Citrix XenServer Reviews

The primary use case of this solution is for providing virtual machines to the customers.

It reduced the number of physical workstations. There was a requirement to have several different workstations physically.

Also, it helped us to keep it standard. This allowed more management of the virtual machines.

The most valuable features are being able to host many virtual machines and being able to patch machines. For example, have a primary and secondary machine and being able to put the user on one machine and patch up the other one and rotate.

Some of the tools are different from VMware and there are some issues with speed in the network.

They need to have some cleared individuals on their team.

There are some limits, and technical support could be improved. The online documentation could be better found within the accounts. 

There is an issue with having an actual account versus a standard account. 

You need a licensed account to look up technical support.

Better return time when reaching out for support would be an improvement.

I had been working with Citrix Hypervisor for approximately six years.

They incremented every new version that came out from XenServer 6 to 7.5.

There were several times where there were some glitches or it crashed. 

Our network is a standalone one that is not connected to the outside. Being able to either update or get any type of support without allowing outside into the internal network was sometimes difficult.

It's a scalable solution. It's easy to scale.

We looked at scaling and going into machine creation services where you have one machine and that's the gold master machine in the update.

We have approximately 150 users in our organization. 

Their roles were mostly purposes, usual work.

I have used technical support. They were helpful but not helpful for the environment that I worked with because of security reasons. We couldn't give access to the internal network.

Previously, we did not use another solution. We started with Citrix Hypervisor.

I was not a part of the setup process.

I would definitely suggest that you do a trade study with other Hypervisors available.

I would rate Citrix Hypervisor a six out of ten.

On-premises

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.

My primary use of the product is for the purpose of server virtualization. It is used for virtualizing our web servers.

It provides a free, easy means of virtualization which would otherwise be costly to implement.

I'm currently using the free version, so I'm limited as to what I find the most valuable in the broader set of product features. For me, just the ability to virtualize servers is the most valuable.

To improve the product, I would like to be able to use the high availability of XenServer but the free version does not have that feature. I would really like to have a different trial option so I could try out the broader set of available options even if it is for a limited time.

It's pretty complicated to set up the server order and that can be simplified in the product. If a server shuts down the order in which the virtual servers will come up should be something that I can designate easily. The order can make a difference in a successful startup.

I have been using the product for more than a year.

As far as stability, I haven't had a problem. I highly recommend the product and I think it deserves good feedback as to stability.

The scalability is good. I really like the cloning option as it makes scaling easy. I don't have a problem with enhancing my setup. I'm very satisfied with it. 

I never request any technical support for the product directly from the company so I can not speak to the product support directly. I found the community and the forum very helpful when I had questions. The people there are very helpful. It is easy to find a solution if I have any problems.

The setup for the product is pretty straightforward. I use it straight out of the box in the limited free version on two servers that allows me to configure virtualization. It's a pretty easy solution to install and use.

I installed the product myself. I did not require assistance.

It is nice to be able to have a product that is free to use. Although it is simple, it does what I need it to do. The version you pay for has more features. I know that I would like to use some of the features in the paid version, but I can not justify the cost at this time.

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate XenServer as an eight. There are some problems, but it is also not the full release version.

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.