High-availability options in a cluster are good.
Citrix Hypervisor Review
Lots of good features, lots of limitations
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
We were able to create a very inexpensive (nearly free) cluster of VM hosts.
What needs improvement?
Permissions granularity was very limited - we could not assign permissions on anything smaller than the entire cluster. Support for OS'es without paravirtualization-friendly device drivers was very limited - couldn't run some versions of Linux.
For how long have I used the solution?
6 months
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Clustered-host hardware needed to be identical, all-or-nothing permissions didn't work well for VM's owned by different teams.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Lots of errors, which may or may not have been important. It was tough to assess the health of the cluster.
How are customer service and technical support?
n/a - we used the free, open-source distribution of XenServer.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Used VMWare, before and after. VMWare was more expensive.
How was the initial setup?
Initial software setup of XenServer is very simple, but the hardware setup is more complex. Switching and shared-storage infrastructure needed to be mapped out in advance (which is true for any VM-host-cluster environment).
What about the implementation team?
in-house
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Also tried oVirt, the FOSS project, similar to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. This had some very promising features, but was difficult to implement, and had some hardware and OS compatibility issues when running on CentOS.
What other advice do I have?
Citrix or third-party software would probably make it more flexible and powerful than the plain, FOSS XenServer components.
Which version of this solution are you currently using?
6.1
**Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Last updated: Apr 23 2016
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2 Comments
it_user4401 (Developer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees)Vendor
You are right, XenServer has lots of good features, but lots of limitations. Related to limitations, do you know how many virtual processors can XenServer allocate to a virtual machine?
it_user3039 (Senior Systems Engineer at a cloud provider with 51-200 employees)Vendor
For XenServer 6.2, it looks like the limit is 16 vcpu's - see http://support.citrix.com/servlet/KbServlet/download/34966-102-704363/CTX137837_XenServer%206_2_0_Configuration%20Limits.pdf
Author
it_user3039
Senior Systems Engineer at a cloud provider with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Twitter davidcsloane
Highlights
This solution allows the end users to clone, start, stop, or remotely control their VMs.
I find it very easy to manage and at a cost that small customers would never refuse (free).
This is a dependable solution for virtualization with a good community for product support.
The price is the solution's most valuable feature.
The compatibility of the solution is its most valuable feature. It's compatible on almost every cloud these days.
The ability to move a virtual machine while it is running is a big advantage.
The feature I find most valuable, is its performance
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