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."
"The ability to move a virtual machine while it is running is a big advantage."
"The solution integrates well with other solutions, which makes it really strong as a primary solution to deploy."
"The solution is extremely user friendly."
"The most valuable features are being able to host many virtual machines and being able to patch machines."
"Citrix Hypervisor integrates easily and I can manage the infrastructure better. If I need to take a machine down to expand the hard drive, I do not have to physically be here. I do not need to order new equipment or new hard drives. I can shut it down, increase the drive space and bring it back up."
"Scripting can automate procedures."
"Citrix Hypervisor is quick to deploy and easy to manage."
"It's not a particular feature, really, however, I can say that the solution is just easy to maintain, and makes it easy to backup all those VMs. We can easily save our data and we can deploy VM machines very fast and create the delivery of the server in a pretty simple, dynamic way."
"The virtualization, the remote management user interface, and the web console are most valuable."
"The virtualization is set by itself. vSphere is the best way to have a non-host based fixed solution. We always try to find an agnostic environment where we can restore agnostics or just say, "I need resources, capacity." That's why VMware vSphere in particular, has been the best in the past but now also with the evolution of their product. Nowadays, you don't have to use any STEM infrastructure anymore because the bandwidth and the land speeds are getting steeper."
"It makes managing your virtual servers easier and more centralized."
"The main benefit of the version 6.7 is that it makes end-users able to use the interface much more effectively. They don't have to install a client on their machine, they can do it from their phone, their laptop, their tablet, any OS, anytime. It's a better experience for the end-user."
"The solution has high availability."
"The most valuable features are the vMotion, the storage vMotion, the DRS, and the high availability function."
"There are no issues with the level of scalability you can achieve."
"The main problem with Citrix Hypervisor is getting readily available backup solutions for it. It would be wonderful if Hypervisor were better integrated with third-party backup solutions."
"The USB support for the virtual server needs improvement."
"There are several areas that need improvement including the stability of the networking stack and networking management."
"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 licensing costs are too high on the solution. They should work to make the costs more reasonable."
"The interface has to be updated."
"Live migration is something that can be improved."
"The solution is only in English. It would be ideal if it was in Portuguese."
"The support for the latest version could be improved."
"It would be nice to see it a little more tightly integrated with the patching solution so you could do it in one pane of glass. Right now, you have to jump back and forth. It's still not difficult, but you have to jump back and forth to do your update definitions and then go back and actually do the updates themselves."
"In future releases, I would like to see less pricing. The license can be improved."
"The pipeline feature can be improved, as it doesn't allow for specific situations."
"On the older version of VMware vSphere, possibly version four, we had a feature that allowed us to backup Ziploc machines. It has not been available in the newer version such as six or seven. I have been looking for another solution to accomplish the backups but they should bring back this plugin-type tool to allow older backup capabilities."
"The hardware cost is high."
"My biggest suggestion would be some kind of a mechanism - and it's almost an AI-type thing, a Siri/Cortana - for where to find how to do certain things. If there was the ability to just type in a basic question and say, "How do I change the VM settings for this?" and it could bring me right there, that would be really awesome."
"The price is a big issue for us because the market is very competitive in our country, so we can't really push our VMware vSphere products because the customers will prefer to use something cheaper."
Citrix Hypervisor is ranked 8th in Server Virtualization Software with 45 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 "Good features, fair pricing, and excellent reliability". 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, 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 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