Citrix Hypervisor Reviews

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.

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.

We migrated from VMware to XenCenter to cut costs.

This solution is more cost-effective and hardware-efficient with Citrix VDI.

The support for this solution is phenomenal.

The built-in networking features are a little limited.

Prior to this solution, we used VMware.

We use the product primarily for server virtualization.

It has allowed us to grow over time because, initially, it was free. We were able to use what would have been budgeted for licensing costs in other ways.

Simply the ability to virtualize and make better use of existing resources is the most valuable aspect of this solution.

It is a very good product, so there really isn't much that needs to be added. Maybe the speed could be improved. It might be nice if the licensing cost could be improved because it is a big jump when you reach the threshold.

A good addition might be consol management in Linux. Right now I have to start in Windows to manage the system. It is not my preference.

This solution is very stable.

The whole point of the product is to be scalable, so it has very good scalability.

I never had a reason to use technical support.

I changed the implementation from XenServer. The product we use now is not really XenServer but XCP-ng which is built on the XenServer open source. Because of the structure of the licensing through Citrix, we changed the product, although it is built on the same source.

The initial deployment of the product was easy. The entire deployment with testing took about one month before it was completed for production.

I did the implementation myself.

There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. In the beginning, because we had a small network, it was free. We have expanded to five physical servers so now we have to pay for all the servers. It is good for others to be aware that the product is only free to a point.

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate XenServer as an eight for the product. For the pricing, I would rate it a five.

We primarily use the solution for virtualization and for building other things on top of it. Mostly we sell the solution to other customers and offer them support.

The solution integrates well with other solutions, which makes it really strong as a primary solution to deploy.

The solution is too expensive and people are kind of moving away from Citrix. It's starting to become a problem. It is a primary reason that while we are rebuilding we're going to seek out open-source solutions.

The solution is stable.

The solution is highly scalable and can be highly integrated with other solutions, which makes it very good.

Technical support is good. I would rate them eight out of ten.

Sometimes there are difficulties when you look at the reseller model because you need to go through the reseller to get help, and often they are just salespeople. For us, in Botswana, resellers are typically in South Africa and they are more interested in sales than assistance.

These resellers are only interested in sales. When you are an assistant or a developer like we are, they can't really support you. They can only offer licenses to you. That is actually where the problem is. They have their sales quarters. If you don't meet their quarter they'll cut you off the next time and you have to reapply and go through their checks again, which is not a Citrix problem, but a partner weakness that should be re-considered.

The initial setup has a moderate level of difficulty. Someone with a good understanding of the technology will be okay, but if someone who is new to the solution may experience challenges. 

When you try to show clients Citrix, the price kind of scares them away. It's quite expensive.

We are rebuilding our whole news infrastructure. We stopped using the solution for some things, but we will use it once we are finished with what we are currently building.

We're using a hybrid deployment model. We're also a Citrix partner.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I really like the solution. It works well.

We primarily use the solution for deploying. Usually we're deploying infrastructure based on XenServer desktop solutions.

The solution is easy to deploy. It's very easy to understand problems and read logs.

The solution would benefit from faster technical support.

The solution should add session sharing in future releases. It would be helpful if, for example, you could switch a user from one terminal server to another terminal server without loosing the session and without the need to log off and then log on again. This way we can put in place some services, without asking the user to log out. We can just move users from one server to another and the user would not notice any interruption.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is extremely scalable.

We're not satisfied with technical support. It's very slow.

The solution is easy to deploy.

The solution is free to use.

We use the private cloud deployment model.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It depends on what an organization requires, but I would recommend the solution.

I primarily use the solution for virtualization. I have about five virtual servers on it.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is very fast. It also works very well for physically small servers.

The USB support for the virtual server needs improvement.

The solution is very stable. It works very well.

My environment is very small, so I don't have much experience with scaling the solution.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I handled the implementation myself.

We use the free version, not the commercial version of the solution.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I would recommend the solution. I was looking for a solution that works well on a small server, and this solution works very well for me.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is virtualization. 

The feature I find most valuable is its performance. It's a no "frills" solution. There aren't many tools and some may find that a little arcane, but I come from another visualization background. I like the console because you can do everything on the console, so you don't need any tools. 

This solution needs a block-level backup. We have backup solutions in place but they are pretty arcane. That is a niche, it is not filled with professional solutions. There are solutions that can do it - if you look at solutions for file system level backups, you will find many of them. But if you look for systems with block-level backup or block-level synchronization, you will see that the tools are pretty minor.

The solution is extremely stable. It's much more stable than VMware or any other tool that we've tested. One might get away with freeware solutions, but if you need support, I recommend using the commercial solution. 

It is easy to scale with this solution. I can scale up and scale down when I need to. And for memory and the VCPU's, it's even simpler because you can simply select that interface, and it will follow. Since I started using the 7.6 version, I can move virtual hosts around, so that's all working extremely well without any hurdles or hiccups. Our company has 600 employees and about 60% of them are using XenServer.

I think the technical support could be better because we have received support directly from the Dell server instead of from Citrix directly. It is difficult to get hold of support during office hours and sometimes will take a while to get the right person for the right answer. But apart from that, the quality of the answers and the support is very good.

The initial setup was very easy. It starts very easy and if you have special niche cases that are not provided, they are standard to install. You would, however, need to get yourself comfortable with the console, but if you have a Linux background, you will find that it is very easy. I did 90% of the installation myself, but we used third parties for special niche cases. We also needed support from Dell because we had some issues during startup with some drivers that were provided by Dell since we are mainly using Dell hardware.

My advice to others would be that there is no one golden bullet when choosing a virtualization platform. It depends on the careful planning of what kind of service you plan to provide to your users. Ask questions like: What is running on those systems? What platforms? What are your minimum demands? 

There's something else that's fairly important because the virtualization market is rapidly shifting towards a total overhaul. And efforts are being made on the Linux site to run armed and risk solutions in the data center. So I hope that XenServer will adapt to that too.

This solution has special niche cases where it doesn't work as you planned. But in general, I am very happy with the server. I will give it a rating of nine out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for Citrix worker resources.

The price is the solution's most valuable feature.

The manageability of the solution needs improvement. It's an extremely bad product to handle. 

The solution needs to offer better implementation of shared storage.

The solution is not stable.

The solution is scalable. 

I don't like the cluster functionality, but it's scalable. You can put a new service inside, and it works. The only thing is the shared storage, which does not have a good implementation. With LVM, it's a bad idea to use real partitioning. It's advisable instead to use a container file like Hyper-V or VMware.

Technical support is too slow. It takes too long. Especially in comparison with VMware. Their the support is much better.

In most cases the set up is straightforward. In special cases, especially for shared storage, it's not a great implementation experience.

We're using the on-premises deployment model.

I would advise others to only to use it with functionality where the high availability is available through other mechanisms, like Citrix, and not to use the features from the product itself.

I'd rate the solution four 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.

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.

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.

Our primary use case for this solution is for cloud automation.

This solution allows the end users to clone, start, stop, or remotely control their VMs.

The most valuable feature is the cost; it is a free product.

The self-service user portal needs to be more granular and be more customizable.

The stability of this solution is great, so far.

In terms of scalability, so far so good.

There are approximately two hundred users, with their roles being QA and development. I do expect that the usage will increase a little bit.

There is a paid option for this solution that comes with support, but with the free version that I am using, it is not supported. That is probably a weakness in most corporate environments, but we use it for QA and stuff of that nature.

Previously we were using vCenter from VMware. Our company was purchased and split in half, and I didn't know if we would be continuing the enterprise licensing with VMware so I had to find a free solution. 

The initial setup was straightforward.

It took about four weeks to deploy. We have a small environment.

I handled the deployment personally, and I am the person who maintains the solution for now.

Had I been using the paid version, at $6,000 for an annual license, I believe that it would have paid for itself already.

We use the free version, so there is no charge. To subscribe to the paid version with support, it is approximately $6,000 per year. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

I looked at VMware's vRealize Automation, but it was eliminated due to our budget constraints. 

I really like this solution, but it is not widely known. I'm really surprised that more people don't know about it. I find that it suits our needs pretty well.

Considering what I am getting for the cost I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. There are more powerful solutions out there, but they're very costly.

If I were paying for the support then I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use this primarily for core banking, automative industry, data applications, and more.

We find there are good central maintenance and management panels.

It needs improvement with the securit 

I think it provides good performance.

The scalability of the solution is good. We have less than 100 people currently using the solution. 

We have in-house IT tech support that helps us with solving tech issues.

The initial setup is very easy and we can do it quickly.

I advise customers to consider pricing and licensing. 

The pricing and licensing is so important. Customers do consider the price seriously. 

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.

Xen is an open source virtualization server widely used in IT. It provides simple and robust commands to manage Xen environment for managing virtual hosts.Backup and recovery of virtual hosts are simple. It can be managed remotely with XenCenter. It supports all client OS like windows, linux etc !!

It requires system with large number of CPUs and large number of memory to support guest operating systems. Not able to export virtual hosts in other virtualization softwares.

I have been using Xen for 4 servers now and still using it. 

Highly recommended and suited for administrators having sound knowledge of open source commands. !!

• Cost effective
• Performance
• Overall simplicity

Since XenServer was the chosen platform from the start of our virtualization implementation, the improvements have been significant. Such improvements include the overall reduction of physical hardware, more efficient use and allocation of hardware resources, recovery points, storage utilization (when combined with dedupe), functional delivery of role based servers, and overall server management.

• The community and Citrix would be wise to build more partnerships, in particular with backup/recovery vendors. XenServer seriously lacks options in the shrink wrap backup-solution field.
• Develop a web-based management interface. There are community developed interfaces, but none specifically supported.
• Simplify block-level storage management. Disk chains can get complex over time and require a high degree of patience to clean up, especially with pooled storage repositories.
• Test the guest tools more thoroughly!

7 years.

Basic deployment is very easy. Multi-pathing storage does require a more advanced level of switching knowledge, but there is no shortage of documentation and examples to help implement.

Like any solution, plan your storage and networking wisely.

XenServer hosts have never had stability issues. The guest tools have definitely had stability issues.

Never had issues with scalability. In fact, I even had good success with processor masking in order to extend some life in an older server that was performing well.

From a customer-service perspective, there really isn't much that can be said. I don't have Citrix calling me to discuss XenServer. All service is community driven.

Throughout my use of XenServer, I've opened about 3 cases with Citrix. Each time the engineer I worked with was very knowledgeable and always assisted in resolving my issue.

No other option was used. I tested Hyper-V and, at the time, MS did not have a good solution to live migration.

Setup was simple and quick. I was able to begin with local storage and move my virtual machines to network storage at my leisure without any issues or downtime.

We've used standard networking, iSCSI multi-pathing, and bonded NFS. All have worked well.

All in-house.

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.

The high availability facility.

Use of this solution has reduced our costs, and we have a collection of over three 42U server rack cabinets.

The web management provided by Citrix needs to be improved.

I have used XenServer since 2012.

We had some issues with the iSCSI multipath setup.

Some older versions of the Intel 550 chipset caused some instability with XenServer.

No issues yet.

It's good.

It's good.

We had a previous solution and changed because the solution lacked some features that we needed.

It was straightforward.

The whole setup was done in-house.

It's large enough that it is appreciated by management.

• VMWare
• Hyper-V

Just use the best solution for your own business.