I’ll let you in on a secret. Despite all my years working for Citrix, I never learned how to pronounce “Xen” correctly — even after quite a few brave colleagues tried to get me to say “szen” and not “ksen.” So you can imagine my (and probably my colleagues’, as well) relief when, with the launch of 8.0, XenServer becomes Citrix Hypervisor.
But there is a lot more than just a name change with this release. With the new major version number, we want to signal the adoption of a new Linux kernel that lays a foundation for further innovation. The new platform opens the door for us to continue to make this the best hypervisor for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops and a cost-effective and high-performance option for general purpose workloads.
We’re big fans of Citrix Hypervisor, we demand the maximum out of the product, and it works. — Neil Bailey, Head of IT Infrastructure, Enterprise Architecture and Innovations, Red Bull Racing Red Bull Technology
Improvements for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
Whether it’s fully on-premises or part of a hybrid-cloud deployment with Citrix Cloud, tens of thousands of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops customers have chosen Citrix Hypervisor to make their deployment the best it can be.
Why?
They need the best solution to run HDX 3D Pro; to save on infrastructure by using features like PVS and MCS accelerator; to improve the user experience thanks to Windows Continuum support; or just to minimize the amount of vendors in the solution stack.
(You do know that Citrix Hypervisor is included without extra cost in every Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops edition and service offering, don’t you?)
Citrix Hypervisor 8.0 continues to improve the stack. All our customers using our vGPU capabilities will highly appreciate the fact that we now enable snapshots for vGPU enabled VMs. And everyone looking to deploy the new Windows Server OS as part of their solution stack will now be able to, with the support for Windows Server 2019 VMs.
Full support for Windows Server 2019 VMs has also been added to our Long Term Service Release (LTSR) 7.1 CU2 for those who are using the Management Agent or Windows Update to automatically update the I/O drivers. Others will acquire support through a hotfix to be released soon.
Improvements for General Workloads
While a big focus on our Hypervisor development is on improving the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployments, we have not forgotten our customers who use Citrix Hypervisor as the foundation for their HPC or cloud-infrastructure or just as a cost-effective general infrastructure hypervisor.
For them, we enable support for disks larger than two terabytes and provide an updated list of supported Linux guest OSs, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Desktop 15 and CentOS / RedHat Enterprise Linux 7.6 to mention a few. You can see the full list on the Citrix Hypervisor product documentation page.
We will also introduce Experimental support for UEFI boot for Windows VMs, which might greatly improve the boot times of your VMs.
Upgrading to Citrix Hypervisor 8.0
Because this is a new major release make sure to check the new Citrix Hypervisor Hardware Compatibility List to verify that your hardware is supported, and study the instructions on how to upgrade your Citrix XenServer pool to Citrix Hypervisor on the product documentation page.
For customers on our Current Release (CR) track, we will support upgrading from XenServer 7.5 and 7.6. You can also upgrade from our LTSR release, but please keep in mind that will switch you from the LTSR track to the CR track.
Try It Now!
If you don’t have Citrix Hypervisor yet but are a Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops customer, you can download the software from the Citrix downloads page. You don’t need to look around for an extra license. Just point it to you Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops license server, and it will work.
For those who want to take Citrix Hypervisor for a spin, you can sign up for a 90-day, 12-socket free trial at the Citrix Hypervisor product page.
