally, then stream them on-demand to any combination of virtual machines or physical servers.
  • Workflow orchestration enables users to automate key management processes across their virtual infrastructure using common task libraries and a graphical workflow canvas.
  • High availability delivers a broad range of powerful high availability options from automatic restart to workload balancing of virtual machines across resource pools based on preset thresholds.(This is only available for XenServer for now as far as i know)

    • Platinum

    • All of the above
    • Automated lab management streamlines the process of building, testing, sharing and delivering applications on-demand throughout the full application lifecycle, from development labs to production servers

     

    So all in all i think its a win-win for customer and new prospects, and i am guessing we will hear a reply from VMware as they now seem quite a bit overpriced. If anyone hear anything from VMware, please let me know :-)

    Rene Vester

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    About the author

    René Vester

    René Vester is a fulltime virtualization and server based computing enthusiast working for Conecto A/S a Danish Citrix specialist partner. René is the author of several blogs addressed to virtualization technologies and has authored many articles related to virtualization. He is a dedicated member of the community and spends the time he has sharing his experiences with vendors and peers. René is a Citrix Technology Professional and founder of the Danish Citrix User Group.

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    One Response to “What will be done for the existing XenServer customers?”

    1. ca755 says:
      March 9, 2009 at 13:47

      Actually i have heard something from vmware.

      Again please don’t compare apples and bananas. Citrix has moved the cost towards the essentials instead of the cpu licensing like vmware does, this however doesn’t imply that anything is free.

      As discussed earlier, who would ever consider a production environment without HA for the host servers? If you agree with me the starting price is 2500 USD per physical host for Essentials for XenServer Enterprise and 5000 USD for the platinum. Further consider the virtualisation ratio on each host and you’ll aspect to consider, before comparing prices.

      Cheers,
      With respect for this great site.

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