We performed a comparison between Citrix Hypervisor and VMware vSphere based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Citrix Hypervisor wins out in this comparison. The main difference between the two solutions is that VMware vSphere is more expensive than Citrix Hypervisor and users say it also needs improved security and monitoring features.
"The initial setup is easy."
"What I like the most is the support of the GPU Graphics and the VM Live migration."
"This solution allows the end users to clone, start, stop, or remotely control their VMs."
"The feature I find most valuable, is its performance"
"The solution is extremely stable."
"The solution's security is its most valuable aspect."
"The price is the solution's most valuable feature."
"Citrix Hypervisor does a great job overall, such as the virtualization of the host. It's very easy to manage the virtual machine, to create, and configure high availability."
"In the past, we struggled with VM encryption. We couldn't encrypt the virtual machines with older versions of vSphere without some kind of third-party tool. Now, with 6.7, it's all in the application itself, in vSphere. We no longer have to procure additional products to meet that requirement. We can just do it on the fly, and pass our audit with no issues."
"The solution allows for very good virtualization."
"Workloads; We use vSphere for mission-critical apps including SAP and and part of our internal development in C+, for the solution that collects everything for the buyers."
"The redundancy, the failover, the ability to stay up and running 24/7, all the various tools that are in there, high-availability, DRS, are very critical to us."
"The solution is very scalable."
"The tool makes virtualization easy. It was free, and we could profit from its GUI. It helps to manage VMs easily."
"In terms of overall features, vSphere's stability stands out on top. Not only is it highly stable, but we're also able to have a quick backup server on standby."
"The most useful features are ESXi, DRS, Auto Deploy, and the Lifecycle Manager."
"I would like the possibility of updating the hypervisor by applying security patches."
"It needs to have a more robust backup solution."
"It can be useful to have a web management program because we have to install our client-server. We have to properly manage the host, if we had administration tools through a web interface it would be a benefit."
"You need a licensed account to look up technical support."
"Citrix could provide more tools to help the client manage the solution because we need to build our own tools in some cases. Everything is available through PowerShell, but then you need to build your own scripts to do the more advanced work."
"The graphics user interface is pretty bad."
"The licensing costs are too high on the solution. They should work to make the costs more reasonable."
"The built-in networking features are a little limited."
"The support is good, but it's slow."
"The pipeline feature can be improved, as it doesn't allow for specific situations."
"Inability to get to a single hypervisor environment to support a container environment."
"Integration with different platforms could be improved."
"Both the price and the licensing fee are expensive, especially for our clients with a smaller workload."
"This solution should have a better backup policy. Furthermore, there should be an ability to expose the universal machine. In the current version, you need to shutdown and use an offline virtual machine to backup."
"Generally, the user interface needs to be improved for non-technical people."
"They need to further develop graphics virtualization."
Citrix Hypervisor is ranked 8th in Server Virtualization Software with 46 reviews while VMware vSphere is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 446 reviews. Citrix Hypervisor is rated 8.2, while VMware vSphere is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Citrix Hypervisor writes "Allows us to allocate CPU, memory, storage, and network resources across VMs and minimizes downtime in case of hardware failure or maintenance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSphere writes "Offers good performance and is useful for banking systems". Citrix Hypervisor is most compared with Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, KVM, Oracle VM VirtualBox and Nutanix AHV Virtualization, whereas VMware vSphere is most compared with Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM VirtualBox. See our Citrix Hypervisor vs. VMware vSphere report.
See our list of best Server Virtualization Software vendors.
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VMware and Citrix server virtualization do almost the same thing with nearly same options, on the other hand Citrix Xenapp and Xendesktop is far more advanced and efficient and have their own secured protocol. I've been using Citrix Xenapp for long time, it is an amazing solution saving huge cost related to communication channels and software license. Also I implemented Citrix Xenapp on VMware and HyperV. The stability of Citrix over VMware is far more better than over HyperV. We used the Citrix Xenapp to streaming Oracle EBS and Microsoft office to remote users (about 13000 user) it served up to 1600 concurrent user very efficient.
Hi,
VMware and Citrix XenServer both are Bare metal (Type1) Virtualization Software. Both are good. But VMware is too user friendly and good for Enterprise as well. Whereas, Citrix is good for SMB.
In short, there are so many options with each company that it is hard to provide a short sweet answer. From my experience, Citrix has been used primarily to enable one to access computers and systems remotely as well as a tool to enable folks to get together via an online meeting format. VMWare, conversely, has been used for virtual environments where one could host their servers, say up to 4 or 5 of them, virtually, on each ESXi host machine. Again, each company has many products, however I have thought of them as an apples verses oranges comparison in as far as the service/products they offer. One can explore Citrix products at www.citrix.com and VMWare products at http://www.vmware.com/products/.
-Jeff
Adding to Howard's points, you can virtualize NetScaler as well. It is now replacing Cisco's Load Balancing line of products. Citrix XenServer also allows for users to build their own Cloud.
As with Rakesh's comments, Citrix can provide some of same benefits.
1. Reduce physical space in the data center, thereby reducing physical server maintenance, cooling costs and OPEX.
2. Using templates, you can deploy virtual servers in hours instead of days or weeks with physical purchases.
3. With Desktop virtualization, Microsoft has VDA licensing. Server OS licensing remains the same.
Overall, both vendors have their own key points of expertise, it will depend on what you really want to accomplish with virtualization.
Which products specifically?
Haven't used citrix but had been useing VMWARE , I will therefore concentrate on VMware alone.
VMWare benefits on Multiple fronts
1. Reduce Physical Space of Data Center
2. Reduces Physical Server Maintenance Cost and thereby OPEX
3. Make implementing Redundancy much Easier
4. Servers are Up in Days compared to conventional methods where we needed to procure physical Servers
5. Reduce Energy Cost as we have reduced number of Physical Servers
6. Reduces Windows OS licensing cost
Adding to Howard's points above, VMware uses their existing Hypervisor platform to enable customers build their own Cloud too.
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