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Citrix just release a minor update for its P2V/V2V migration utility XenConvert 2.0. (Current Release 2.0.1)

This version introduces the support for OVF contents created with VMware vSphere 4, plus it enhances support for OVF and VMDK files created with other VMware products, including VI 3.x, Workstation 6.5.2, Studio 1.0, OVF Tool 0.9, Converter 3.0.3 and 4.0.

Versions are available for both x86 and x64 and is available from here
http://citrix.com/English/ss/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=1855017&productId=683148

Things to watch out for in this release (known problems)
1. Windows Boot and System drives must be on the save volume

2. Do not run from within a Terminal Services 2000 session (i'll try not to!!)

3. XenConvert has problems with mapped drives when the next available mapped drive is a network drive, quick workaround is to remap network drives to something other then the lowest lettered drive

4. Disable autorun and AV software during convert

XenConvert Requirements
XenConvert can run on Windows 2000 SP4 to Windows 2003 R2 SP2 with x64 support on Windows 2003

XenConvert can convert or P2V/V2V the following

Windows Server 2003; Standard, Enterprise SP1/SP2
Windows Server 2003 R2; Standard, Enterprise SP1/SP2
CentOS 5.2
Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5.2
Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 SP1/SP2
32-bit
Windows Server 2003; Standard, Enterprise SP1/SP2
Windows Server 2003 R2; Standard, Enterprise SP1/SP2
Windows Small Business Server 2003 SP1/SP2
Windows XP SP1/SP2/SP3
Windows 2000 SP4
CentOS 5.2
Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.0
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5.2
Suse Linux Enterprise Server 5.2
Novell SUSE Enterprise Server 9 SP2/SP3/SP4
Novell SUSE Enterprise Server 10 SP1
Debian 4.0
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1
Virtual Machine Configuration (*.vmc)
Fixed VHD
Dynamic VHD
XenServer
XVA Version 2
VMware (VMDK formats)
OVF
Stream-optimized Monolithic VMDK

With experimental support for the following

64-bit
Windows Server 2008
Windows Vista SP1
32-bit
Windows Server 2008
Windows Vista SP1
Hyper-V
Fixed VHD
Dynamic VHD
VMware
Virtual Machine Configuration (*.vmx)
Flat Monolithic VMDK
Sparse Monolithic VMDK
Flat Extent VMDK
Sparse Extent VMDK

Supported desternations

XenServer 4.0, 4.1, 5.0 and 5.5

XenConvert has a simple wizard interface or a command line option, remember to disable all AV software, autorun, any search indexing software, enable windows automount
(hint: DISKPART, automount enable)
 

Blog, Citrix, Windows citrix, xenconvert, xenserver, p2v, v2v

Something I had always looked for, for my own information and from a marketing perspective was a solid performance comparison between what could be considered the big 3 hypervisors.

There are a number of these “lab tests” out there (and most look to be dated) but this is current and covers most of the points I was interesting in reading about.

I recommend having a look at the following post and I also recommend looking around the rest of the site. virtualizationreview.com has a ton of virtualisation related information and is usually presented in a complete and unbias fashion.

http://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2009/03/02/lab-experiment-hypervisors.aspx

Blog, Citrix, Virtualization, Windows virtualization, esx, xenserver, hyper-v

How this differs from other free hypervisors is that a number of enterprise features have been included that otherwise would have cost $$.

This includes,
Centralised management
Live migration (not even available with Hyper-V, scheduled for Windows 2008 R2)
Resource scheduling
64bit Hypervisor (ESX is 32bit for example)
Bare Metal Hypervisor
Integrated storage management

(Note High availability is missing from this release, you need XenServer Essentials for that)

XenServer essentials is now the commercial version of XenServer which essentially is a management and feature extension for Xen and Hyper-V.
http://citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=683148

Full facts and figures for XenServer 5 can be found here
http://www.xenserver5.com/

For those of you thinking about testing or trailing XenServer 5 it installs in VMware Workstation, however as VMware Workstation does not pass Intel or AMD virtualisation extensions through its emulated BIOS you can not test Windows VMs (unless someone knows something I do not?!) as Xen requires these to virtualise Windows.

Blog, Citrix, Windows virtualization, xenserver