Citrix announced the availability of Citrix XenServer 4.1, the company's first release since Citrix acquired XenSource in late 2007. The release included enhancements to the product as well as a major shift in the product's pricing. The company changed its product pricing model from a per socket basis to per server. It no longer matters how many sockets or how many processor cores you have in the system. Custome Citrix announced the availability of Citrix XenServer 4.1, the company’s first release since Citrix acquired XenSource in late 2007. The release included enhancements to the product as well as a major shift in the product’s pricing.The company changed its product pricing model from a per socket basis to per server. It no longer matters how many sockets or how many processor cores you have in the system. Customers can now deploy an unlimited number of virtual machines on each physical server for a single price.What’s nice about this new pricing solution is that it finally simplifies the process. The new pricing applies to all editions of Citrix XenServer 4.1, Standard, Enterprise and even the recently announced Platinum edition. A free version of XenServer, the Express Edition, is also available for unlimited use on a single server. Most other server virtualization solutions on the market charge incremental license fees based on the number of CPU sockets. This causes both the cost and the licensing complexity of their solutions to increase, things that consumers of virtualization are becoming extremely concerned with.Chris Wolf, senior analyst at Burton Group, said, “As organizations increasingly virtualize their data centers, they are consistently asking virtualization vendors for simple, predictable pricing and licensing policies. Vendors who work to simplify licensing and pricing in a time of virtualization ubiquity are showing leadership by demonstrating that they are clearly putting their customers’ interests first.”“By introducing this new, streamlined licensing model, we’re taking yet another step toward friction-free deployment and continuing to make Citrix XenServer the easiest virtualization solution to own and deploy,” said Matt Fairbanks, VP of product marketing, Virtualization and Management Division for Citrix. New features of XenServer 4.1 include:Scalability and Performance – Double the number of simultaneous running VMs, Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI, formerly nested page table, or NPT) support for modern AMD processors, VLAN support now available in Standard Edition, Improved Citrix XenApp performance and maximum number of user sessions Reliability and Manageability – Host NIC bonding for fail-over (configured via CLI), Centralized logging, Configuration of network management interfaces via the CLI, Update/patch management integrated in XenCenter, Java bindings for XenAPI in SDK Storage – Shared Fibre Channel storage support (initialized via CLI), Enhanced support for NetApp filers, including snapshot and cloning, Windows guest disk hot-remove, iSCSI compatibility and HBA support improvements, Support for hot-plugging USB storage as a storage repository Host System – Rolling pool upgrade support, NIC driver updates (e1000, BNX2, TG3), Support for 10Gb network adapters (Mellanox/Chelsio) Guest Support – Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 32-bit and CentOS 5 32-bit install from physical CD, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 64-bit and CentOS 5 64-bit guest support, Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 32-bit and 64-bit guest support, Windows Vista 32-bit guest supportCustomers can download a free 30-day trial of the new Citrix XenServer 4.1 starting today. XenServer product suggested retail pricing starts at $600 per server for an annual license and $900 per server for a perpetual license. XenServer Express also remains available as a free download from the same web site. Software Development