Citrix releases Xen 4.0

Xen.org, part of Citrix, has launched a new version of the Xen open source hypervisor.

The company claimed that Xen 4.0 would offer substantial improvement for both on-premise and cloud computing workloads. The improvements include improvements to memory, with the introduction of algorithms, such as Transcendent Memory and Page Sharing to enhance performance.

Further improvements include a beefed-up fault tolerance by supporting live transactional synchronisation of VM states between physical servers, as well as using the reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS features in new Intel and AMD processors ; a new virtual hard disk implementation called Blktap2 that's aimed at delivering high-performance VM snapshots and the introduction of NetChannel2, which uses NICs with with multi-queue and SR-IOV functionality to improve data processing capabilities. In addition, Xen 4.0 supports a new Linux kernel option, PVOps that allows administrators access to the most recent devices.

Ian Pratt, founder and chairman of Xen.org said that The explosion of cloud computing in the industry and increasing demands from enterprise customers are the driving forces behind the continued technology advancement of the Xen community. The Xen hypervisor already powers most of the world's largest clouds and our customer base expects the Xen community to set the pace in virtualisation infrastructure. Xen 4.0 delivers on these expectations.”