Citrix makes "Kensho" preview available

Citrix has delivered a technical preview of a toolkit that allows developers to create and deploy OVF-based virtual appliances that run on multiple virtualization hypervisors.

The toolkit, which was introduced last July, is code named "Kensho" and provides the ability to create, import and deploy application workloads on Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMWare's ESX hypervisor as well as Citrix's own XenServer.  It is available as a free download starting today at the Citrix Developer Network.

The kit uses the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Open Virtualization Format (OVF) to allow the creation of independent and portable virtual appliances that can be deployed seamlessly across multi-hypervisor environments.  

In addition, Citrix has partnered with rPath to enable these DMTF-based virtual appliances on clouds such as Amazon EC2.  The toolkit is released under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and is available at   http://community.citrix.com/display/xs/Kensho.

Citrix made a big splash in the cloud computing arena last month by debuting Citrix Cloud Center, based on XenServer 5, a major upgrade of its hypervisor platform that was also launched last month.