Citrix, HP Team Up on Embedded Hypervisor

  • By Keith Ward
  • 03/21/08

Citrix has become the latest entry into the increasingly-crowded field ofembedded hypervisors.

The Fort Lauderdale, FL-based company Thursday announced a deal to embed a small, lightweight version of its standardhypervisor, XenServer, into ProLiant brand servers from HP. Called CitrixXenServer HP Select Edition, the hypervisor will come pre-installed, givingcustomers the opportunity to try virtualization out of the box.

Hypervisors enable virtualization by decoupling software from theunderlying hardware. Embedded hypervisors do not have all the functionalityof their full-fledged brethren, but do have the advantage of small size andintegrated capabilities.

By shrinking down and embedding itsflagship hypervisor, Citrix now competes more directly with VMware, whichannounced a similar deal several weeks ago. In that pact, four OEMs -- IBM, Dell,Fujitsu, and HP -- agreed to offer VMware's ESX 3i hypervisor as an embeddedoption. One potential advantage XenServer Select may have over ESX 3i is agraphical user interface, which may make it more attractive to Windowsadmins, who tend to favor GUIs over command-line interfaces.

Thedeal also means that HP offers customers the choice of several differentembedded hypervisors.

It appears that most hypervisor makers aretrying to break into the "available-out-of-the-box" market. Microsoft, forexample, is offering something along the same lines, without an embeddedoption: its brand-new hypervisor, Hyper-V, is bundled with Windows Server2008 (and also offered as a stand-alone server). Hyper-V is now at the releasecandidate stage, and could be available soon. Microsoft, however, hasnot announced any intent to embed Hyper-V, the way Citrix and VMwareare.

Citrix says that XenServer HP Select Edition will be availableand supported as of March 31. No pricing information was given.

About the Author

Keith Ward is online news editor for the Redmond Media Group. You can contact him at [email protected].

Featured

  • From Fire TV to Signage Stick: University of Utah's Digital Signage Evolution

    Jake Sorensen, who oversees sponsorship and advertising and Student Media in Auxiliary Business Development at the University of Utah, has navigated the digital signage landscape for nearly 15 years. He was managing hundreds of devices on campus that were incompatible with digital signage requirements and needed a solution that was reliable and lowered labor costs. The Amazon Signage Stick, specifically engineered for digital signage applications, gave him the stability and design functionality the University of Utah needed, along with the assurance of long-term support.

  • Abstract geometric shapes including hexagons, circles, and triangles in blue, silver, and white

    Google Launches Its Most Advanced AI Model Yet

    Google has introduced Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, a new artificial intelligence model designed to reason through problems before delivering answers, a shift that marks a major leap in AI capability, according to the company.

  • Training the Next Generation of Space Cybersecurity Experts

    CT asked Scott Shackelford, Indiana University professor of law and director of the Ostrom Workshop Program on Cybersecurity and Internet Governance, about the possible emergence of space cybersecurity as a separate field that would support changing practices and foster future space cybersecurity leaders.

  • Two stylized glowing spheres with swirling particles and binary code are connected by light beams in a futuristic, gradient space

    New Boston-Based Research Center to Advance Quantum Computing with AI

    NVIDIA is establishing a research hub dedicated to advancing quantum computing through artificial intelligence (AI) and accelerated computing technologies.