Citrix Hypervisor Reviews

Basic virtualization, we used it before we already had the license as we’re a Citrix shop, so it’s cost effective. If we were looking for another solution, we wouldn't go with it.

• Eease of maintenance
• Ability to move around regardless of hardware
• We're not tied to single piece of hardware, so if a piece of hardware fails we can quickly adjust

All partners will build their apps around Hyper-V and vSphere, so XenServer needs to gain more market share with better relationship with their partners so that they’re incentivized to improve XenServer. It’s not functionality that will drive me away, it’s that I can’t integrate as well as with other vendors.

We rarely have issues. I come across bugs once in a while, but that’s pretty rare.

It’s highly scalable, haven’t run into any hardware issues that would prevent growth. We don’t have any old, legacy hardware we’re tiring to fit in.

Very good, they get us to the right level technician pretty quickly so we’re not just walking through a checklist. We get someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Pretty straightforward.

We figured it out on our own. Good documentation and set of options is less to roll out.

Research the different partners you have to work with throughout your organization and determine how well they work with Hyper-V and vSphere as opposed to XenServer.

High-availability options in a cluster are good.

We were able to create a very inexpensive (nearly free) cluster of VM hosts.

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.

6 months

Clustered-host hardware needed to be identical, all-or-nothing permissions didn't work well for VM's owned by different teams.

Lots of errors, which may or may not have been important.  It was tough to assess the health of the cluster.

n/a - we used the free, open-source distribution of XenServer.

Used VMWare, before and after. VMWare was more expensive.

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).

in-house

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.

Citrix or third-party software would probably make it more flexible and powerful than the plain, FOSS XenServer components.

XenServer is my favorite virtualization product. After previewing Vmware, Xen, and Hyper-V, I found this to be the easiest. You don't have to know linux to use. I like that XenServer can import virtual machines from any of the other hypervisors. I use scheduled snapshots and archiving, to where I don't have to worry if my machines are backed up. XenMotion is a breeze and makes it extremely easy to upgrade or change out servers. I also like that you can have heterogeneous pools with XenServer Advanced or above.

You have to set limits on scheduled snapshots, otherwise it won't let you take more. I have a limit of 7 days, with daily snapshots. The free version is somewhat limited in features. It is best for testing or small organizations. Something that might be a con is that when all of your servers are virtualized, you may not need some of your IT staff.

I use this to host all of my servers and my virtual desktops. This has saved my organization a ton of money. Although there is a high initial cost, it has paid for itself in the long run. If you are planning on doing a VDI solution, I would recommend using the same company for virtualization. For XenDesktop, use XenServer; for Vmware VDI, use ESXI. To test the full features of XenServer, try out the open source equivalent- Xen Cloud Platform.

I use XenServer to migrate all the old servers of my clients. I think it is a robust, proven and free option.

I find it very easy to manage and at a cost that small customers would never refuse (free).

The most valuable feature is the possibility of creating virtual machine templates from a snapshot and vice versa. It saves me many hours of work.

I would like the possibility of updating the hypervisor by applying security patches. In the free version, it is a bit annoying.

I have been using this solution since 2011.

I use Citrix Hypervisor for virtualization.

The most valuable feature of this product is that its scripting can automate procedures. I have also had a very good experience with its storage.

I have been using this solution for almost ten years.

I had no problems with the initial setup.

The cost of this product is not high.

Citrix is an excellent tool, we don't have any issues or complaints about it. I would rate this solution as ten out of ten.

On-premises

The primary use case of this solution is to manage virtual servers under Citrix.

The deployment model we are using is on-premises.

What I like the most is the support of the GPU Graphics and the VM Live migration.

Network management needs improvement because it is not very stable.

In the next release, I would like to see more tools added, or included.

I have been using this solution for one year.

This solution is stable.

There are approximately three hundred users.

The technical support is very good.

Previously we used a different solution but this one is better.

The initial setup is simple and straightforward.

This solution is open source, it's free.

Version eight of this solution is complete.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

My primary use of the product is for the purpose of server virtualization. It is used for virtualizing our web servers.

It provides a free, easy means of virtualization which would otherwise be costly to implement.

I'm currently using the free version, so I'm limited as to what I find the most valuable in the broader set of product features. For me, just the ability to virtualize servers is the most valuable.

To improve the product, I would like to be able to use the high availability of XenServer but the free version does not have that feature. I would really like to have a different trial option so I could try out the broader set of available options even if it is for a limited time.

It's pretty complicated to set up the server order and that can be simplified in the product. If a server shuts down the order in which the virtual servers will come up should be something that I can designate easily. The order can make a difference in a successful startup.

I have been using the product for more than a year.

As far as stability, I haven't had a problem. I highly recommend the product and I think it deserves good feedback as to stability.

The scalability is good. I really like the cloning option as it makes scaling easy. I don't have a problem with enhancing my setup. I'm very satisfied with it. 

I never request any technical support for the product directly from the company so I can not speak to the product support directly. I found the community and the forum very helpful when I had questions. The people there are very helpful. It is easy to find a solution if I have any problems.

The setup for the product is pretty straightforward. I use it straight out of the box in the limited free version on two servers that allows me to configure virtualization. It's a pretty easy solution to install and use.

I installed the product myself. I did not require assistance.

It is nice to be able to have a product that is free to use. Although it is simple, it does what I need it to do. The version you pay for has more features. I know that I would like to use some of the features in the paid version, but I can not justify the cost at this time.

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate XenServer as an eight. There are some problems, but it is also not the full release version.

Some months ago, I used this solution to create some virtual machines. I could replicate some of these virtual machines, and clusterization, and some reports.

The online support material is great. Citrix has the more complete online material.

The product is more inclusive than other options, which is nice. 

It's not as complex as other options. It's easier to use.

The onboarding process is pretty straightforward. 

The product is a great option for enterprise-level organizations.

The solution offers a wide array of compatibility with, for example, some image files of other systems, and can be virtualized using another solution. The Citrix Hypervisor has a larger range of compatibility.

The solution is only in English. It would be ideal if it was in Portuguese. 

I've used the solution for a number of years. 

If you are an enterprise-level organization, this solution will fit your needs. It works well for large companies. 

I also work with Hyper-V.

The initial setup isn't too difficult. It's fairly simple and straightforward. A company shouldn't have any issues with it. 

We can implement this solution for our clients if they need us to.

I was not involved in the acquisition of the solution, so I do not have exact details about the pricing.

We are a public (government) company. Due to legislation, most of the time, we can't simply choose a vendor. If we need to acquire a contract solution, we make a technical study where the features are evaluated and the final specifications are always based on features, not on vendors, or manufacturers.

We are service providers.We are implementers and sometimes we do the plans of the implementation.

In this company, we mostly have on-premise solutions, such as hypervisors. For example, the Microsoft Hypervisors, Citrix Hypervisors, et cetera. Here in the company, we don't use exactly cloud solutions, or not entirely cloud. We use many hybrid solutions. We have a Citrix Orchestrator inside our infrastructure.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud