Citrix XenServer Reviews

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.

I have been using the product for ten years.

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.

• 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.

Customer Service:

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.

Technical Support:

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.

I use XenServer to migrate all the old servers of my clients. I think it is a robust, proven and free option.

I find it very easy to manage and at a cost that small customers would never refuse (free).

The most valuable feature is the possibility of creating virtual machine templates from a snapshot and vice versa. It saves me many hours of work.

I would like the possibility of updating the hypervisor by applying security patches. In the free version, it is a bit annoying.

I have been using this solution since 2011.

Xen is an open source virtualization server widely used in IT. It provides simple and robust commands to manage Xen environment for managing virtual hosts.Backup and recovery of virtual hosts are simple. It can be managed remotely with XenCenter. It supports all client OS like windows, linux etc !!

It requires system with large number of CPUs and large number of memory to support guest operating systems. Not able to export virtual hosts in other virtualization softwares.

I have been using Xen for 4 servers now and still using it. 

Highly recommended and suited for administrators having sound knowledge of open source commands. !!

Basic virtualization, we used it before we already had the license as we’re a Citrix shop, so it’s cost effective. If we were looking for another solution, we wouldn't go with it.

• Eease of maintenance
• Ability to move around regardless of hardware
• We're not tied to single piece of hardware, so if a piece of hardware fails we can quickly adjust

All partners will build their apps around Hyper-V and vSphere, so XenServer needs to gain more market share with better relationship with their partners so that they’re incentivized to improve XenServer. It’s not functionality that will drive me away, it’s that I can’t integrate as well as with other vendors.

We rarely have issues. I come across bugs once in a while, but that’s pretty rare.

It’s highly scalable, haven’t run into any hardware issues that would prevent growth. We don’t have any old, legacy hardware we’re tiring to fit in.

Very good, they get us to the right level technician pretty quickly so we’re not just walking through a checklist. We get someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Pretty straightforward.

We figured it out on our own. Good documentation and set of options is less to roll out.

Research the different partners you have to work with throughout your organization and determine how well they work with Hyper-V and vSphere as opposed to XenServer.

XenServer is my favorite virtualization product. After previewing Vmware, Xen, and Hyper-V, I found this to be the easiest. You don't have to know linux to use. I like that XenServer can import virtual machines from any of the other hypervisors. I use scheduled snapshots and archiving, to where I don't have to worry if my machines are backed up. XenMotion is a breeze and makes it extremely easy to upgrade or change out servers. I also like that you can have heterogeneous pools with XenServer Advanced or above.

You have to set limits on scheduled snapshots, otherwise it won't let you take more. I have a limit of 7 days, with daily snapshots. The free version is somewhat limited in features. It is best for testing or small organizations. Something that might be a con is that when all of your servers are virtualized, you may not need some of your IT staff.

I use this to host all of my servers and my virtual desktops. This has saved my organization a ton of money. Although there is a high initial cost, it has paid for itself in the long run. If you are planning on doing a VDI solution, I would recommend using the same company for virtualization. For XenDesktop, use XenServer; for Vmware VDI, use ESXI. To test the full features of XenServer, try out the open source equivalent- Xen Cloud Platform.

This product makes up our infrastructure and we use it to host several servers.

The continued uptime of our virtual machines is good. If there's a problem with one host, the machines get migrated off. This is something that works well.

Live migration is something that can be improved.

Modification of virtual machines, while they're still powered on, should be supported.

I have been working with Citrix Hypervisor for about a year and a quarter.

The newest revision appears to be pretty stable.

This is a scalable solution.

I have worked with other hypervisors in the past and Citrix is a little more basic.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

Citrix is a good low-cost alternative to VMware, so if budgeting is an issue then I would recommend it.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

On-premises

The primary use case of this solution is to manage virtual servers under Citrix.

The deployment model we are using is on-premises.

What I like the most is the support of the GPU Graphics and the VM Live migration.

Network management needs improvement because it is not very stable.

In the next release, I would like to see more tools added, or included.

I have been using this solution for one year.

This solution is stable.

There are approximately three hundred users.

The technical support is very good.

Previously we used a different solution but this one is better.

The initial setup is simple and straightforward.

This solution is open source, it's free.

Version eight of this solution is complete.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.