Citrix XenServer Reviews

• 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.

Customer Service:

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.

Technical Support:

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.

Customer Service:

It's good.

Technical Support:

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.

Much cheaper than other major Hypervisors (VMware, Hyper-V). Easy to install and use at the beginning.

Hard to maintain system because Xen's management tool (XenCenter) isn't very useful. For example XenCenter does not have any orchestration features (as opposed to SCOM, SCCM, etc.. from MS). However Xen provides APIs to develop other tools. As a result, Xen is cheap but a good value.

XenServer have four different editions: Free, Advanced, Enterprise, Platinum. You can ask for free license at no cost but you have to renew it each year. The free edition lacks some features that are only available on the other three editions. We can easily access XenServer from XenCenter; we can even manage multiple XenServer from a single XenCenter.

XenCenter is not available on Mac OS X or Linux, so we can only manage XenServer(s) from Windows. XenServer also lack of web based administration interface. We have to install XenServer on a dedicated machine, we can’t even have XenServer dual boot with another OS because XenServer installation will wipe the whole drive before installation. The processor that we use has to support virtualization (Intel-VT or AMD-V).

Good alternative of VMware ESXi, you can use free version to try the product first and perhaps move to the paid version if you need support or you need features that is not available in the free version.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

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

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.

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.