Release: Citrix Cloud Platform 4.2 and CloudPortal Business Manager 2.1

Citrix last week announced the release of version 4.2 of its cloud solution called Cloud Platform. Cloud Platform is build on top of Apache CloudStack and combined with Citrix CloudPortal Business Manager 2.1 provides the platform solution.

CloudStack was submitted to the Apache Software Foundation in April 2012 after Citrix acquired the platform from Cloud.com in July 2011. Citrix now still uses CloudStack as a basis for its Cloud Platform software.

Cloud Platform distinguishes between so called scale-up and scale-out workloads providing a solution for both types of workloads.

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For scale-up workloads version 4.2 provides the following new features:

  • Dynamic scaling of CPU and memory on running VMs
  • dvSwitch and PVLAN networking support for VMware switching and VM isolation on the same network
  • VMware vSphere features like virtual hardware hot add, vMotion, VMware HA & DRS, CPU & RAM overcommit, VM snapshots, storage migration and zone-wide block storage
  • Create multi-tier networks with unique, tier-based firewall and load balancing rules to avoid single point of failure
  • Create site-to-site VPN and Private Gateways (e.g. SSL VPN) from the cloud to other clouds or datacenters for Virtual Private Cloud environments
  • Granularly group cloud infrastructure layers—hosts, clusters, pods and zones; virtual machine resources; and CPU, Memory, Storage and IP addresses—into different isolation levels
  • Achieve compliance, security, performance and licensing requirements for running the most stringent enterprise application workloads in the cloud
  • Directly integrate with enterprise-class application delivery controllers (ADCs) and networking devices including Citrix NetScaler, F5 load balancers, Cisco hardware and software (UCS, Nexus 1000v, ASA1000v), Juniper firewalls and VMware Distributed Virtual Switch
  • Get built-in support for DHCP, NAT, Gateway, VPN, Firewall, Port Forwarding, VLAN, Elastic IP, routing and load balancing

For scale-out workloads version 4.2 provides the following new features:

  • Create Amazon Web Service-like availability regions that can consist of multiple zones (including mixed zone types) and datacenters
  • Ensure geographic wide object store access and high availability through multiple zones, helping to meet compliance requirements for geo-specific cloud locations
  • Deliver Amazon S3-like object storage in a region or across multiple zones

    Gain transparent access to storage across geographic and logically defined locations for cloud-native application workloads that require object storage

    Leverage the same S3-based object storage as a secondary storage for IaaS as well as to provide Storage-as-a-service (StaaS) to users

  • Create new Network-as-a-Service offerings, including comprehensive portable IP capabilities, advanced load balancing scenarios (GSLB , advanced zones) and AWS-like Health Checks to ensure application availability, dedicated network resources and VLANS

Citrix also released a new plug-in framework so that partners can more easily build custom extensions to Cloud Platform.

Cloud Portal Business Manager version 2.1 extends the CloudStack solutions with a webportal which manages the commerce, user management, service provisioning and operational aspects.

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Version 2.1 provides the following new features:

  • Cloud Services Catalog
  • Customization SDK; allows development teams to customize the user experience look and feel by allowing them to tailor the following user interface components for their organization
  • BSS/OSS APIs, allowing application and service integration
  • Support for Citrix CloudPlatorm 4.2
  • Citrix and Partner Connectors; 3rd party connectors from partners such as Appcara, ActiveState, Caringo, Cloudian, Cloudsoft, CumuLogic and others
  • Performance and User Experience Enhancements; enhancements to the user experience, improvements to catalog, accounts, subscription and billing performance, improved subscription notifications, support for event log downloads and RHEL support. This release also includes Active Directory import functionality available as an external tool.