Citrix Systems, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of Citrix XenServer 5.6.  Unveiled earlier this month at Citrix Synergy 2010, the latest release adds new features across the entire product line, enhancing the enterprise-ready, cloud-proven virtualization platform with all the capabilities needed to create and manage a virtual infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of competing products.

Last year, Citrix introduced the Free Edition of XenServer, setting an entirely new standard in the industry by offering an enterprise-ready, cloud-proven server virtualization platform for no cost.  Since then, XenServer has been activated for production use in more than 45,000 enterprise datacenters worldwide, including 45 percent of the Fortune 500.  

“We started with the free version of Citrix XenServer and went on to deploy the Enterprise Edition in favor of competing products,” said Rutger Pannekoek, Manager of Services and Application Engineering, TomTom.  “Of course, the cost and quality were important, but we were especially attracted to the open source basis of the product combined with the commercial support by Citrix.  Now we have hundreds of virtual servers running on XenServer, which has enabled us to have an always-on and dynamic datacenter, with the ability to easily move workloads between physical servers when needed.”

Key Facts and Highlights:

·         XenServer 5.6 delivers enhanced virtualization management capabilities for both the free XenServer, as well as the more advanced Enterprise and Platinum editions.  The new low-priced XenServer Advanced Edition makes it easier and more cost-efficient for enterprise and cloud customers running free XenServer to add more advanced high availability and management capabilities.  A full list of features in each edition can be found here.

·         XenServer 5.6 is available immediately.  The new XenServer Advanced Edition is $1,000 per server, or $30 per month for cloud service providers.  The Enterprise and Platinum editions are $2,500 and $5,000 per server, respectively. 

·         The XenServer Free Edition or a 30-day trial of the Platinum Edition can be downloaded here.