Network Engineer at a retailer with 51-200 employees
Highly recommended for virtualization, as it deals effectively with data backup, data recovery, and data storage.
What is most valuable?
• Simple and highly optimized performance
• Distinctive storage integration characteristic, through which the administrator directly leverages characteristics of industry’s most important arrays.
• XenServer backup and recovery pursues an agent based strategy. Using this, the client can gain an application level of understanding.
• This server utilizes sophisticated WLB, which confines Central Processing Units, memory, disk Input/output, and network Input/output data. It also gives two optimization modes.
• Presents an exclusive characteristic of provisioning services, which offer streamlined supervision and considerable storage saving.
• It is examined and controlled by the XenCenter which may be installed on one or more windows personal computers or servers, which means there is no load on the XenServer host.
• Provides an excellent free virtualization suite compared to other servers and has top performance for Windows and Linux OS.
What needs improvement?
• Bigger footprint than VMware, along with dependence on Linux in Dom.
• There are only some noteworthy areas. Also, it requires or depends in some cases, added characteristics on third party solutions.
What other advice do I have?
Selecting any server virtualization solution, more often than not, relies on the client’s particular needs and on hand development tools & communication. XenServer offers some free, but limited solutions like the licensing, hardware, management applications, and services and characteristics, but support has a high price if the full function version is required. In the case of the free version, XenServer offers an excellent virtualization solution, more so than other servers.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Solution Architect, IT Consultant at Merdasco - Rayan Merdas Data Prosseccing
It is a good solution for central maintenance and management panels.
Pros and Cons
- "We find there are good central maintenance and central management panels."
- "It needs improvement with the security features."
What is our primary use case?
We use this primarily for core banking, automative industry, data applications, and more.
What is most valuable?
We find there are good central maintenance and management panels.
What needs improvement?
It needs improvement with the securit
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I think it provides good performance.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of the solution is good. We have less than 100 people currently using the solution.
How is customer service and technical support?
We have in-house IT tech support that helps us with solving tech issues.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very easy and we can do it quickly.
What about the implementation team?
I advise customers to consider pricing and licensing.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing and licensing is so important. Customers do consider the price seriously.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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April 2024
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Head of Data Center at a tech company with 51-200 employees
XenServer Free Virtualization Platform is one of the most full-featured free hypervisors available.
Valuable Features:
XenServer Free Virtualization Platform is one of the most full-featured free systems available. It's main advantage over the free VMware ESXi hypervisor is that the management applications is Windows-based and free for download. This for me is the main reason why we have adopted it and in production use for the last three (3) years.Overall, XenServer Free edition is easy to install and configure. It's dialogues are straight-forward and the Windows-based management application interface is also very effective. It gets the job done in a visual way and is really a great help for novice users of hypervisor systems.
Room for Improvement:
- New versions removed the option to automatically start a virtual machine on power-up.
- Host OS consumes more memory than competing products.
- No high-availability and clustering options I have been using the free XenServer product for the past three (3) years and I'm very satisfied with it.
Other Advice:
The product is free to download and use. It's also very easy to install and configure. The one good thing about this free and open source product is its very good management software. Other competing products only offer web-based management with limited features, unlike the feature set that XenCenter's management software has to offer.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
I want to install multiple similar Xen vms. I want to install only one VM and rest should be replica of first way. Could you please advise what is the best way to do that.
System Engineer & IT Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
A solution that offers good compatibility but requires more flexibility and better storage
Pros and Cons
- "The compatibility of the solution is its most valuable feature. It's compatible on almost every cloud these days."
- "The solution should be more flexible and allow for greater customization."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for infrastructure. It is like a DNS active directory.
What is most valuable?
The compatibility of the solution is its most valuable feature. It's compatible on almost every cloud these days.
What needs improvement?
The performance, storage capabilities and network are all aspects of the solution that needs improvement.
The solution should be more flexible and allow for greater customization.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for six or seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is pretty stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have about 50-100 users right now and it works well for us.
How are customer service and technical support?
Generally, I do not use the solution's technical support, but I haven't heard very good things from those that have.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward. It wasn't complex. It was very easy.
What other advice do I have?
We're using the on-premises deployment model.
I'd generally recommend that if someone is considering using this solution that they look into other options first.
I'd rate the solution six out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Data Center Expert at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Xenserver - Opensource virtualization platform, definitely worth testing and exploring
Valuable Features:
The free software includes the advanced features, like migration of virtual machines from one host to another without interrupting the services, and active directory integration.
Xen hypervisor is open source.
Xen hypervisor is installed on bare metal and provides high performance.
Real time performance monitoring
Hot swappable disks and NICs
Unlimited Virtual machines, Memory
Management Console
Virtual Machine template
Room for Improvement:
Xenservers need a 64 bit system with IntelVT or AMD V technology for windows guests.
Management console only supports Windows
Windows guests are well supported, but Linux guests have limited support.
Its list of supported Linux guests is quite small.
Other Advice:
Xenserver provides numerous features like, Xenmotion - live migration of virtual machines, real time performance monitoring, high performance using bare metal installation, and it's all absolutely free. It provides unlimited virtualization . Xenserver has a unique workload balancing technique which captures CPU, memory, network, and disk data. It may lack certain features, but it can satisfy many environments. In my opinion, Xenserver provides better features for free, making it the best for home, lab, and research purposes.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
What is best way to scale Xen VM machines? I have idea about creating templates in vmware. Is there similar way for Xen server too?
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Free version only supports one guest machine on the host. So, you probably have to purchase licenses if you really want to use Xen features.