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Citrix XenServer vs Oracle VM vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.3
Citrix XenServer is praised for reducing costs and enhancing efficiency through virtualization, offering stability and effective management features.
Sentiment score
7.7
The ROI varies, with high initial costs; however, cost-effectiveness and ease of use are appreciated despite differing opinions.
Sentiment score
7.1
VMware vSphere increases ROI by reducing server needs, costs, and deployment time, improving efficiency and hardware utilization.
My clients generally maintain their Citrix infrastructure without shifting, suggesting stability and reliable operation as Citrix XenServer is fully established.
We can say 10% is the approximate amount of savings because most of the things are automated and streamlined, so the manual work is eliminated in most cases.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
3.9
Citrix XenServer support ranges in effectiveness, with concerns about response speed and access, often relying on community channels.
Sentiment score
8.0
Oracle VM support improved over time, with mixed reviews on speed and expertise, but helpful resources for self-resolution.
Sentiment score
6.8
VMware vSphere support is efficient and knowledgeable, though delays occur for low-priority issues; community forums provide additional help.
With valid licenses, we can access hotfixes, service packs, knowledge base, self-help tools, diagnostics, downloads, live chat, and phone support.
They do not provide adequate support for midsize businesses.
There appear to be very few engineers at Citrix who understand the problems.
The response time and quality of support could be improved.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
Recently, support has been less friendly and slower, especially after the company was acquired by Broadcom.
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Citrix XenServer is highly scalable, easily integrates new hosts, and effectively manages virtualization with minor disk management concerns.
Sentiment score
7.3
Oracle VM efficiently scales resources across environments, providing flexibility and seamless integration, despite minor configuration challenges.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere is praised for its scalable architecture, allowing efficient expansion with minimal downtime, despite potential hardware and licensing issues.
Familiarity with Linux can enhance its performance and usability.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
VMware vSphere is highly scalable in terms of the number of users and the number of servers it can handle.
It is a highly scalable solution.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Citrix XenServer is stable and reliable, praised for minimal issues, good support, and consistent updates by users.
Sentiment score
7.5
Oracle VM is praised for stability and performance, despite initial bugs, with improvements in latest versions on certified hardware.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware vSphere is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and strong performance, widely regarded as a robust platform.
I haven't had any significant issues with Citrix XenServer installations over the last 10-15 years.
Not every upgrade goes smoothly, and after an upgrade, it sometimes stops working.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
While they are generally stable, if outages occur, they tend to be due to brands like HP or Dell, not VMware vSphere itself.
I would rate the stability of VMware vSphere as eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Citrix XenServer needs improved backup, storage, Linux support, UI, multi-language, third-party integration, and lower licensing for better accessibility.
Oracle VM users seek improvements in UI, integration, documentation, and features like drag-and-drop, backup, and monitoring tools.
VMware vSphere's cost, stability, integration, and usability issues lead organizations to consider alternatives and seek improved solutions.
Although the product is technically competitive, it is not widely known or used due to poor marketing.
Citrix needs to improve the hypervisor, specifically in security and performance.
We can implement high availability and live migration with pools, along with security and backup to enable role-based access control for safer management.
If I have limited systems and there is maintenance on the hardware, the Oracle systems are impacted.
Not every upgrade goes smoothly, and after an upgrade, it sometimes stops working.
Oracle VM provides automation capabilities in the new version.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
 

Setup Cost

Citrix XenServer offers cost-effective licensing with strong support, making it a popular low-cost alternative to VMware.
Oracle VM is cost-effective with included support and licensing, benefiting enterprise users, especially with Oracle hardware.
VMware vSphere is reliable, but its high pricing and complex licensing can challenge budget-conscious enterprises compared to competitors.
It is cheaper compared to its competitors.
Organizations save substantial money because competing solutions, such as VMware, cost double or triple.
The pricing and licensing policy of Citrix XenServer is not transparent and quite confusing.
Oracle VM is not a very expensive solution.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
The solution is too expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Citrix XenServer is a secure, cost-effective virtualization platform offering user-friendly, efficient resource management with robust features and scalability.
Oracle VM offers scalable, secure, open-source virtualization with extensive automation, cost savings, and enhanced compatibility with Oracle databases.
VMware vSphere provides efficient virtualization with high availability, scalability, and robust performance, enhancing agility and minimizing downtime.
The most valuable feature is transferring and sharing applications that allow users to move files between devices, including smartphones, tablets, and computers without needing USB cables, internet connections, or data usage.
It provides secure access to applications and resources, which is crucial for us and our clients.
It is user-friendly and easy to deploy, making it an attractive option.
If there is an issue with the operating system running on top of it, there's no primary and secondary domain, rather segregated I/Os, disks, memory, everything assigned to a logical domain.
It is easy to copy or clone one Oracle workstation to another.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
The tool is highly available, which is crucial for implementing critical applications requiring 24/7 availability.
The high availability feature is significant.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Citrix XenServer is 4.8%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle VM is 7.0%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 16.5%, down from 19.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware vSphere16.5%
Oracle VM7.0%
Citrix XenServer4.8%
Other71.7%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Jörg Köhler - PeerSpot reviewer
Consulting benefits from robust consulting while also recognizing the need for improved disk management
When it comes to optimization, that's one of the weaker points of Citrix XenServer, especially regarding disk management, which is somewhat clumsy. Backup-related issues and disk management should be improved. Especially concerning backup, as discussions with Veeam engineers about Citrix XenServer backup strategy indicate there might not be a solution from Veeam soon. License optimization is not such a significant problem, but licenses are quite complicated. Vendors constantly invent new license models, making it difficult to order the correct licenses needed. There is not a big difference between Citrix and VMware products because Citrix can implement Windows and Linux anyway.
Nitin Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience enhanced performance and support with reliable server consolidation
We are working with Oracle VM and Oracle OLVM We have used both Oracle VM and Oracle OLVM. It has been four or five years since we started using these solutions. Both products are from Oracle. Oracle VM provides automation capabilities in the new version. We have been using this solution for…
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
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Comparison Review

VL
Jan 13, 2015
vSphere vs. RHEV vs. Hyper-V vs. XenServer
We have used the following functions: 1. Hypervisor: to ensure that the virtual server provide web and email services to the company, thus providing a stable operation a with single sign-on integration of an AD server and vCenter. 2. Network and Storage: centralized data server…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise37
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business173
Midsize Enterprise137
Large Enterprise256
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Citrix Hypervisor?
The core function enables multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server. This maximizes hardware utili...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix Hypervisor?
Licensing with Citrix XenServer is very cost-effective. Organizations save substantial money because competing soluti...
What needs improvement with Citrix Hypervisor?
I would say I would need a self-service portal as an additional feature to see in the future to make it even better.
Which is better - Oracle VM or KVM?
I would prefer if KVM was easier to scale and not so limited. Overall the product has been helpful. It is easy to use...
Which is better - Oracle VM or VMware VSphere?
Oracle VM seems to me to be kind of outdated. Nevertheless, it is fairly straightforward to use and maintain. The sol...
What do you like most about Oracle VM?
If you want to access the VM from anywhere over the Internet, you put it in a public subnet. So, VMs are linked to th...
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platfor...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux...
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Hypervisor
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

U.S. Army Shared Services Center, SoftLayer, Educational Services of America, Independent Bank, and SK Telecom.
Ambulance Victoria, Australian Finance Group (AFG), Avnet Technology Solutions, CERN, cloudKleyer, Danish Tax Authority (SKAT), Data Intensity, Dubai World, Engineers Australia, Enkitec, Groupe FLO, Guerra S.A. Implemento, s Rodovišrios, Interactive One, IT Convergence, Jesta Digital, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, KT, Kyoto Prefecture, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory / National Ignition Facility, Multinet Pakistan, National Australia Bank (NAB), Navis LLC, Overhead Door, Overstock.com, Paragon Data, Parks Victoria, Pella, Sunway Shared Services, St. Louis Metro, Terminales Ro de la Plata S.A., University of Massachusetts, Versace,
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Proxmox, VMware, Microsoft and others in Server Virtualization Software. Updated: September 2025.
868,229 professionals have used our research since 2012.