XenServer 5.6 Update 1 Released

Hi all,

The entire XenServer team is pleased to announce the release of Citrix XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1  to Citrix.com and MyCitrix.com.

Customers and partners can find the downloads on MyCitrix: https://www.citrix.com/English/SS/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=2306109&productId=683148 as well as through the trial download section from http://www.citrix.com/xenserver

What’s New in this release

Highlights for this release are:

·         Distributed Virtual Switching. Provides distributed, fine-grained networking configuration and control policies, which increase visibility into XenServer virtual networks. Support for the vSwitch has been added as a post-install option on XenServer hosts, as well as a Controller for administration of multiple vSwitches and cross-server internal networks.
Jumbo Frames are now supported for storage networks when the vSwitch is used.

·         VM Protection and Recovery. Configure scheduled snapshots and (optional) archive of virtual machines.

·         Web Self-Service. Provides browser-based access to selected virtual machines by delegated administrators.

·         Boot from SAN with multipathing support. Boot XenServer hosts with HBAs from a SAN, with multipathing support.

·         HA Restart Priority. Configure HA policies to restart specific VM(s) first.

·         Enhanced XenCenter. Including StorageLink configuration entirely within XenCenter, workload reporting for VM utilization and chargeback.

·         Improved MPP RDAC multipathing including path health reporting and alerting in XenCenter.

·         Snapshot improvements. Improved reclamation of space after VM snapshots are deleted, even if the VM is running.

·         Enhanced guest OS support for Windows 7 SP1, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, and Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP1.

·         Generic Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.x support. RHEL / CentOS / Oracle Enterprise Linux versions 5.0 to 5.5 support with a generic .RHEL 5. template.

·         Brocade HBA drivers and command-line tools are included in XenServer.

·         Provisioning Services improvements to Windows volume license (MAK and KMS) support.

·         XenDesktop platform enhancements. Provides local host caching of VM images to reduce storage TCO for XenDesktop VDI deployments. (Note: these platform enhancements will be enabled by a future version of XenDesktop).

·         Lab Manager 3.9 Service Pack 1 which includes various updates and bugfixes

More details can be found in the Release notes on the Knowledge Base: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127362. Full documentation is accessible through the MyCitrix download page, or on the KB here: http://support.citrix.com/product/xens/v5.6/component/fp1/#tab-doc. Internal deliverables will be made available by the Product Marketing team through MyCitrite.