Citrix Hypervisor vs VMware vSphere comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jan 9, 2023

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.

  • Ease of Deployment: Reviewers of both solutions report that their initial setup and deployment is straightforward and fast.
  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their stability and scalability.

    Citrix Hypervisor users say that it is secure and flexible with good customizations, and can easily move VMs between hosts. Several users mention that its backup tools could use improvement.

    VMware vSphere users say it is flexible and easy to use and has good virtualization and fast data recovery. Some VMware vSphere users say that the solution should improve its security and monitoring features.
  • Pricing: Citrix Hypervisor users say the solution is a low-cost product. In contrast, most VMware vSphere say the solution is expensive.
  • Service and Support: Reviewers of both solutions report being satisfied with the level of the support they receive.
  • ROI: Both Citrix Hypervisor and VMware vSphere users are satisfied with the ROI.

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.

To learn more, read our detailed Citrix Hypervisor vs. VMware vSphere Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: What do each of the VMware and Citrix products do?
Answer: 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 allow you to process at a data center where your computing power is located. The user attaches to the Citrix network from remote location, uses the application which runs at the data center but only the screens and data is transferred. The process eliminates latency in distribution to remote user locations. Using Citrix a document can be created in Philadelphia and viewed in Hong Kong virtually without any user detectible delay because all of the processing was done at a data center in Philadelphia. Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more details.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"This is a good product for virtualization and it is easy to use.""Scripting can automate procedures.""The onboarding process is pretty straightforward.""What I find most valuable in Citrix Hypervisor is its licensing policy, because you'll get it for free if you buy a Citrix XenDesktop license. You don't need to spend additional money on the Citrix Hypervisor because you can manage both the Citrix XenDesktop and the Citrix Hypervisor with just one license, so you can save on cost. I also like that the solution is good support-wise. Hardware support is also faster compared to other solutions.""The feature I find most valuable, is its performance""I find it very easy to manage and at a cost that small customers would never refuse (free).""The solution is extremely user friendly.""The price is the solution's most valuable feature."

More Citrix Hypervisor Pros →

"It is the number one virtualization-layer platform available, and a lot of people trust it.""The built-in encryption of vSphere really helps us to secure our customers, especially customers in the medical field who need to be HIPAA compliant. Being able to encrypt the VM itself helps out a ton.""It is easy to manage the solution. It is scalable and very stable.""VMware Tanzu (container) is the most valuable addition because you get an efficient solution to manage the VM and container in a single pane of glass.""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.""The emphasis isn't specifically on a particular feature, but rather on the ease of use. For instance, when building a test lab or setting up an entire environment from scratch, VMware products are notably more user-friendly compared to alternatives like Nutanix. I've had prior experience with Nutanix. From my personal perspective, I found it easier to adapt to using VMware than when I started using Dynamics. This ease of use is a strong point. It's largely about how straightforward it is to navigate through VMware's user interface. In contrast, with Nutanix, there's a need to delve into smaller configurations and navigate vendor-specific settings. VMware, on the other hand, offers a more accessible management page. This difference primarily centres around usability and the overall user-friendliness of the interface.""Their command-line tools integrate well with other Microsoft products like PowerShell, so I can manipulate VMs using it.""The most useful features are ESXi, DRS, Auto Deploy, and the Lifecycle Manager."

More VMware vSphere Pros →

Cons
"The solution would benefit from faster 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.""Live migration is something that can be improved.""Network management needs improvement because it is not very stable.""Integration with other vendors and other applications could be improved.""The product could be faster and licensing options could be improved.""Citrix is not investing in the virtual surroundings.""The manageability of the solution needs improvement. It's an extremely bad product to handle."

More Citrix Hypervisor Cons →

"I feel that the scalability of the solution should be improved.""It could be more scalable.""The technical support is good. However, it could be more seamless when it comes to chat support and lower response times.""VMware has amped up how frequently they release new versions and that adds instability to a stable environment.""When it comes to cross-regional (e.g., someone in the US managing the China vSphere implementations), it can be a somewhat slow. I would recommend increasing the speed. While there has already been improvement there, I would like to see more.""The solution should be more secure.""The cost can be better.""I would like to see a little bit more visibility regarding errors. When an error does occur, there are times where it says "Unknown error" or something to that effect, and it doesn't necessarily give you a lot of metrics. If you go online and you give a description of it, normally the VMware forums can help you find out what it is, but I'd like to see a little bit more visibility from the software itself regarding what's going on: "This went wrong, this is why.""

More VMware vSphere Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The pricing and licensing is so important. Customers do consider the price seriously."
  • "The most valuable feature is the cost; it is a free product."
  • "To subscribe to the paid version with support, it is approximately $6,000 per year."
  • "There are free and paid versions. The free version is limited in features but not by time limit. The paid version has more features."
  • "While it is free for small networks, the pricing is high if your network grows past a certain size."
  • "We migrated from VMware to XenCenter to cut costs."
  • "This solution is open source, it's free."
  • "Citrix is a good low-cost alternative to VMware, so if budgeting is an issue then I would recommend it."
  • More Citrix Hypervisor Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "My advice when it comes to pricing is that pricing is a bummer, especially when it comes to SnS coverage."
  • "Purchase only the cheaper solution with support. I don’t recommend high-end licenses."
  • "Pricing needs to be competitive since Microsoft Hyper-V has come a long way; they are both around the same price range."
  • "VMware is consistently expensive and their pricing arrogance is what will drive us and other customers away."
  • "Start with the lowest and upgrade if, and only if, absolutely necessary."
  • "Compared with other vendors’ products, the pricing of the license is slightly lower. The annual S&S price is very affordable."
  • "The product is worth what you pay for it. I definitely feel like I"m getting good value."
  • "​The only issue with vSphere might be with the cost of the tools and the software.​"
  • More VMware vSphere Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Answers from the Community
    Avigail Sugarman
    Yasser Ghonaim - PeerSpot reviewerYasser Ghonaim
    Real User

    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.

    it_user86838 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user86838 (Implementation Unit at a tech services company with 51-200 employees)
    Consultant

    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.

    it_user127791 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user127791 (IT Representative at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees)
    Vendor

    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

    Dan Withrow - PeerSpot reviewerDan Withrow
    Real User

    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.

    it_user134880 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user134880 (IT Manager at a non-tech company)
    Vendor

    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

    it_user113568 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user113568 (Account Manager at a tech company with 10,001+ employees)
    Real User

    Adding to Howard's points above, VMware uses their existing Hypervisor platform to enable customers build their own Cloud too.

    it_user99459 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user99459 (Infra Director with 51-200 employees)
    Vendor

    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

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Citrix Hypervisor is expensive. The cloud licenses are expensive. Only Citrix is earning money off those. It's the same with VMware and Microsoft.
    Top Answer:Citrix is not investing in the virtual surroundings. Third-party tools are bad for Citrix at the moment. No good backup recovery is available. On Microsoft, we can use Veeam, which is a great product… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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.
    Top Answer: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 found… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    10,912
    Comparisons
    7,644
    Reviews
    8
    Average Words per Review
    580
    Rating
    8.8
    Views
    44,230
    Comparisons
    36,500
    Reviews
    17
    Average Words per Review
    366
    Rating
    8.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    XenServer
    Learn More
    Overview

    Citrix Hypervisor is a leading virtualization management platform optimized for application, desktop and server virtualization infrastructures. Consolidation and containment of workloads on Citrix Hypervisor enables organizations of any vertical or size to transform their business IT compute infrastructures.

    VMware vSphere is a powerful and complete server virtualization platform that allows its users to create and manage virtual data centers and machines. VMware vSphere is designed to help IT departments set up and run applications using the most cost-effective computer resources. By using vSphere, organizations save the time and energy necessary for purchasing infrastructure and software and reduce ongoing maintenance and operational burdens on IT teams.

    Infrastructure administrators and network operators can access and manage the vSphere server by using a web-based cross-platform client application or via the vSphere client tool provided with vSphere. 

    VMware vSphere provides visibility into VMs and enables its users to carry out operations to manage VMs. This includes tasks such as:

    • Powering VMs on and off
    • Launching the VM console
    • Shutting down guest operating systems
    • Settings configurations
    • Taking system snapshots

    VMware vSphere Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using VMware vSphere include: 

    • Reduced costs: Since VMware applications are run on a server, it is not necessary to spend large amounts of your organization’s money on hardware, software, and infrastructure.
    • Increased productivity and customer satisfaction: VMware is able to operate multiple complex processes simultaneously. With all your applications being managed and run on the cloud, downtime, failures, and application errors are rare. VMware easily scales up and down to meet your computing needs. The high availability that VMware provides allows your IT staff to focus on other issues and keeps your customers satisfied with the service they receive.
    • Unlimited access to your VMs: VMware’s user-friendly cloud-based interface allows any employee to work from any location at any time.
    • Enhanced security: VMware’s security tools deliver full visibility into your entire system. This keeps your applications and data more secure, in any type of environment. VMware provides multiple protective tools including antiviruses and anti-malware, as well as backup and recovery services.

    VMware vSphere Features

    Below is a list of some of VMware vSphere’s key features:

    • Transferable virtual machine images: Export and import virtual machine images from your local environment. This gives users the ability to set up and configure their systems locally and only upload them to the server once everything is working properly. VM images can be moved back and forth between vendors, ensuring that your company is never tied up to a specific cloud vendor.
    • User-friendly interface: Using VMware’s intuitive console, you can easily create, manage, share, and deploy virtual machines.
    • API integration: VMware’s APIs support integration with third-party applications for data protection, multipathing, and disk array solutions.
    • Distributed power management: Automate efficiency by continuously optimizing server power consumption within each cluster.

    Reviews from Real Users

    VMware vSphere stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. A few major ones are its virtualization abilities, its flexibility and availability, and its user-friendly interface.

    Felix D., an Automation project administrator, DCS, I&E at Centennial Cayman Corp, writes, “The connectivity is fantastic, and many functions can run together in one server. If you need to scale, we can continue to add components or modules. It's a beautiful virtual solution that has many advantages over physical hardware, where you have to use devices and wiring to connect all your projects.”

    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.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider17%
    Healthcare Company10%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization48%
    Computer Software Company7%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Energy/Utilities Company10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Computer Software Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization25%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business55%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise30%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise55%
    Large Enterprise30%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise34%
    Large Enterprise46%
    Buyer's Guide
    Citrix Hypervisor vs. VMware vSphere
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Citrix Hypervisor vs. VMware vSphere and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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.

    We monitor all Server Virtualization Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.