Citrix XenServer Reviews

We migrated from VMware to XenCenter to cut costs.

This solution is more cost-effective and hardware-efficient with Citrix VDI.

The support for this solution is phenomenal.

The built-in networking features are a little limited.

Prior to this solution, we used VMware.

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.

We primarily use the solution for virtualization and for building other things on top of it. Mostly we sell the solution to other customers and offer them support.

The solution integrates well with other solutions, which makes it really strong as a primary solution to deploy.

The solution is too expensive and people are kind of moving away from Citrix. It's starting to become a problem. It is a primary reason that while we are rebuilding we're going to seek out open-source solutions.

The solution is stable.

The solution is highly scalable and can be highly integrated with other solutions, which makes it very good.

Technical support is good. I would rate them eight out of ten.

Sometimes there are difficulties when you look at the reseller model because you need to go through the reseller to get help, and often they are just salespeople. For us, in Botswana, resellers are typically in South Africa and they are more interested in sales than assistance.

These resellers are only interested in sales. When you are an assistant or a developer like we are, they can't really support you. They can only offer licenses to you. That is actually where the problem is. They have their sales quarters. If you don't meet their quarter they'll cut you off the next time and you have to reapply and go through their checks again, which is not a Citrix problem, but a partner weakness that should be re-considered.

The initial setup has a moderate level of difficulty. Someone with a good understanding of the technology will be okay, but if someone who is new to the solution may experience challenges. 

When you try to show clients Citrix, the price kind of scares them away. It's quite expensive.

We are rebuilding our whole news infrastructure. We stopped using the solution for some things, but we will use it once we are finished with what we are currently building.

We're using a hybrid deployment model. We're also a Citrix partner.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I really like the solution. It works well.

Our primary use case for this solution is for cloud automation.

This solution allows the end users to clone, start, stop, or remotely control their VMs.

The most valuable feature is the cost; it is a free product.

The self-service user portal needs to be more granular and be more customizable.

The stability of this solution is great, so far.

In terms of scalability, so far so good.

There are approximately two hundred users, with their roles being QA and development. I do expect that the usage will increase a little bit.

There is a paid option for this solution that comes with support, but with the free version that I am using, it is not supported. That is probably a weakness in most corporate environments, but we use it for QA and stuff of that nature.

Previously we were using vCenter from VMware. Our company was purchased and split in half, and I didn't know if we would be continuing the enterprise licensing with VMware so I had to find a free solution. 

The initial setup was straightforward.

It took about four weeks to deploy. We have a small environment.

I handled the deployment personally, and I am the person who maintains the solution for now.

Had I been using the paid version, at $6,000 for an annual license, I believe that it would have paid for itself already.

We use the free version, so there is no charge. To subscribe to the paid version with support, it is approximately $6,000 per year. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

I looked at VMware's vRealize Automation, but it was eliminated due to our budget constraints. 

I really like this solution, but it is not widely known. I'm really surprised that more people don't know about it. I find that it suits our needs pretty well.

Considering what I am getting for the cost I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. There are more powerful solutions out there, but they're very costly.

If I were paying for the support then I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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. 

• Cost effective
• Performance
• Overall simplicity

Since XenServer was the chosen platform from the start of our virtualization implementation, the improvements have been significant. Such improvements include the overall reduction of physical hardware, more efficient use and allocation of hardware resources, recovery points, storage utilization (when combined with dedupe), functional delivery of role based servers, and overall server management.

• The community and Citrix would be wise to build more partnerships, in particular with backup/recovery vendors. XenServer seriously lacks options in the shrink wrap backup-solution field.
• Develop a web-based management interface. There are community developed interfaces, but none specifically supported.
• Simplify block-level storage management. Disk chains can get complex over time and require a high degree of patience to clean up, especially with pooled storage repositories.
• Test the guest tools more thoroughly!

7 years.

Basic deployment is very easy. Multi-pathing storage does require a more advanced level of switching knowledge, but there is no shortage of documentation and examples to help implement.

Like any solution, plan your storage and networking wisely.

XenServer hosts have never had stability issues. The guest tools have definitely had stability issues.

Never had issues with scalability. In fact, I even had good success with processor masking in order to extend some life in an older server that was performing well.

From a customer-service perspective, there really isn't much that can be said. I don't have Citrix calling me to discuss XenServer. All service is community driven.

Throughout my use of XenServer, I've opened about 3 cases with Citrix. Each time the engineer I worked with was very knowledgeable and always assisted in resolving my issue.

No other option was used. I tested Hyper-V and, at the time, MS did not have a good solution to live migration.

Setup was simple and quick. I was able to begin with local storage and move my virtual machines to network storage at my leisure without any issues or downtime.

We've used standard networking, iSCSI multi-pathing, and bonded NFS. All have worked well.

All in-house.

We use the product primarily for server virtualization.

It has allowed us to grow over time because, initially, it was free. We were able to use what would have been budgeted for licensing costs in other ways.

Simply the ability to virtualize and make better use of existing resources is the most valuable aspect of this solution.

It is a very good product, so there really isn't much that needs to be added. Maybe the speed could be improved. It might be nice if the licensing cost could be improved because it is a big jump when you reach the threshold.

A good addition might be consol management in Linux. Right now I have to start in Windows to manage the system. It is not my preference.

This solution is very stable.

The whole point of the product is to be scalable, so it has very good scalability.

I never had a reason to use technical support.

I changed the implementation from XenServer. The product we use now is not really XenServer but XCP-ng which is built on the XenServer open source. Because of the structure of the licensing through Citrix, we changed the product, although it is built on the same source.

The initial deployment of the product was easy. The entire deployment with testing took about one month before it was completed for production.

I did the implementation myself.

There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. In the beginning, because we had a small network, it was free. We have expanded to five physical servers so now we have to pay for all the servers. It is good for others to be aware that the product is only free to a point.

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate XenServer as an eight for the product. For the pricing, I would rate it a five.

We primarily use the solution to deploy some services for our final users. 

The solution's security is its most valuable aspect.

The customization is very good.

Technical support is very, very good. They are very knowledgeable and responsive.

The pricing is good if you compare it to what else is on the market.

Overall, I can't think of a feature that is lacking. We've been pretty satisfied overall.

We've been using the solution for a while. We've used it over the last 12 months at least.

The stability is very good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. We find it good. It's reliable.

The scalability is good. If a company needs to expand it, it should be able to rather effectively. It's so easy to create new users and add new features that can be integrated into the solution.

We do plan to increase usage. There may be about 50 people now, however, but by the end of the year, we may be up to 100 or so.

The solution offers very good technical support. We've been very satisfied with the level of service that they provide.

We didn't previously use a different solution. This is our first product for our company to use in this manner.

The initial setup is not complex. It's pretty straightforward. It was easy.

Depending on the configuration and the number of users the deployment times differ. Typically, it will take between one and three hours.

We used three to five people for deployment and maintenance.

We used a Citrix integrator that assisted us in the implementation.

I'd say that the ROI has been good, however, it is not so easy to calculate that. When you get satisfaction from the users and the way they can work around the solution, that's the best return of investment that you can get from any kind of solution.

We pay for licensing yearly. It's a subscription-based license. We find the price to be quite good.

We are a reseller.

This may be the best solution on the market for these purposes. We've been very happy with it so far.

I'd rate the solution for nine out of ten.