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VMware View 5.2
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XenDesktop 5.6 (XD)
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My Comments
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Uses only VMware Hypervisor. Use the power of vSphere 5.1 with
capabilities such as Fault tolerance, VMotion and Site Recovery
Manager
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No tight integration with Hypervisor and flexible with
XenServer, vSphere and Hyper-V
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I seriously feel it’s better to have multiple hypervisor
support. That way you have the choice to: stick with the current
hypervisor the company runs and manages; use lower cost
alternative hypervisors; or use a hybrid hypervisor model
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Content based Read Cache (CBRC) feature available on vSphere
using RAM cache
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IntelliCache feature available on XenServer using Local Storage
caching
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This feature is only available for pooled desktop delivery
method. CBRC and IntelliCache have their own share of pros and
cons. However, CBRC will be faster because it’s based out
of RAM. This feature is very vSphere specific
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View Composer Array Integration – Offloading the creation of
linked clones to the storage array
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Not Available (**Can be made available using vSphere + XD 5.6
but not sure if Citrix will support it)
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This feature is more related to storage array functioning
with the hypervisor. VMware (vSphere) and a few other storage
vendors (EMC and NetApp) have coded specific drivers to offload
the creation of linked clones process from the hypervisor level to
storage array. Very limited vendors and new arrays would
have such capabilities
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Sparse Virtual Disk – space reclaiming (deleted files) on the
virtual machines
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Not Available (**Can be made available at the storage array
level provided any OEM supports and has tested features with XD )
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Using this feature you can surely save some expensive
storage space by deleting unwanted old files.
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vShield security & hypervisor offload
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Offloading Antivirus architecture capabilities is available
with all leading hypervisors today such as Hyper-V, XenServer and
vSphere. Vendors such as MacAfee Move and TrendMicro Deep Security
provide hypervisor level security
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Single console to manage the entire View environment using View
Management Manage
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Multiple consoles such as Desktop Studio, Provisioning
Services,
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Current versions of XD 5.6 for sure has many consoles to
manage. But Citrix has overcome the problem in the next version
(Excalibur) where there is a single console to manage desktop and
application delivery
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Cheaper View licensing cost
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Yes the list price for View is cheaper than the XenDesktop
license for all variants such as enterprise and platinum etc.
However, one has to evaluate various use cases before making the
choice of the products
E.g. The Citrix Provisioning services can reduce the storage
cost by 30% VS Machine Creation Services
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VMware Compared a 10,000 desktop reference architecture
published on the Citrix website and claimed they are:
- 42%
less Storage than XD
- 19% few
servers than XD
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No detail was given as to which Citrix XD architecture they
were comparing View to.
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Virtual 3D Graphics over WAN and LAN
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Similar capabilities of 3D GPU sharing using OpenGL available
with XenDesktop
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VMware said there was no 3D GPU sharing/virtualization
within XD. However it is available within XD
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A website that gives detailed information about VMware’s
competition
www.whychooseview.com
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Citrix Flexcast & Project Accelerator websites where you
can get more information
http://project.citrix.com/
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VMware is the only vendor which has public information on
competition on their website compared against Citrix, Dell etc. A
detailed comparison of VDI products is carried out by ProjectVRC
in their VDI Smackdown
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consumption would be per machine memory (3*2GB=6 GB)