Virtualisation for every server in the enterprise

The NEW Citrix Essentials for XenServer

Citrix® Essentials™ for XenServer™ extends advanced virtualization management capabilities to Citrix XenServer environments to help customers create highly scalable, manageable and agile virtual infrastructures.  The solution extends the enterprise management capabilities of XenServer in the areas of lab automation, storage management, provisioning services, workflow automation and high availability.

With the enterprise-class, cloud-proven XenServer platform now available for free unlimited use, customers with mixed Windows® and Linux environments, significant investments in Citrix application delivery solutions, or plans to build private clouds can turn to Citrix XenServer.

Citrix® Essentials™ for XenServer featuring StorageLink™ technology delivers deep integration with leading storage platforms to reduce the cost and complexity of managing storage in XenServer environments.

StorageLink provides one-click access to native storage devices for simplified management through storage configuration wizards that leverage existing storage array-based services. Essentials for XenServer with StorageLink supports all storage architectures, including SMI-S based, to deliver faster virtual machine deployment and lower storage management TCO in virtual environments.

Citrix StorageLink provides your organization with:

 

• Reduced cost and complexity by leveraging existing investments in storage systems.

• One click access to native storage services.

• Simplified, wizard-driven storage setup and maintenance.

XenServer resource pools can be configured with automated high-availability protection allowing virtual machines on a failed host to automatically restart on another physical server according to priority and resource availability. Essentials for Xenserver provides a range high availability offerings, from automatic restart of hosts and virtual machines after a hardware failure through full fault tolerance of hardware and applications.

Essentials for XenServer automates the management of lab infrastructures to reduce the complexity, time and cost of managing non-production environments typically used in development, test, support and training organizations. Lab management capabilities included in Essentials for XenServer automate the setup and tear-down of complex application workload configurations, provide self-service template libraries for rapid provisioning, reduce virtual machine sprawl and enable cross-team collaboration on common virtual environments. With Essentials for XenServer, organizations can accelerate and improve the process of moving applications workloads through testing and into the production environment while reducing virtual machine sprawl and minimizing configuration errors and delays.

By automating and simplifying virtual lab environments, organizations achieve:

• Shorter testing and development cycles – Reduce time to market and IT response times by centralizing access to prebuilt production-like environments and utilizing advanced automation capabilities for self-service setup and tear-down of approved virtual environments.

• Better quality – Improve stability and consistency by automating manual and error-prone build and test processes, maximizing test coverage and reducing time to detect and reproduce errors.

• Lower costs – Dramatically consolidate software and hardware resources, reducing sprawl and improving utilization across disparate teams.

• Increased productivity – Maximize collaboration and productivity of distributed development, test and support teams by making production-like environments visible and shareable across the enterprise.

Essentials for XenServer accelerates the delivery of server workloads, dramatically improves IT agility and simplifies ongoing IT administration by dynamically provisioning application workloads from a single server image. With Essentials for XenServer, organizations can reduce both the storage costs and the burden of patching, maintaining, testing and supporting hundreds of separate server images. Essentials for XenServer further improves IT efficiencies with its broad coverage for datacenter infrastructure by provisioning workloads to both physical and virtual servers.

By delivering server workloads on-demand rather than deploying them on individual virtual or physical servers, IT administrators are able to:

• Simplify and streamline server management, while reducing software rollout risk.

• Ensure consistency by provisioning simultaneously from a single standard workload image.

• Increase IT responsiveness and agility by enabling capacity on-demand–-repurpose any server to do any job.

• Reduce utility costs and space needs by cutting the number of backup servers that are required.

   

Citrix Workflow Studio™ is an infrastructure process automation platform that enables you to transform your datacenter into a dynamic delivery center. Built on top of Windows® PowerShell™ and Windows Workflow Foundation, Workflow Studio provides an easy-to-use, graphical interface for workflow composition that virtually eliminates scripting. Workflow Studio orchestration acts as the glue across the IT infrastructure allowing administrators to easily tie technology components together via workflows.

The key benefits provided by Workflow Studio are:

• Graphically create workflows without writing scripts.

• Activate, schedule, and monitor workflow processes from a unified central dashboard.

• Mechanize repetitive configuration tasks.

• Integrate infrastructure components across the Citrix Delivery Center™.

• Extend / integrate application processes that span multiple products.

• Access a rich set of resources through direct integration with the Citrix Developer Network.

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