Citrix Hypervisor is no stranger to the desktop and server virtualization game. Some may know Citrix Hypervisor as XenServer, and others may know it all the way back to the acquisition of XenSource in 2007. Citrix Hypervisor’s continuous evolution since then has taken us from the XenServer 7.1 Long Term Service Release (LTSR), to the name and platform change of Citrix Hypervisor 8.0, and, now, to the release of the Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 LTSR.

That’s a long and eventful history full of innovations, customer insights, feature enhancements, and much more. Whether you are an original XenServer fan or are new to Citrix Hypervisor, there is a lot about the product to love, including the LTSR. Check out the announcement blog post with everything you need to know about the new LTSR and its lifecycle and how to upgrade.

Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 is the first LTSR we have released since XenServer 7.1. That’s three years of innovation wrapped into one release. Let’s look at the top 10 reasons why you should make the move to Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 LTSR today:

  1. Perfect for your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops LTSR Environment: The LTSR is a release cycle that spans both Citrix Hypervisor and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. With extended lifecycle and optional extended support, admins get the predictability of having their environments being on a specific release for an extended period of time.
  2. New Platform: When we transitioned from XenServer to Citrix Hypervisor, we moved over to a new platform with an updated CentOS userspace and the latest Xen. When making this transition, we adopted the new Linux kernel as an enabler for ongoing product innovation.
  3. Increased pool size and High Availability Improvements: Since the release of XenServer 7.1, we have increased the pool size by 4x, from 16 to 64 hosts. This increase means that you have fewer pools to manage, flexible in-pool migration with shared storage, and improved High Availability. Our High Availability plan computation feature dynamically calculates a new failure plan in response to events that would affect the pool. We also introduced a more efficient approach for complex configurations when we adopted the larger pool size for improved user experience.
  4. Next generation XenCenter: With every new release, we have worked to improve the Citrix Hypervisor management experience within XenCenter. Some of these improvements include the ability to upgrade or update multiple pools in parallel, enhanced licensing visibility to ensure admins know when end of life is approaching, performance improvements when working at scale, and much more.
  5. Easy admin TLS Certificate install: This feature is new with the Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 LTSR and allows organizations to easily replace the Citrix Hypervisor host TLS certificates within their environments. By incorporating the functionality into XenCenter, admins now have a much easier means of adding certificates, and XenCenter will even remind you when nearing certificate expiration.
  6. Scheduled snapshots: To give admins even more granular control over their environments, the scheduled snapshots feature enables admins to schedule hourly, daily, or weekly snapshots on a VM or group of VMs. They can also configure the maximum number of scheduled snapshots to help with management by having the oldest snapshot deleted in a rolling fashion.
  7. Expanded SR-IOV support: If you are looking to improve system I/O performance, this is an alternative to traditional network virtualization. When utilizing SR-IOV, you are able to extract the maximum possible performance from your network cards by having virtual machines communicate directly with the network adapter via Direct Memory Access. Please note this comes at the expense of VM agility.
  8. Guest UEFI and Secure Boot: Security is top of mind with every release of Citrix Hypervisor, and with the support of Guest UEFI and Secure Boot, we are further enabling organizations that are abiding by strict security guidelines. With this feature, OS signatures are verified against Microsoft’s public keys at boot time, ensuring your infrastructure is secure right from the boot process itself.
  9. Continual improvements in vGPUs: I wouldn’t be able to get through this list without bringing up our graphics enhancements over the past three years. Citrix Hypervisor supports all three graphics providers — AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA — to seamlessly deliver high graphics workloads. We have introduced vGPU live migration, supported on NVIDIA, which enables redistribution of VMs as hosts’ resources become strained. We also support multiple NVIDIA vGPUs on one VM to speed up production workflows and scale app performance.
  10. It’s included in every version of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops: Yep, you heard that right. If you are a Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops customer, you are already entitled to Citrix Hypervisor Premium Edition. So what are you waiting for?

Now is the time to get started with Citrix Hypervisor. Download Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 LTSR today to get the most out of your virtualization environment. New to the LTSR? Check out the lifecycle milestones page to get details on what the LTSR lifecycle can mean for you!