The Citrix® XenServer Dell Edition™ virtualization software, with the 64-bit open-source Xen hypervisor at its core, is a powerful virtualization solution that enables efficient resource consolidation, utilization, dynamic provisioning, and integrated systems management. XenServer Dell Edition has a small footprint and is optimized to run from an internal flash storage in Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers. Dell and Citrix have partnered to bring pre-qualified and virtualization-ready platforms for today’s dynamic and growing data centers.

Licensing

XenServer Dell Edition 5.0 Hotfix-3 and 5.5 conform to new XenServer licensing, which enables features such as XenMotion in XenServer Dell Edition, instead of XenServer Dell Enterprise Edition. Dell provides the following licensing options for XenServer Dell Edition:

• Citrix XenServer Dell Edition supports XenServer hosts with up to four sockets, up to 128 GB of physical RAM, and no limit on the number of concurrent virutal machines (VMs). The number of VMs is determined by the resources available on the XenServer host. It also supports these features:
  
  • Live relocation (XenMotion) of VMs within the same resource pool
  • Multi-host management using a single XenCenter console
• Citrix Essentials for XenServer Dell Enterprise Edition offers these features:
  
  • Clustering of XenServer hosts into resource pools
  • Support for Network File System (NFS), Internet SCSI (iSCSI), and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) shared storage repositories
  • Additional Quality of Service (QoS) control for VMs

Download XenServer Dell Edition 5.5 here!


A note regarding "Citrix XenServer Dell Edition" vs. "Citrix XenServer":

Starting with XenServer 5.6, the "Dell Edition" term has been dropped and is now simply called "XenServer 5.6". For information on Citrix XenServer 5.6, refer to the section Citrix XenServer.

Key Resources

Citrix XenServer Dell Edition Features

• Factory installed from Dell
  Citrix XenServer Dell Edition is factory installed from Dell on select PowerEdge servers. This feature helps reduce the installation and deployment time required and simplify the deployment process to get your infrastructure ready to use. With minimal configuration, the XenServer host is available to run VMs.

• Integrated systems management and monitoring
  Citrix XenServer Dell Edition comes pre-installed with Dell OpenManage™ Server Administrator software. This feature enables systems management right out of the box without any additional need to install an agent on the host.

• Optimized footprint and controlled environment
  XenServer Dell Edition is optimized for a smaller disk footprint and writes to flash storage. The majority of the XenServer Dell edition file system is read only and thus provides a tighter control over the XenServer operating environment. The XenServer Dell Edition host agent software has been significantly optimized to minimize the number of write cycles to the flash storage. XenServer writes to flash storage only when something important has changed and must be recorded. Write minimization helps improve the life of the flash storage.

• Improved reliability and diskless configurations
  Running XenServer Dell Edition on a server's internal flash storage helps provide enhanced reliability over running on traditional hard disks. Because flash storage does not have moving parts it can be more reliable than a hard disk. Also, because XenServer resides on the server's internal flash storage, there is no need for local hard disks on the server. XenServer hosts can connect to remote iSCSI or NFS storage and take advantage of features such as XenMotion to minimize VM downtime and workload migration.

• Enhanced XenServer updates
  To help enhance reliability of software upgrades, the XenServer Dell Edition image contains a primary and secondary copy of the XenServer file system. Any time an update is applied, the secondary copy is updated, leaving the primary copy in a known good state. The secondary copy becomes the primary after a successful upgrade. An update to the XenServer host can be applied using the XenServer local console or XenCenter.

• Pre-certified and supported configurations
  Citrix XenServer Dell Edition is certified and fully supported by Dell for select server and storage configurations. Both Dell and Citrix have worked closely to provide the highest quality product and user experience.

Note that individual features may differ by XenServer version.