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Citrix XenServer now factory integrated on Dell PowerEdge servers

New Citrix XenServer Dell products are the only virtualisation solutions with integrated support for Dell OpenManage, enabling customers to leverage familiar management tools to help increase server and storage utilisation

Johannesburg, 14 May 2008

Citrix Systems, the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, announced the availability of Citrix XenServer software factory integrated on Dell PowerEdge servers.

Building on the announcement made on 23 October 2007, Citrix and Dell have partnered to make integrated server virtualisation technology a reality for customers of all sizes.

The initial products now available to Dell customers worldwide include the Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition and Citrix XenServer Dell Enterprise Edition as part of factory-integrated solutions designed to make it even easier for customers to begin implementing their virtualisation strategies.

The Citrix XenServer Dell products are the only virtualisation solutions to feature integrated Dell management agent technology. As a result, customers can use the same familiar Dell OpenManage System Management software on their existing Dell servers to help increase server and storage utilisation.

By coupling Citrix XenServer with Dell's PowerEdge servers, the companies bring built-in, easy-to-use virtual machine installation and management to millions of Dell customers worldwide.

"We already use Citrix XenApp for application virtualisation, so selecting Citrix XenServer for server virtualisation was a great choice because it simplified our end-to-end virtualisation strategy from the data centre to the desktop," said Scott Stanaland, Network Administrator, C.C. Dickson Company.

"XenServer integrated with Dell servers is a win-win because now it is even easier. And it is a great value-add to have a single management console for our virtualisation needs."

Citrix XenServer is a simple, efficient way to virtualise servers and help deliver a dynamic data centre - a flexible, aggregated pool of computing and storage resources. By factory-integrating Citrix XenServer into Dell PowerEdge platforms, Citrix and Dell will provide a simpler deployment and management environment that speeds adoption of flexible, cost-saving server virtualisation technology, making it the optimal choice for virtualisation on Dell systems.

Highlights include:
* Quick start-up - An embedded hypervisor and intuitive interface into Citrix XenServer Dell Editions ensure easy installation.
* OpenManage integration - The only virtualisation solution integrated with Dell OpenManage, Citrix XenServer management console allows users to monitor and manage physical and virtual machines from a single console, with simple drag and drop controls.
* High performance - With a thin layer of code, true 64-bit hypervisor architecture and use of hardware virtualisation optimisation from Intel and AMD, Citrix XenServer enables customers to realise high performance with little overhead.
* Cost-effective live migration - The XenServer Dell Enterprise Edition does not require additional management licences or hardware, and upgrades are as simple as a licence key. As a result, advanced virtualisation features unique to Citrix XenServer, such as live migration on Dell's MD3000 direct attached storage arrays, are more accessible and simpler to use.

"Dell is dedicated to simplifying IT for our customers and our partnership with Citrix enables us to further ease the complexity of virtualisation," said Rick Becker, vice-president of solutions, Dell Product Group. "The power of Citrix virtualisation software with the affordability of Dell solutions can help customers quickly leverage virtualisation technology with minimal risk and immediate return on investment, while knowing they can easily upgrade to a larger solution as their requirements increase."

"We have been using Citrix XenServer with an MD3000i storage array and found it to be a cost-effective solution for advanced virtualisation functionality," said John S Lawler II, systems administrator at ATS Ohio Inc. "The integration of XenServer with Dell servers will further simplify our adoption and deployment of virtualisation and we are excited to go to the next level of this technology without worrying about increased complexity."

End-to-end virtualisation

After implementing Citrix XenServer, Dell customers can easily take advantage of Citrix's application and desktop virtualisation solutions to make their IT infrastructure more flexible and dynamic. Citrix XenApp for application virtualisation stores all Windows applications in a single central store in the data centre and delivers them to end users on-demand via innovative application virtualisation technology. Citrix XenDesktop, scheduled to be available 20 May, is the industry's first comprehensive, fully integrated desktop delivery system, moving beyond the limitations of existing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) point solutions to ensure the simple, secure, fast delivery of Windows desktops to any office worker over any network.

"Citrix XenServer is a simple and effective way to virtualise servers for customers of all sizes, but as the only integrated virtualisation solution to provide built-in support for Dell OpenManage, we make it even easier for customers to reap the benefits of server virtualisation," said Peter Levine, senior vice-president and general manager, Virtualisation and Management Division, Citrix. "It is an exciting time for virtualisation technology as it becomes a natural extension of the hardware platform, enabling companies of all sizes to easily and affordably increase server and storage utilisation, while reducing equipment and energy costs."

Citrix XenServer has also been tested and certified on Dell PowerVault MD3000, MD3000i and EqualLogic storage arrays, providing Dell customers with a proven solution for their storage and server virtualisation needs. Announced today from Citrix partner Egenera is the Dell PAN system, with integrated Citrix XenServer management, providing a complete disaster recovery and high availability infrastructure virtualisation solution for large enterprise data centres.

Pricing and availability

Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition and Enterprise Editions are available now. Pricing for PowerEdge servers integrated with Citrix XenServer is available at www.dell.com/poweredge. More information, including self-running demos of the new product, are available at www.citrix.com/dell and www.dell.com/citrixnow.

Citrix recently made virtualisation even more accessible with its new per-server licensing model for Citrix XenServer. As a result, customers can now deploy an unlimited number of virtual machines or guest operating systems on each physical server for a single low price, regardless of whether it has one, two or four CPU sockets.

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Citrix XenServer

Citrix XenServer, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, is an enterprise-class solution for virtualising application workloads across any number of servers in the data centre as a flexible aggregated pool of computing resources. With the new Platinum Edition, XenServer becomes the first and only solution on the market to address both virtual and physical servers, making the entire data centre more dynamic.

Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and the most trusted name in application delivery infrastructure. More than 200 000 organisations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 99% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers. Citrix has approximately 7 680 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2007 was $1.4 billion.

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