Citrix XenServer Reviews

We primarily use the solution for application delivery that is centralized on-premises and hosted on data centers. For example, net applications. All the net applications I have published using the Citrix Hypervisor are there. On top of the Citrix Hypervisor, I position the Citrix application delivery infrastructure, and I have published all my applications that way. I'm just publishing and providing this application to my business users, as per their demand. It offers completely secure accessibility, and centralized access management.

The solution is extremely user friendly.

It's quite scalable.

We've found the solution to be very stable.

The product is working as per our expectations, and, it's giving us optimal performance in terms of connectivity for my end users. 

The licensing costs are too high on the solution. They should work to make the costs more reasonable.

It is not easy to adopt this quantitative footprint. It could be helpful if we could have some sort of optimum licensing model to make the adoption of this product easier. 

The integration with all products needs a bit of work. There should not be any kind of limitation for cross-areas, for example, you should be able to use Linux, and any other operating system you choose.

If I want to assign more than two TB of line, it is currently not supporting this. They should, however, because in some cases, you'd be required to have more than two TB of space. They should work to offer much more space than they do.

Our organization has been using the solution for six months so far.

However, for my part, I've been working with it for more than 14 years. 

In my environment, I am using Citrix Hypervisor for my XenApp virtual apps and desktop. We are using seven XenApps around 13 IDS app. It's very a stable product, and I have never faced any kind of problem over the last six months. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash. It's reliable.

The solution is very scalable. If an organization needs to expand, this solution will be able to handle the process. It's quite good. The scalability is one of it's greatest aspects.

We haven't had any issues with technical support. They've been very good. We're satisfied with their level of support.

The initial setup is very straightforward. There is not any complexity to worry about.

The licensing model is very expensive at the moment.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

As of now, in this COVID-19 paramedic situation, it's very remote-friendly product. It's great for IT and business processes if teams are planning to work from home remotely. This platform is quite good, in terms of publicity planning, remote connectivity, product flexibility, and user demands. Companies that want that kind of flexibility and freedom should explore this tool. It's quite useful.

Our primary use case for this product is that it serves as the main computing platform for our enterprise software. Our ERP system and our SQL Servers run on top of that and all the applications that we deploy are essentially virtualized.

Server consolidation has saved us a lot of money over the years. Being a non-profit that is a very big consideration for us.

The feature that is most valuable to us is the XenMotion (live migration) feature. It is critical for us, especially when doing maintenance work. That is a must-have feature. Also Storage XenMotion. The ability to move a VM while it is still running and continue doing maintenance on that is a big advantage.

The third-party integration is not very advanced. I don't know if it's a lack of interest by developers. Compared with VMware, Xenserver doesn't have a lot of third-party add-ons. Maybe in some way that can be improved.

The number one feature that would make it a more robust product is a backup solution. Right now we have to buy Xen Orchestra as a separate solution to manage the tasks a little bit better. If it was integrated within the product, that would be good. Maybe Citrix should just buy Xen Orchestra and improve on it. It is a very good product. It does everything we want to do, but it's a separate product which means we have to pay another license in addition to the ones for XenServer. So I really would want to see improvements in the backup arena and a more robust clean-up job after some tasks such as snapshots fail to complete.

I have been using the product since 2011, so I have been using it eight years or more.

As far as stability, we have never had any problems that we've not been able to overcome. The only thing we have experienced is that sometimes when you are doing your backups or you are creating a snapshot, you get orphaned images or other unnecessary files that the system fails to auto clean. But this is not really any failure of the system as far as stability. 

We have 16 licenses at the moment and we run it on four Dell R910 machines with four CPUs in each, and each is eight-core. 

It is easy to scale up. You can grow as you wish.

The technical support is quite quick and responsive. Whenever we have a problem, they are able to log in and check on the issue for us. Technical support has been good for us. We do pay for annual tech support. They are quite good.

Initially, I would say the setup was straightforward. When we consulted with Citrix about our plan for implementation we created our design diagrams, then we sent them the diagrams so they could check whether the design was going to work or not. When they looked at our diagram, they confirmed that it was a good design in terms of fail-over at both hardware level (host pools and storage) as well as physical network design. So we just deployed the product the way we had planned and it was straight forward after the plan was confirmed.

I would advise that with this setup, you are better off also taking up the paid support. The Tech support with these guys is fantastic. They will call you within minutes of logging the issue and with you to resolve the problem. If you provide access to the host they will log in and troubleshoot with you and show you which commands were run to solve the problem. 10/10 score on Technical support.

I think the biggest issue that I've seen that scares off a lot of potential customers is that they think it is complicated to set up. There are not many people who have deployed the product compared to other products. I think new clients should start small and gain confidence. There is no harm in having a mixed environment where they can at least try it out. If they like it they can continue to roll out the deployment. 

For us, the attraction has been that the licensing is straight forward. You don't have to think about what it will cost for add on features. It's really straightforward in that you pay for the number of CPU cores you have and that is if you want Technical Support. It is very easy for us to predict our costs. With other products, it is really difficult to know how much it's going to cost from year-to-year. With this product, we are able to say for sure what the cost will be.

On a scale from one to ten, with one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate this product as a nine. It is not a ten only because I don't have an easy way to do replication and backup. We had to learn to use the command line just to do that. But other than that, it's a very stable product. We have never had trouble, in addition, the hypervisor has a very small footprint on the host.

We use the solution for VDI technology. 

There's no complexity in using the tool, especially with the VBI integration. It works very well and has proven to be a stable platform. I have experienced attacks, such as ransomware, but my Citrix Hypervisor virtual machines were protected. This is due to its hardened operating system and DNS, which successfully protected the virtual machines on that platform.

The tool's most valuable features are high availability and load balancing. If one hardware server goes out of service in a multiple-host cluster, my workload automatically starts on another hardware host. Load balancing adjusts based on the load on a particular virtual machine or hardware, automatically balancing the load across multiple hosts. This ensures I get optimal performance from my resources.

It would be very helpful if I could browse the data store directly in the GUI, similar to VMware and Hyper-V. This feature would be particularly useful when something goes wrong with a virtual machine or virtual disk.

I have been working with the product for 12 years.

I have seen environments where we started with a two-node or three-node cluster and scaled up to eight nodes. My company has 35 users. 

Citrix Hypervisor's initial deployment is simple. We update it every six months to one year. Except for major releases or patch updates, the solution doesn't require much maintenance. It does not require many resources regarding people or trained personnel. It is easy to maintain, and if I place a person to understand the Hypervisor or the patching process, he or she can manage it easily. 

The solution offers value for money. 

We are currently working on a policy within our organization to identify areas where we can optimize resources. For instance, in troubleshooting, we get repeated calls from certain areas. Suppose we can automate tasks like upgrades, monitoring of IT infrastructure, and monitoring of logs and security infrastructure. In that case, we aim to integrate AI into these areas so that repetitive tasks can be managed by AI or similar solutions.

When I look at backup solutions like Commvault, I see that these companies support Citrix Hypervisor. However, a limited number of software companies or solution providers in IT directly integrate with Citrix Hypervisor. If that ecosystem can be expanded, it would help us increase our installed base on Citrix Hypervisor.

VMware has changed its policy and is not providing certain licensing to enterprise customers. So, in that case, customers have to buy the entire package, even if they only want the Hypervisor. Hyper-V and Citrix Hypervisor are very good solutions for those cases.

If you have a test and development system or a production system, or if you want to deploy a disaster recovery setup cost-effectively and with no complexity in various integrations, Citrix Hypervisor can be the best choice.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten. 

The primary use case of this solution is for hosting our virtual machines. Our operational applications are installed on Citrix. I'm the chief technology officer and we are customers of Citrix.

Our applications are now online 24/7 so availability has improved. We've also enhanced our security. Citrix has helped us reach customers in a timely manner and our applications can be accessed via the web. The ability to order and make payments online has streamlined our business operations and enabled us to reach a wider range of customers. It's also helped us improve customer service and improve revenue generation.

Citrix allows you to move your virtual machines from one host to the other, with the host geographical prefix. I think that's an awesome feature. We can access infographics and manuals, and communicate easily with each other. Great security features.

I'd like to see improvement in integration with other vendors and other applications, like Microsoft, for example. Operability with different kinds of hardware and infrastructure could be included so that you don't have to approach the vendor. I should be able to operate with a diverse infrastructure or RPA. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The solution is very stable, we've hardly had any issues with it. 

This solution is highly scalable. We've upgraded our hardware from time to time and all it requires is installation of the Hypervisor; our virtual machines are moved to it and operations continue without any downtime. 

We have a consultant who deals with technical support and manages it for us. 

We used a consultant for deployment.

The solution is not expensive at all. 

I highly recommend this solution, especially if cost is an issue. All the features; the security, scalability and the graph features are really good. 

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Citrix Hypervisor is used for tracing any database application and AD file server, but most people are using public XenApp or XenDesktop for client virtualization.

What I find most valuable in Citrix Hypervisor is its licensing policy, because you'll get it for free if you buy a Citrix XenDesktop license. You don't need to spend additional money on the Citrix Hypervisor because you can manage both the Citrix XenDesktop and the Citrix Hypervisor with just one license, so you can save on cost.

I also like that the solution is good support-wise. Hardware support is also faster compared to other solutions.

Citrix Hypervisor is expensive if you get it as a stand-alone product, so this is one area for improvement. Its price could be cheaper.

We also found other areas for improvement in Citrix Hypervisor, for example, we can't use SCIM provisioning, and there are limitations to the size of the HDD.

Another area for improvement is the pass-through storage, in particular the removable storage, because that also has limitations where you can't connect to the drive if it is more than one TB.

There are no issues with the stability of Citrix Hypervisor. It's good, and even the process of upgrading it is straightforward.

Citrix Hypervisor is easy to scale. Scaling it is straightforward.

Citrix Hypervisor has good support.

Installing Citrix Hypervisor is a very fast and straightforward process. Installation is faster than any other hypervisor because it is not a hyper-converged solution. People should still have some knowledge about the product to make the installation process very easy. It took less than a day to complete the installation of Citrix Hypervisor.

Citrix Hypervisor is a licensed product, and customers who buy the Citrix XenDesktop get Citrix Hypervisor for free. If they don't buy the license for Citrix XenDesktop, they'll need to pay for Citrix Hypervisor and its price is high. Pricing is even higher than VMware.

The licensing policy for Citrix Hypervisor is good. It's straightforward. The only issue is the price because it's an expensive product.

I provide Citrix Hypervisor to customers.

My company has many customers for Citrix Hypervisor, particularly more than ten customers. The product is good, but my company is slowly ruling it out. Customers are being moved to another solution because Citrix Hypervisor clusters need external storage and people nowadays are eliminating that type of technology.

I'm recommending Citrix Hypervisor to others looking into implementing it, specifically if they already have licensed client virtualization solutions such as Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenDesktop, because they could get Citrix Hypervisor for free. They could save on the cost of paying additional for hypervisors. Similarly, they could also save on cost if they get Microsoft hypervisors.

I'm rating Citrix Hypervisor nine out of ten.

It is quite flexible and rugged. It is also easy to understand and user-friendly. It is not as complicated as some of the other solutions. It has its technicalities, but it is easy to understand. You can easily pick up in a short period of time and understand how to manage the infrastructure.

I am not very sure about how flexible Citrix Hypervisor is with different types of infrastructures. I only know it is flexible with Nutanix, but I am not sure if it is also flexible with others. They can make its integration with other platforms or OEMs easy. They should also make it easy for users to manage their infrastructure. Citrix should make compatibility information related to a hypervisor easily available in a datasheet.

Citrix isn't really recognized in this part of the world, and they need to expand their solution and make it more available. There are a lot of customers and companies that are looking for a solution like Citrix, and it should be available in this part of the world. They need to educate people more. Technically, it is good and flexible and has good ability, but it is not as much known as VMware or Microsoft.

Their support should also be improved. Currently, if you don't have an updated version, they will not give you the attention.

I have been using this solution for about eight years.

It is pretty stable. We have recently upgraded to a newer version. I used 7.6 for a long time, which was very stable in spite of being end-of-support. In terms of stability, they are doing a good job.

We currently have a problem with technical support at our location. We don't have so many Citrix support companies or partners. We have just a few of them, and it is pretty difficult to get support and talk to Citrix directly. For this, two things are involved. You need to have the latest updates of infrastructure, and you should have got the support license. Otherwise, you can't get support from them. If you don't have the updated support or version, they will not give you the attention, which is a problem and a shortcoming.

I had to call them because we had a disconnect with our storage, and due to that, we lost a lot of data. I couldn't get support from Citrix because they informed me that I was using an older version of the solution. This is one of the shortcomings, so we had to work on the issue internally to resolve it. We had a backup, and we were able to restore everything,

It is easy and straightforward. It all depends on the hosting platform. You need to be sure that the host is actually compatible with the version of the hypervisor that you're using. It matters a lot. If you're not using the right or compatible infrastructure, you may run into some problems. Citrix should make this information easily available for people in a datasheet. Most of the time, you have to go online for this information. It should be easily accessible for the users so that they can easily find information about compatible platforms. 

I am fine with their license support. What we have right now is permanent, so I don't have a problem with their license.

I would recommend this solution for user endpoints or desktops. I would rate Citrix Hypervisor an eight out of ten.

The main use case is virtualization—to virtualize the virtual machines. We also install Hypervisor to provide external storage for the client. Hypervisor connects all the server hardware with the external storage, then we create VMs for the client, and they can install and use their applications on the virtual machines.

It's easy to migrate VMs using Hypervisor.

The main problem with Citrix Hypervisor is getting readily available backup solutions for it. It would be wonderful if Hypervisor were better integrated with third-party backup solutions. 

I've been using Citrix Hypervisor for the last two years.

Hypervisor is highly stable. We've hardly had any issues with it.

In terms of scalability, I would say Hypervisor is in the middle tier. I can't really speak to its enterprise-wide scalability, but it's very much okay on the mid-range level. From my experience, I can say it's good for small and medium-sized companies. I've never deployed it for a large enterprise. 

I'm very satisfied with Citrix support. 

Installing Hypervisor is really simple. It's the simplest setup I've ever done before. We used a team to deploy it, and it doesn't take much time, like two or three hours tops. That includes installing Hypervisor, creating all of the VMs, and installing the application on the VMs. The main form of maintenance we do is upgrading. And maybe sometimes there's a component failure, so we have to replace the component. 

Citrix Hypervisor is relatively cost-effective, even when you factor in vendor or third-party support. Of course, there can be additional costs, depending on the complexity of the solution, but the standard installation is cost-effective.

I rate Citrix Hypervisor nine out of 10. It's easy to deploy and cost-effective. And the support, whether the vendor support or even third party support, it's readily available. So, the person should have the rest of mind in deploying this solution.

Our primary use case of this solution is virtualization. 

The feature I find most valuable is its performance. It's a no "frills" solution. There aren't many tools and some may find that a little arcane, but I come from another visualization background. I like the console because you can do everything on the console, so you don't need any tools. 

This solution needs a block-level backup. We have backup solutions in place but they are pretty arcane. That is a niche, it is not filled with professional solutions. There are solutions that can do it - if you look at solutions for file system level backups, you will find many of them. But if you look for systems with block-level backup or block-level synchronization, you will see that the tools are pretty minor.

The solution is extremely stable. It's much more stable than VMware or any other tool that we've tested. One might get away with freeware solutions, but if you need support, I recommend using the commercial solution. 

It is easy to scale with this solution. I can scale up and scale down when I need to. And for memory and the VCPU's, it's even simpler because you can simply select that interface, and it will follow. Since I started using the 7.6 version, I can move virtual hosts around, so that's all working extremely well without any hurdles or hiccups. Our company has 600 employees and about 60% of them are using XenServer.

I think the technical support could be better because we have received support directly from the Dell server instead of from Citrix directly. It is difficult to get hold of support during office hours and sometimes will take a while to get the right person for the right answer. But apart from that, the quality of the answers and the support is very good.

The initial setup was very easy. It starts very easy and if you have special niche cases that are not provided, they are standard to install. You would, however, need to get yourself comfortable with the console, but if you have a Linux background, you will find that it is very easy. I did 90% of the installation myself, but we used third parties for special niche cases. We also needed support from Dell because we had some issues during startup with some drivers that were provided by Dell since we are mainly using Dell hardware.

My advice to others would be that there is no one golden bullet when choosing a virtualization platform. It depends on the careful planning of what kind of service you plan to provide to your users. Ask questions like: What is running on those systems? What platforms? What are your minimum demands? 

There's something else that's fairly important because the virtualization market is rapidly shifting towards a total overhaul. And efforts are being made on the Linux site to run armed and risk solutions in the data center. So I hope that XenServer will adapt to that too.

This solution has special niche cases where it doesn't work as you planned. But in general, I am very happy with the server. I will give it a rating of nine out of ten.