Critix ups competition with offer of free XenServer hypervisor

Critix has intensified competition in the virtualisation market with offer of providing its XenServer hypervisor free of cost.

The software could be downloaded from Citrix’s website by end of March 2009. Users will get single server instance of XenServer, informed chief technical officer, Simon Crosby. The release would include resource sharing between multiple servers, full live motion-features and multi-node management. However, according to Crosby, free edition would exclude some features which would continue to be delivered at cost.

At cost features would include StorageLink which enables direct provisioning of virtual machines and Workflow Studio orchestration, a tool for automating common tasks. To avail these users will have to purchase Citrix’s Essentials for XenServer package, priced at £3,750 for Platinum Edition and £1,000 for Enterprise Edition.

Jason Greschler, director at Microsoft, welcomed this move saying it was in line with Microsoft’s ethos that such tools should be free, fast, ubiquitous and compatible.

Microsoft has been already offering its hypervisor, Hyper-V free of charge together with Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008.

Critix announced further close collaboration with Microsoft on server virtualisation in ‘Project Encore’. Virtualisation management package would include hypervisor interoperability and storage integration for virtual machines based on XenServer and Hyper-V.

According to analyst firm Gartner, virtualisation is growing fast and global revenue from virtualisation software will increase by 43% in 2009.

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