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.
"This is a good product for virtualization and it is easy to use."
"The price is the solution's most valuable feature."
"Citrix Hypervisor is quick to deploy and easy to manage."
"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."
"Ability to move your virtual machines from one host to another."
"I find it very easy to manage and at a cost that small customers would never refuse (free)."
"The onboarding process is pretty straightforward."
"Citrix is easy to use and is stable."
"VMware vSphere has a lot of features that are valuable, such as multiple clusters, VM mobility, VDI, and virtual desktop."
"The solution has high availability."
"We don't have any downtime because it was built right."
"Performance; We have seen a performance boost because we have been able to more dynamically allocate either memory or processors."
"We have removed the need for backups and going to the office at three in the morning to change a server. I do everything during my business hours. It gave me my life back."
"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."
"being able to manage a lot of servers in one pane of glass makes things a lot simpler. Basically, a lot of things just happen in one area. You can roll things over, move things around more dynamically, without having to hit multiple systems."
"The performance of VMware vSphere is good."
"The self-service user portal needs to be more granular and be more customizable."
"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."
"The product could be faster and licensing options could be improved."
"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."
"You need a licensed account to look up technical support."
"The solution should be more flexible and allow for greater customization."
"It needs to have a more robust backup solution."
"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."
"It's inherently complex. Operating a large virtual infrastructure is not an easy task for anyone."
"A fully **automatic** and lightweight Virtual Center. Another time this has a huge improvement in last releases. However, a more automatic and simple deployment is required."
"I do not find it to be simple and efficient to manage. The tools, the interface to manage it, are a pain. In the latest version, they moved us to web-only, the Web Client and it's terrible. It's slow. It crashes. It's annoying. I used the Web Client in the older version and was happy. I would go back to the regular thick client but I don't have that option anymore, so I am always fighting it."
"There is room for improvement in Google Cloud. The reason thing there was, like, when I type something in the terminal and then immediately, I need to go to edit the certain like file for Node.js, for the server, or for Kubernetes. So I have to do it from the terminal to the editor."
"Given that I've been using version seven, it seems that some of the bugs I faced during that version have already been addressed in subsequent updates. Although I haven't personally tested them yet, it appears that these issues have been resolved. In version seven, there was a problem with the network interface not responding due to certain configurations not being properly filtered. However, in version eight, this requirement has been minimized, so the mentioned bug is less likely to occur. Instead of solely addressing these fixes in newer versions, it might be beneficial for them to consider applying these improvements to the older versions as well. This approach could prevent users from feeling compelled to upgrade to version eight solely to avoid encountering the issue, and instead provide updates for version seven users."
"The UI of VMware could use some improvements, especially in dark mode."
"The solution needs to improve its stability."
"The performance of the solution could be better and there could be an extra level of security."
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