Overview
What is XenServer?
XenServer (formerly Citrix Hypervisor) is a virtualization management platform optimized for application, desktop and server virtualization infrastructures.
Citrix Hypervisor: Empowering Efficient Virtualization and Disaster Recovery.
Citrix Hypervisor Review
A Decent Choice
Virtualization is easy with Citrix
Citrix Hypervisor was built for Citrix VDI
XenServer and modern virtualization
XenServer is Awesome!
Open source hypervisor, free license and advanced features
XenServer: room for improvement
XenServer reviewed by an avid Citrix and VDI engineer
XenServer Vs ?
Popular Features
- Live virtual machine migration (11)9.090%
- Live virtual machine backup (10)8.080%
- Management console (11)5.050%
- Virtual machine automated provisioning (10)2.020%
Pricing
What is XenServer?
XenServer (formerly Citrix Hypervisor) is a virtualization management platform optimized for application, desktop and server virtualization infrastructures.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
What is Proxmox VE?
Proxmox Virtual Environment is an open source server virtualization management solution based on QEMU/KVM and LXC. Users can manage virtual machines, containers, highly available clusters, storage and networks via a web interface or CLI. Proxmox VE code is licensed under the GNU Affero General…
Features
Server Virtualization
Server virtualization allows multiple operating systems to be run completely independently on a single server
- 2Virtual machine automated provisioning(10) Ratings
Automation of virtual machine provisioning through use of vm templates
- 5Management console(11) Ratings
Management console for central administration of vm environment
- 8Live virtual machine backup(10) Ratings
Ability to backup vms without interrupting service
- 9Live virtual machine migration(11) Ratings
Downtime minimization by migrating live vms between hosts and across clusters
- 9Hypervisor-level security(10) Ratings
Hypervisor-level security including antivirus and anti-malware
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is XenServer?
XenServer Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
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Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(74)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Recommendations
Organizations have found XenServer to be a valuable alternative to VMWare ESXi, allowing them to consolidate their physical servers and manage their environment efficiently with XoA. Users have reported improved speed and delivery of IT services by utilizing individual servers for each department. Additionally, XenServer is widely used as a host for VDI infrastructure, enabling the creation and management of virtual desktop environments.
XenServer addresses various business problems, including server consolidation, flexibility and scalability, disaster recovery, and cost reduction. The scope of use cases for XenServer can range from small-scale deployments for individual departments or teams to large-scale enterprise deployments spanning multiple data centers. For example, the University of Sao Paulo and other public institutes in Brazil rely on XenServer as the principal hypervisor for their private cloud, offering infrastructure as a service to the academic community.
Citrix Hypervisor, another name for XenServer, is often used as the sole hypervisor in entire Citrix environments, reducing hardware expenses and providing virtualization for production servers. It allows organizations to leverage their hardware resources efficiently by running multiple virtual machines on each physical server, resulting in cost savings related to licensing, hardware, and power needs. Users appreciate the ease of use and straightforwardness when creating new VMs with XenServer.
In addition to these use cases, Citrix Hypervisor offers scalability and a combination of remote desktop services and web interface servers. However, it is important to note that implementing and managing this product require long-term vision, planning, and a competent team. Nonetheless, XenServer has proven beneficial for teaching virtualization classes and setting up workloads for clients encompassing IT labs, VDI environments, and server workloads.
Users frequently recommend Citrix Hypervisor as a reliable alternative to VMWare for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop. They find it well-suited for small and medium-scale deployments, making it a cost-effective choice. It is also recommended to thoroughly check compatibility with other programs before implementing Citrix Hypervisor to ensure seamless integration and avoid any potential glitches. Additionally, Citrix Hypervisor is praised for its ease of deployment and setup, particularly suitable for small businesses. Users also suggest considering Citrix Hypervisor for organizations with remote or mobile staff, as it enables convenient access to tools from home or on the go. Finally, Citrix XenServer is mentioned as a good choice for in-house use, contributing to reducing infrastructure costs.
Attribute Ratings
- 10Likelihood to Renew3 ratings
- 5.5Availability1 rating
- 6.4Performance1 rating
- 6.1Usability2 ratings
- 6.4Support Rating1 rating
- 2.7In-Person Training1 rating
- 7.3Implementation Rating1 rating
- 5.5Configurability1 rating
- 6.4Product Scalability1 rating
- 5.5Ease of integration1 rating
- 8.2Vendor pre-sale1 rating
- 8.2Vendor post-sale1 rating
Reviews
(1-11 of 11)- Host Virtual Desktops.
- Application Virtualization is much easier.
- Scalability & Flexibility.
- Resource pools are not reliable.
- No provision for automated desktop creation.
Citrix Hypervisor Review
- Citrix hypervisor does price very well for small organizations. It is free.
- Since this product is open source it does not have any type of vendor lockdown issues.
- Allows live migration of VM's so you can keep systems up and running when changes are needed to the hardware in the background.
- The GUI management tools are quite easy to learn.
- Has Snapshot capability which is a great way to protect against malware as well as do risk-free upgrades.
- Although part of this is free the free solution has limitations that make the purchase of the paid version a requirement for most medium and large enterprises.
- Support for USB devices is lacking vs. its competitors.
- Technical support is somewhat limited especially the free "Google browsing" type since the product is used much less vs. Hyper-V or VMWARE.
- In a related issue to tech support, finding local IT support who have used the product is also challenging.
- Networking/virtual networks are less stable than they should be.
A Decent Choice
- Creating VMS - virtualizing physical or already virtual images is a snap
- Configuration - in a smaller environment, configuration is simple and easy to understand
- Templates and Clones - the ability to create these on the fly make it great for a dev environment
- Support - if free is what you need, great support is not what you'll get, keep in mind if support is necessary
- Upgrades - the upgrade process is buggy and problematic at best
- Partner Support - if you're looking for a product with multiple parters rolled in, I'd look elsewhere
Virtualization is easy with Citrix
- Good scalability.
- The ease of setup.
- Very good integration with other tools.
- The support from the vendor is very good.
- The interface can be more user-friendly.
- Model the management of clustering.
- Use DDK to compile drivers.
Citrix Hypervisor was built for Citrix VDI
- The install is incredibly easy. Even version upgrades require minimal effort to accomplish.
- The dynamic storage capabilities are great. If a server runs low on disk space we can increase the drive space in minutes instead of waiting days for new drives to arrive and the time to physically shut down the server to add them.
- A lot of software vendors only support VMWare and Hyper-V as acceptable hypervisors for their products.
- It lacks the ability to truly upscale memory in a live environment.
XenServer and modern virtualization
- Resource Monitoring is a good and I am able to monitor my entire infrastructure whether I'm using my iPhone remotely or while on any company-issued laptop to ensure our services run at peak efficiency.
- CLI - the command line is not hard to use. It can take a little time to get used to the commands but once you have them down managing the environment from the GUI or CLI is pretty easy.
- Backups are very easy to start and manage with XenCenter or XoA. Keeping business DR scenarios achievable.
- Better support for USB devices (which is a weak point of most Hypervisors)
- More native iPhone/Android apps to monitor the environment
- Better reports for an insight of how healthy the environment is
XenServer is Awesome!
- Provides visibility of all the VM's and one can tell when any of the server's are offline.
- The functionality to re-boot a VM is easy and quick
- It is secure and can be accessed remotely.
- Disaster recovery is difficult to use
Open source hypervisor, free license and advanced features
- Free advanced resources: Live migration, live storage migration, snapshots, open switch/vxlan. Others hypervisors offer the same but are paid.
- It is fully compatible with CloudStack and OpenStack.
- Supports paravirtualization (PVM) and hardware virtual machines (HVM).
- It is open-source and easy to troubleshoot.
- The snapshots management still presents problems, especially in environments with several virtual machines.
- The virtual memory management is still weak if compared with other hypervisors.
- There isn't a central server for the management of physical hosts. XenCenter is a client that is not good because it demands so much memory and CPU to execute simple tasks in environments with several VMs.
XenServer: room for improvement
- Create virtual machine
- Xenmotion
- Config/installation of XenServer
- Lacks management tool equivalent to vCenter server. XenCenter is a client-side app only.
- Lack official support for work load balancing (the support has been dropped)
XenServer reviewed by an avid Citrix and VDI engineer
- Manages upgrades to the pool of hypervisor hosts with relative ease through a console (if licensed).
- Makes it easy to create machine templates and clones and move them around within the pool of hosts.
- Handles failures reasonably well through the use of the pool database copied on each host
- Adding or presenting additional storage to the host can often be a task that is far more involved than competitive products.
- The product can require reboots more frequently than competitors due to the DOM kernel getting "hung up".
- Sometimes when a virtual machine is deleted it still leaves behind orphaned vdisks.
- Recovering from the loss of a host can sometimes cause virtual machines to require lengthy command prompt scripting to fix so they can be powered back on from another host.
The product is less well suited for large enterprise data centers. However, new versions are bringing features to allow the hypervisor to contend. Complex virtual networking environments may not be well suited for XenServer.
XenServer Vs ?
- Low cost. Support is much cheaper than the alternatives.
- Much simpler to implement and manage than other hypervisors.
- Good performance on all the VMs.
- Front line support form off shore has been challenging lately. Need a better escalation path for issues.
- Upgrades can be difficult at times. Not always super smooth.