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 most valuable features are being able to host many virtual machines and being able to patch machines."
"This is a dependable solution for virtualization with a good community for product support."
"What I like the most is the support of the GPU Graphics and the VM Live migration."
"We can easily migrate VMs from one host to another."
"The solution integrates well with other solutions, which makes it really strong as a primary solution to deploy."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The continued uptime of our virtual machines is good."
"The feature I find most valuable, is its performance"
"One of the things I like with the web client, versus the thick client, is that we're able to access all the vCenters that we manage. With the thick client, you have to log in to one vCenter at a time."
"An easy way of providing near-zero downtime services, the operation of the instances between clustered services, and providing the projected SLA for our customers."
"It is very easy to use and very stable."
"The UI is very intuitive, you don't have to spend hours before you figure it out. All in all, compared to other environments, like Hyper-V, we find vSphere a lot more user-friendly and intuitive to use."
"Ease-of-Use; The solution is very simple to use and to manage. Updates are simple. The biggest feature that enables the ease of use is the fact that you can update via the web interface. With a couple of clicks, the update is done; no manual intervention, you just click Update and it automatically reboots the server for you and you're back up and going again."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to manage."
"The solution is very straightforward to implement."
"We use it for our VDI infrastructure and managing virtual machines."
"Overall, I can't think of a feature that is lacking. We've been pretty satisfied overall."
"I would like the possibility of updating the hypervisor by applying security patches."
"The solution is too expensive and people are kind of moving away from Citrix. It's starting to become a problem. It is a primary reason that while we are rebuilding we're going to seek out open-source solutions."
"There are several areas that need improvement including the stability of the networking stack and networking management."
"Network management needs improvement because it is not very stable."
"I am not very sure about how flexible Citrix Hypervisor is with different types of infrastructures. I only know it is flexible with Nutanix, but I am not sure if it is also flexible with others. They can make its integration with other platforms or OEMs easy. They should also make it easy for users to manage their infrastructure. Citrix should make compatibility information related to a hypervisor easily available in a datasheet. Citrix isn't really recognized in this part of the world, and they need to expand their solution and make it more available. There are a lot of customers and companies that are looking for a solution like Citrix, and it should be available in this part of the world. They need to educate people more. Technically, it is good and flexible and has good ability, but it is not as much known as VMware or Microsoft. Their support should also be improved. Currently, if you don't have an updated version, they will not give you the attention."
"The solution needs better backup facilities that are available for virtual machines to create servers on."
"You need a licensed account to look up technical support."
"I’d like to see a better web console or rather, transform the web console in a real single pane of glass for the whole infrastructure instead of having to go for vRealize Ops Manager."
"Reporting on vCenter needs to be improved."
"Generally, the user interface needs to be improved for non-technical people."
"I would like them to move into having a containerized application to manage the vCenter."
"Reducing the cost of vSphere would be an improvement."
"The solution could be a bit more user-friendly."
"Two improvements that I would like to see are higher resolution console modes for guests and easier switching between consoles."
"There is definitely room for improvement and that improvement should be in the licensing and the simplicity of procuring additional licenses or additional VMware products. Right now, it's very complex."
Citrix Hypervisor is ranked 8th in Server Virtualization Software with 8 reviews while VMware vSphere is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 14 reviews. Citrix Hypervisor is rated 8.2, while VMware vSphere is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Citrix Hypervisor writes "An easy-to-use solution with virtualization features that helped during lockdown". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSphere writes "Offers a suite of software components for virtualization including ESXi, vCenter Server, and other software". Citrix Hypervisor is most compared with Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, Oracle VM VirtualBox, KVM and Nutanix AHV Virtualization, whereas VMware vSphere is most compared with Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, VMware Workstation, Oracle VM and IBM PowerVM. 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 http://www.citrix.com/products.html?posit=glnav 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