Citrix Systems today unveiled XenServer 5, the next-generation server virtualization product line which promises to deliver unprecedented management capabilities and ease-of-use for more dynamic datacenters.

“XenServer 5 is going to completely change the way a lot of people think about server virtualization,” Lou Shipley, VP and General Manager XenServer Product Group pointed out in a statement. “We are excited to see the growing momentum around XenServer as customers around the world begin to experience a more powerful, open, easy way to build dynamic datacenters.”

XenServer has been on an upward trend on the server virtualization market, and presents itself as a “growing force” on the emerging cloud computing market, as well as a key component of the Citrix Cloud Center solution that Citrix also unveiled on Monday.

Among other features which have already proven their functionality, such as live migration, resource pooling and workload provisioning, XenServer adds over 100 new features for virtualization management, including advances in high availability (HA) and disaster recovery.

Furthermore, XenServer 5 is backed up by a resilient distributed management architecture, which unlike other virtualization solutions, doesn’t cause one point of failure to bring down all servers across a datacenter.

The open storage APIs in XenServer 5 makes it easy for customers to access and control advanced functions such as snapshotting, cloning, replication, de-duplication and provisioning in existing storage systems from vendors such as EqualLogic and NetApp directly from within the XenServer management console.

In addition to that, the new XenServer 5 management console also supports all storage environments on the market, including NAS (network attached storage), DAS (direct attached storage) and SAN (storage area networks) – both fiber channel and iSCSI, also offering support 8GB HBAs (host bus adaptors) from Qlogic and Emulex.

XenServer 5 is also the first server virtualization platform to be validated by AMD and Intel 32-bit and 64-bit systems through Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, Citrix System revealed.

Regarding the pricing and availability, XenServer 5 will start at a retail price of $900 per server, and will include the advanced XenCenter management technologies and a one-year Citrix Subscription Advantage membership.