Quadric Software

Citrix XenServer 7.1 Support with Alike

Citrix recently announced the upcoming release of the latest version of XenServer – Citrix XenServer 7.1. And according to Citrix, XenServer 7.1 is “a significant step in the product’s evolution.” In this week’s blog post, we are pleased to announce that Alike v4.x provides full support for Citrix XenServer 7.1, right out of the box.

Alike Offers Full Support for Citrix XenServer 7.1

Along with offering long-term support (LTS) and a new live patching feature, Citrix XenServer 7.1 has a ton of other cool features, including Integrated Image Provisioning. That’s why we have made sure that Alike fully supports XenServer 7.1, even before it’s released. We have accomplished this through partnering with Citrix.

Quadric was founded on designing a reliable, affordable backup solution that would be fully integrated with XenServer, and we have always considered XenServer one of the best hypervisors available. That’s why we have focused on collaborating with Citrix to ensure that we maintain Alike’s Citrix Ready certification every step of the way.

Because of our strong partnership with Citrix and our XenServer expertise, Alike has always been considered the leading backup solution for XenServer. Now, through early access testing of Citrix XenServer 7.1, we are excited to confirm that our Alike backup solution fully supports Citrix XenServer 7.1. With that, we give you our version of the highlights of XS 7.1.

Maximum 10-year Support with Citrix XenServer 7.1

Citrix has strategically included a maximum of 10 years of support with the release of XenServer 7.1, making 7.1 the first long-term support release (LTSR) for XenServer 7.1 Most publishers of LTS software offer a maximum of 2 years of support. With the release of Citrix XenServer 7.1, XenServer will be the only hypervisor to offer a full 10 years of support.

Why is this new feature a major benefit to users? First, it ensures reliable, stable engineering to the software development process with a single end-of-maintenance, end-of-life date. For XenServer users in particular, this demonstrates Citrix’s commitment to the XenServer platform for the long haul. XenServer customers can rest easy that their investment in their favorite platform will continue to provide benefits. Plus, LTS increases the stability of the software, making infrastructure maintenance a lot easier.

Live Patching in Citrix XenServer 7.1

Citrix also announced that XenServer 7.1 will include the industry’s first live patching capability. What does that mean for SysAdmins? It will give them the freedom to update their XenServer systems while avoiding the need to reboot all of their hosts after upgrading them. While some organizations have frequent planned outages that need to shut down or migrate VMs, this unique feature is advantageous for larger XenServer environments that require a more scalable infrastructure.

Integrated Image Provisioning (PVS)

Citrix XenServer 7.1 also includes the introduction of PVS-Accelerator. This means that customers will see up to 98% lower network bandwidth requirements per XenServer host, along with faster boot up times per VM. In addition, this simplifies the PVS architecture, reducing the number of PVS servers required to simultaneously boot the same number of desktops. The best part? This feature comes at no additional cost to customers.

Avoid the vTax with XenServer’s New Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)

Citrix recently partnered with Nutanix to give Nutanix customers free access to XenServer’s advanced features for Citrix XenApp or XenDesktop. This ensures that customers have an affordable, scalable, and easily deployed infrastructure.

At Quadric, we also do everything we can to ensure that customers have access to an affordable easy-to-use backup solution for the XenServer platform. That’s why we are constantly improving Alike and testing to ensure that it is fully compatible with the latest version of XenServer.

Once Citrix XenServer 7.1 is released, we would like to encourage you to upgrade, and as always, be sure to back up all of your critical data. If you are still on versions earlier than Alike 4.x, you will need to upgrade to the latest version of Alike to get full support for XS 7.x.

Haven’t tried Alike yet? Sign up for our 30-day free trial at any time to experience everything Alike has to offer for XenServer. Watch our short video on why Alike is the best backup solution for Citrix XenServer to get a preview of all you get with Alike for XenServer.

Want to know more about why Alike is the leading backup and recovery solution for Citrix XenServer? Feel free to contact us at any time to learn more about Alike’s advanced features and its advantages over competing solutions.