Hello, I work as a cloud admin for a mid-sized tech services company. We are currently researching server virtualization tools.
What are the biggest differences between VMware vSphere, Citrix XenServer, Hyper-V, and Proxmox in terms of features and costs?
Are there other solutions you would recommend?
Thanks!
1. VMware is the more popular server virtualization software and has been the pioneer in server virtualization.
2. Citrix Xenserver or Now Citrix Hypervisor is another alternative. However, a major problem that I have faced with Xenserver is that very few Backup software vendors provide full support for XenServer. Due to that, we cannot take full backup of VM (Virtual Machines ) which we can do with VMware.
3. Hyper -V is surely a contender, but from a reliability point of view, you have to find out the reference cases wherein a large number of VMs have been deployed in a production environment.
4. No experience on ProxMox.
So if budget is not a constraint – and should not be from the reliability point of view---go for VMware.
You may consider Citrix Hypervisor & Acronis Backup software as a combination if that works our to be cheaper.
Thanks
Technically Hyper-v is best for windows guest os.
VMWare & xen is best for linux flavor
Oracle VM Server (OVM) is best & flexible for Oracle apps / dbs
We are using all three virtualization flavors & technically tested performance
I would like to know whether your infrastructure is converged or hyperconverged? if it is hyperconverged, I would recommend Nutanix, if it is converged VMware is your best bet. If you are an EMC shop then VXrail is your best bet. So it depends on what you want. And if you are using the Cloud, you can use AWS services for the virtual host if you are hosting it on the cloud.
What kind of workload you are running? There are multiple solutions available. If you are looking for redundancy & scalability, I would recommend to check out Nutanix.
@Rathin Vaidya and @Syed Abid Hussain make good points.
I have experience with VMWare and Hyper-V.
1- They are feature-rich and more common. it means you can find solutions for your issues easily online.
2- Licensing: prices per socket are close, but Win Server Data Center gives unlimited windows licenses for VMs running on it. So if you have mostly Windows VMs/servers, go for Hyper-V
Other than these considerations, VMWare is good.
It mostly depends on:
the workload you have (how many VMs? what OS they run? do you need Failover cluster/redundancy?) and as Krishna mentioned, what hardware do you have? (CI? HCI? brand?).
Proxmox it's the best solution for you, if you can make a feature chart with all the benefits and functions you can have, you gonna find out, but that's my opinion based on my experience
as I always said, you should make a comparison feature chart with all those brands. Every brand already has one just find them and copy them to an excel
its gonna take a lot of time and hard work to make a choice, but when you take it, you gonna be sure.
These are some of the charts i could find in a quick search:
https://www.proxmox.com/en/pro...
https://www.vmware.com/content...
https://www.citrix.com/es-mx/p...
Good luck!
Dear Syed Zafar
I recommend Proxmox is an excellent solution for virtualization.
It offers similar benefits to virtualization products like VMware vSphere, Windows Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, it is up to you, where you are going.
PROXMOX free at no cost, you can install it on any number of physical Servers, with no limit on the use of Processors and Sockets, Communication Bridges, or integration of NAS or SAN either through Fiber Channel, iSCSI Over Ethernet or NFS.
You should only have good server resources and you must virtualize.
I am at your service and attentive to continue.
Purpose-built Traditional, CI, or HCI connectivity? My experience is in building Ethernet SW/HW development, test engineering networks. We use VMware, Hyper-V, and Citrix to validate on-prem and hybrid cloud. AWS, GCP, Kubernetes to validate multi-cloud interoperability involving native legacy, contemporary container, serverless, microservice workloads.
When using reference systems, VMware is my goto for replicating use-case or proof of concept networking et al. Citrix for sandboxing Hyper-V, Windows VDI, and Azure
At times, while researching we would like the product with all the latest features. It's important for what purpose you are looking forward currently and later and budgets at-time.
Also, it could be a mix of solutions at-time based on requirements. Talking about CAPEX, OPEX Cost, minimal maintenance, all out-of-box popular features set. We would suggest you explore Proxmox VE (Standalone / Primary-DR-Backup or as HCI ) & Proxmox Backup for deployment on any readily available of-the-self Servers as a complete Virtualization Solution with Backup.
Estimada virtualización es la forma de simplificar y ordenar nuestras plataformas y sistemas operativos en una granja de servidores. Lo que debes tener claro sobre lo que vas a implementar y sus respaldos de virtualizador existen muchos. Cual usar? Recomiendo que proxmox VE tenga la mejor interfaz y que pueda usarla en toda la web al hacer copias de seguridad. Es genial que solo tenga que conocer los conceptos básicos de Debian Linux ya que proxmox vive en ese sistema operativo. Te recomiendo que veas varios videos para que puedas ver la simplificación de los procesos, estoy aquí para guiarte.
Other solution to recommend is NUTANIX. big winner in the HCI.
Now, everything depends on what kind of workload you have, were you plan to go and How critical is the cost of your solution.
If you plan big growth go with Nutanix.
If you have big constraint on your budget go with Proxmox, it work well,
otherwise VMWare will fit many case, it is a standard of the virtualization, not as scalable and agile than Nutanix, but cheaper.
As per my recommendation I will suggest Vmware Vsphere
I recommend an XCP-NG with Xen-Orchestra:
https://xcp-ng.com/ - Linux OS Distribution
xen-orchestra.com - Web Administration
I recommend VMware, my company is a reseller of that. It is the best solution, it has the best integration with the best cloud solution like Amazon, Azure, and Google.