Citrix just announced the release of the new XenServer 7.4. This update sets a new milestone within the company’s leadership of GPU virtualization support with a unique live migration solution along with a number of new features. Here’s a bit more about what the new Citrix XenServer 7.4 update has to offer.
What’s new with Citrix XenServer 7.4
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Among the new features and capabilities is a new live migration solution, vGPU XenMotion. Citrix says that this is actually the first live migration solution within the industry for vGPU-enabled virtual machines, making XenServer 7.4 the only hypervisor to fully support live migration of vGPU-enabled VMs as well as GPU virtualization from all three of the major GPU vendors. Essentially, vGPU XenMotion can help you improve the end-user experience and VM performance by redistributing those VMs as resources from the various hosts become strained.
In addition to that major milestone, XenServer 7.4 includes a couple of other interesting capabilities. Namely, the update enables GPU choice for Citrix graphic-accelerated workspaces and lets you deliver graphically intensive apps and desktops using Citrix Cloud XenApp and XenDesktop Service and XenServer. These features essentially offer improved performance to anyone working with graphics-heavy workloads.
How to upgrade to XenServer 7.4
If you are already running XenServer 7.3, you can simply move to XenServer 7.4 by downloading the update package within the XenCenter updates wizard. The update is basically a “large hotfix” package, so it should be relatively foolproof to update and move between the different versions.
If you’re using the XenServer 7.1 Long Term Support Release (LTSR) version, then you can update from that version to XenServer 7.4 by using the full upgrade mechanism that you’d normally use. As usual, since the 7.4 version is not a LTSR, it is expected to have a relatively short lifespan and will have to be updated once the next version becomes available.
Photo credit: Citrix
