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Citrix XenServer vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.9
Citrix XenServer offered significant ROI with user satisfaction, virtualization benefits, and cost savings despite significant initial expenses.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSphere enables cost savings by reducing physical servers, optimizing resources, and decreasing setup time and operational costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.5
Citrix XenServer's support is inconsistent, with mixed reviews on response times and effectiveness, benefiting from paid options.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSphere's support is praised for knowledgeable service but criticized for variable response times and declining quality over time.
They do not provide adequate support for midsize businesses.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
My team solves most tickets, needing support only about once or twice a year.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Citrix XenServer excels in scalable deployments, effective for varying business sizes, but needs more features, especially in storage.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere offers seamless scalability and flexibility, efficiently handling large environments with minimal performance issues and strategic adaptability.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Citrix XenServer is a reliable, stable system with minimal issues, appreciated for uptime and dependability despite minor glitches.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware vSphere is highly stable and reliable, with minor issues often due to hardware or third-party integrations.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
 

Room For Improvement

Citrix XenServer needs improved backup, flexibility, and support, addressing concerns over cost, interface, Linux support, and community assistance.
VMware vSphere users seek improvements in cost, support, interface, integration, performance, setup complexity, automation, documentation, and fault tolerance.
Although the product is technically competitive, it is not widely known or used due to poor marketing.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
 

Setup Cost

Citrix XenServer offers free and paid versions; customers find it cost-effective but note licensing can be confusing.
VMware vSphere pricing is high but offers value in stability; consult VMware or resellers to customize licensing.
The pricing and licensing policy of Citrix XenServer is not transparent and quite confusing.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
 

Valuable Features

Citrix XenServer provides cost-effective, high-performance virtualization with seamless integration, intuitive management, and robust features enhancing user satisfaction.
VMware vSphere excels in ease of use, robust features, and efficient resource management, ideal for diverse virtualization needs.
It provides secure access to applications and resources, which is crucial for us and our clients.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
VMware vCenter is extremely useful as we can manage between 100 and 1,000 hosts using just one management tool.
The high availability feature is significant.
 

Categories and Ranking

Citrix XenServer
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSphere
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
452
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Citrix XenServer is 5.1%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 19.6%, up from 18.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software
 

Q&A Highlights

AS
Mar 05, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

Siva Kuppala - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows us to allocate CPU, memory, storage, and network resources across VMs and minimizes downtime in case of hardware failure or maintenance
It is a scalable product and provides great benefits for virtualization needs. However, there are a few considerations: * Cost: Citrix Hypervisor can be fairly expensive. * Complexity: There's a learning curve, especially for those coming from a Microsoft background. Setting it up and managing it can introduce some complexity. * Hardware Support: Not all major hardware vendors fully support Citrix Hypervisor. * Third-party Integration: Integrating Hypervisor with other technologies within a large ecosystem can sometimes be challenging. * Community Support: Compared to solutions like Microsoft Hyper-V, the community support for Citrix Hypervisor is somewhat less extensive. It is not vast. If there are any issues or errors, the community support is not that good. Those are definitely important disadvantages.
Vikas Dhumale - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good performance and is useful for banking systems
Speaking about the application deployment process, I work at the L1 level in my company. In my company, the L3 is a different department that manages the application deployment process, and most of them go for tools apart from the ones under VMware to manage the VMs. I am only creating new VMs and assigning RAM space, and if something comes up, then I create new RHEL-based systems. When it comes to the application deployment process, my company manually deploys the applications. For automation purposes, our company uses Jenkins to collect the logs and provide a GUI with the help of a username and password to the end user, after which they can collect the logs from Jenkins. I work at an L1 level in my company. The integrations and infrastructure-related areas of the product are managed by another team in my company. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. Nowadays, people don't prefer to go for cloud-based solutions. Most of the companies prefer VMware as they want some level of security in the environment. VMware allows users to have in-house products. Most companies or banks are not moving over to cloud-based tools. VMware is used in banking systems. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
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Comparison Review

VL
Jan 13, 2015
vSphere vs. RHEV vs. Hyper-V vs. XenServer
We have used the following functions: 1. Hypervisor: to ensure that the virtual server provide web and email services to the company, thus providing a stable operation a with single sign-on integration of an AD server and vCenter. 2. Network and Storage: centralized data server…
 

Answers from the Community

AS
Mar 5, 2019
Mar 5, 2019
Sure, at a high level: VMware products allow you to set up multiple virtual servers on a single physical server. This allows you to run the virtual servers on the physical server resources. It is an easy way to replicate environments so that there are no surprises when you go to production. You can set up development, QA and UAT all on the same physical box which are identical. Citrix products...
2 out of 9 answers
it_user99459 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 23, 2014
Vmware and Citrix both do similar things. They both offer server virtualization and desktop virtualization (plus other related software). VMware is the clear market leader for server virtualzation (Vsphere) and Citrix is the leader in desktop / application virtualization (Xendesktop / Xenapp). They both offer network software enhancements (and Citrix has NetScaler hardware). If you have any questions, please email howieb@hotmail.com
it_user113568 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 23, 2014
Adding to Howard's points above, VMware uses their existing Hypervisor platform to enable customers build their own Cloud too.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
53%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Educational Organization
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Citrix Hypervisor?
The core function enables multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server. This maximizes hardware utilization and efficiency.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix Hypervisor?
I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with one being very inexpensive and ten being very expensive.
What needs improvement with Citrix Hypervisor?
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 mach...
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
 

Also Known As

Hypervisor
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

U.S. Army Shared Services Center, SoftLayer, Educational Services of America, Independent Bank, and SK Telecom.
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Citrix XenServer vs. VMware vSphere and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.