As a true virtual computing solution, XenServer helps you achieve cloud-like economics through datacenter automation, increased administrative efficiency, high reliability and business continuity, and the ability to leverage the cloud as an extension of your infrastructure.

Server virtualization enables datacenter automation and streamlines operations

With server consolidation, XenServer reduces power, cooling and management costs and helps you optimize use of existing hardware—but shrinking your overall number of servers is only one of the benefits of XenServer. Administrators can also automate key IT processes to improve application service delivery, saving both time and money. Improved IT reliability and the ability to adapt to ever-changing IT environments help you deliver optimal support to the business.

XenServer features for automating datacenter processes

Source: The Total Economic Impact™ of Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Citrix, Feb 2010

Adapt to increasing IT demands for administrative efficiency

Virtualization gives you the flexibility to adapt your datacenter to meet constantly evolving IT requirements. For example, XenServer optimizes the location of server workloads to improve performance and utilization while increasing server readiness within resource pools. This ensures that application requirements and expected performance levels are always met and helps you deliver new applications into production more quickly.

Using XenServer to efficiently manage your datacenter operations

Reduce unplanned downtime

Natural disasters and other business disruptions can cripple any organization—but downtime and data loss are not acceptable in today's business environment. To keep the business moving and protect the bottom line, companies must protect their IT and data investments and keep the infrastructure running so users always have access to the IT resources their work depends on. With server virtualization, servers are separated from underlying hardware and delivered as virtual machines (VM), making the protection of VMs and associated data easier than in a physical infrastructure. This makes server virtualization  a key strategy to protect IT infrastructure against natural disasters and business disruptions, helping organizations reduce downtime due to disasters and increase worker productivity.

Using XenServer to create your business continuity plan

Power your cloud platform

Now more than ever, enterprises are moving to cloud computing to lower capital costs and deliver more responsive and timely IT services to the business. With the growth of both public and private clouds, IT is rapidly expanding beyond traditional datacenter boundaries and exposing new concepts such as platform as a service (PaaS) or infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to users via an enterprise network. Inherent in the promise of cloud computing is an IT infrastructure that is extremely flexible and can be quickly customized to the meet needs of the business, rather than having the business bend to the needs of IT.

How to use XenServer to build your cloud infrastructure

Next: Compare the features of XenServer