XenServer 7.5

One release per quarter - this is the CR cycle of Citrix. And now the latest release is available: XenServer 7.5!

What's new?

The official changelog is here, but here is a simple recap.

Increased pool size

You can now run pools with up to 64 hosts! That's really good news, it means you can use XOSAN with the same flat per-pool pricing, but with a LOT more hosts/storage in your pools!

XenServer Free is limited to 3 hosts max. You need at least Standard edition to enjoy this. Or XCP-ng!

USB passthrough

You can now pass a physical USB device to a VM, as if it was plugged directly into it. This could cause some security questions, but ould probably be handy in certain use cases.

Note: this feature is only available in XenServer Enterprise Edition, or wait for the coming free XCP-ng 7.5 release!

Networking: SR-IOV

This is still experimental, but should allow you to use ultra-fast networking by having multiple VM's "directly" connected to the NIC. Less overhead too.

To enable it: xe-enable-experimental-feature network_sriov

Note: this feature is only available in XenServer Enterprise Edition, or wait for the coming free XCP-ng 7.5 release!

Thin provisioning for block storage

This is really exciting! This feature has been the big missing piece for years… Good news: you can now have thin provisioning on iSCSI/HBA, with GFS2 technology.

Bad news: you need to create a new SR (you can't "convert" an existing iSCSI SR to thin pro), nor can you migrate a VDI from this SR to another type (see "Bonus" section.

Note: this feature is only available in XenServer Enterprise Edition, or wait for the coming free XCP-ng 7.5 release!

Bonus: qcow2 is here

For the new thin pro on block storage (GFS2), you can create VDIs that are 16TiB in size thanks to the use of qcow2 format. This will trigger some questions (you won't be able to export these in VHD format anymore, as the 2TiB limit is within the VHD format itself). So you won't be able to migrate those 2TiB+ disks to any other SR type than GFS2.

XCP-ng 7.5 status

As soon as we validate the update process, we'll provide a 7.5 release for XCP-ng. As usual you'll have 2 choices: upgrade using the ISO (old way) or save some hassle and just use yum update. You can now even upgrade via the XO UI! See the new yum-based updater inside Xen Orchestra.

Stay tuned on the XCP-ng website, in the news section! (or subscribe to the newsletter via the same page)