Citrix today announced the next version of its virtualization platform XenServer which is a commercial product based on the open-source Xen Project hypervisor. XenServer 6.5 will be the follow up of version 6.2 which was released in June last year. Unfortunately Citrix doesn’t provide any details on when they expect this version to become generally available.
Citrix states that XenServer 6.5 will offer a full 64-bit kernel architecture with support for Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT). The release will also offer asset tagging to enable workload geo-tagging which provides the ability to restrict the ability for workloads to run in a particular location. Also support for NVIDIA GRIP vGPU will be provided. Due to the 64 bit architecture also improvements will be made to the workload balancing and distributed virtual switch controller functionality.
Update on availability: XenServer v6.5 has been officially announced today,as well as being released-to-web (RTW). What this means is that it is available to existing customers for download, so they can upgrade their existing XenServer infrastructure. Software Assurance on any existing XenServer infrastructure is a re-requisite to be able to use this new release.
New customers or additional purchases by customers can happen once the release becomes generally available, which will happen in February.