Citrix announces “virtual machines on any hypervisor” project

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 17 July 2008 20:05

Business IT - Technology

What this aims to do is to “solve a multitude of interoperability issues between virtualisation platforms while allowing automated provisioning and management of applications, rather than just virtual machines. Users will be able to easily install and use any OVF packaged application workload regardless of which virtualisation platform they use – whether it be XenServer, Hyper-V, or ESX.”

Although Project Kensho is not due until September, Citrix is clearly excited about the possibilities it will bring to the virtualisation world.

Simon Crosby, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix Systems said that: “XenServer delivers the benefits of fast, free, ubiquitous and compatible virtualization, whether from Citrix, Microsoft or VMware. Project Kensho highlights the Citrix commitment to interoperability for virtualization, while maximizing price/performance and richness of features at the virtual infrastructure level.”

Although Citrix and VMware both worked on the format and had input from Microsoft, Citrix’s alliances most lie with Microsoft, especially as it has been a long term partner over many years in application delivery solutions.

This partnership remains strong with the Project Kensho initiative, with Citrix and Microsoft highlighting their “interoperability benefits”.

An example is given of Xenserver being “enhanced with CIM-based management APIs to allow any DMTF-compliant management tool to manage XenServer, including Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. And because the tools are based on a standards framework, customers are ensured a rich ecosystem of options for virtualization.”

In addition, Citrix notes that thanks to the “open-standard format and special licensing features in OVF, customers can seamlessly move their current virtualized workloads to either XenServer or Hyper-V, enabling them to distribute virtual workloads to the platform of choice while simultaneously ensuring compliance with the underlying licensing requirements for each virtual appliance.”

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