At the end of September Citrix announced the upcoming availability of XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1 (codename Cowley). This is a significant release as it finally includes the Open vSwitch technology and the distributed virtual switching capabilities that come with it, as well as the VMLogix technology acquired in August 2010.
A couple of weeks after the opening of the beta program, a number of key details emerges about the product, including a number of limitations that is worth reporting:
Q: Which edition of XenServer will be required for Distributed Virtual Switching?
A: The Open vSwitch will be included in all editions of XenServer, including Free XenServer. The vSwitch Controller functionality will be a licensed part of a premium XenServer edition.
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Q: Will the Open vSwitch support Link Aggregation?
A: Not in the first release. We are looking into this kind of functionality for a future release.
Q: Is IPv6 supported by the Open vSwitch?
A: Not in this release. We are looking into this kind of functionality for a future release.
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Q: Can the vSwitch Controller be clustered?
A: No, but configuration settings and Control Policies can be backed-up and imported into a new Controller appliance.
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Q: Will Web Self-Service offer the ability to create VMs?
A: VM Creation will not be supported in the first release of Web Self-Service. We are looking into this kind of functionality for a future release.
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Q: Will the Virtual Machines Protection & Recovery (VMPR) feature be available in the “Free” edition of XenServer?
A: No, VMPR will be a licensed feature of a premium edition. More details on packaging will be available closer to the release date.
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Q: Does VMPR support differential snapshots and archiving?
A: Not in the first release. We are looking into this kind of functionality for a future release.