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.
"Ability to move your virtual machines from one host to another."
"The ability to move a virtual machine while it is running is a big advantage."
"The onboarding process is pretty straightforward."
"The solution integrates well with other solutions, which makes it really strong as a primary solution to deploy."
"Citrix is easy to use and is stable."
"Citrix Hypervisor is simple to use."
"This solution allows the end users to clone, start, stop, or remotely control their VMs."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is very fast. It also works very well for physically small servers."
"Vmware vSphere is the benchmark of the visualization market."
"vMotion is one of the most useful features, which helps to provide both flexibility and High Availability. With new versions of vSphere and vCenter, it is still improving (e.g., vMotion across vCenter Servers and virtual switches)."
"I like the standard features."
"The web console is the most valuable feature for me. Because no matter what happens with the server, I can still get to it with the web console."
"The stability of the solution is excellent."
"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 most valuable features for me are a very easily scalable infrastructure. I can have a couple of hosts to do basic workloads. I can have a lot of hosts to do a lot of workloads. vSAN integrates my storage so I don't need an external storage SAN. I love having everything integrated in the same UI. The new HTML5 interface doesn't require any plugins anymore and it's super-fast."
"It is highly scalable. We can add new hardware and expand the infrastructure easily."
"The solution would benefit from faster technical support."
"I would like the possibility of updating the hypervisor by applying security patches."
"It needs to have a more robust backup solution."
"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."
"I think the technical support could be better."
"The solution needs better backup facilities that are available for virtual machines to create servers on."
"Live migration is something that can be improved."
"The self-service user portal needs to be more granular and be more customizable."
"Pricing is starting to get a little high-end."
"I would like them to move into having a containerized application to manage the vCenter."
"The integration with containers should be addressed."
"I would like to see the configuration simplified."
"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."
"It would be highly beneficial for VMware to collaborate with local hosts and partners in countries like those in Africa to establish specific pricing that would align with the economic conditions of countries in Africa, ensuring suitability and compatibility with our consumption capabilities."
"The integration capabilities of the solution have certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."
"There are some limitations with the solution regarding migrating."
Citrix Hypervisor is ranked 8th in Server Virtualization Software with 46 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 "Allows us to allocate CPU, memory, storage, and network resources across VMs and minimizes downtime in case of hardware failure or maintenance". 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, Oracle VM, VMware Workstation and Oracle VM VirtualBox. 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