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Differences between Citrix XenServer and Vmware vSphere
Introduction
Citrix's XenServer and VMware's vSphere are server virtualization platforms. Server virtualization is the process of partitioning a physical server into multiple unique and isolated virtual servers. Every virtual server can independently run its own operating system.
To hide server resources from server users, server virtualization is utilized. This includes different OSs, CPUs, Processors, etc. The idea of server virtualization is frequently used in IT infrastructure to reduce costs by making better use of already available resources.
What is Citrix XenServer?
XenServer is an open-sourced product from Citrix. It's a platform for bare metal (type-1 hypervisor) server virtualization. Which can efficiently control integrated operating systems, networking configurations, and workloads. Citrix XenServer enables the creation and management of virtualized server infrastructure.
What is VMware vSphere?
VMware vSphere is also a type-1 hypervisor, a set of server virtualization products that includes virtualization, management, and interface layers for different virtual machines. It consists of vCenter Server, vCompute, vStorage, vNetwork, and other infrastructure and applications services.
As we know, both are server virtualization platforms; the question arises: Which one is better? Let's see the difference between them in detail.
Differences between Citrix's XenServer and VMware's vSphere
The following table highlights the major differences between the Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere.
| Basis of Different | Citrix Xenserver | VMware vSphere |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Citrix technology developed it | It is developed by VMware Inc. |
| Use Cases | Personal users and small to medium-sized businesses use it. | Generally, it is used by small and medium enterprises. |
| Supported Host Operating System | It supports almost every host operating system like Red Hat Linux, Linux ES, and Windows series consisting of Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, 2003, and XP. | It only supports MS-DOS and free BSD(an operating system developed by Berkeley software distributions). |
| Supported Guest Operating System | Citrix's XenServer supports most of the Windows operating systems and Linux OS. | VMware vSphere supports all windows, Linux, and UNIX operating systems. MS-DOS, Sun Java Desktop System, and Solaris x86 are the operating systems that are only supported in vSphere. |
| Host Server Management | With the ability to establish and manage a virtual infrastructure via the XenCenter management panel, XenServer is enterprise-ready, cloud-proven virtualization technology. System admins can all manage XenServer from a single location. | VMware has developed the management kernel for vSphere from scratch. It doesn't make use of POSIX, Linux, or UNIX. Users can operate in a shell environment thanks to the BusyBox environment, which VMware's server management system uses. |
| Swap Supports | Citrix Xenserver supports almost all swap mediums, including FCoE, SSD, USB, SATA, NFS, and iSCSI. | VMware only supports FCoE(Fibre channel over ethernet) and SSD for swap |
| Licensing | Citrix's XenServer is an open source and does not need a license to run. However, it offers some standard and enterprise licenses. | VMware vSphere needs a license to be used per processor. |
| Pricing | Citrix's XenServer is open source, so it is freely available. However, licensed versions need to be purchased. | VMware vSphere requires a proprietary license, so you have to purchase it. vSphere costs an average of $995 per year for standard editions, and the enterprise edition costs around $3995. |
| Technical Support | Citrix's XenServer provides technical support through blogs, emails, brochures, and manuals. | For technical support, VMware has a help desk and remote training options. |
| Full Virtualization | It is not possible in Citrix's XenServer. | It is possible in VMware vSphere. |
| Security | Citrix uses the Netscaler gateway for application access. | VMware uses windows server DMZ(Demilitarized zone) for user access. |
| Virtualization Management | It supports configuration mapping, asset management, and thin provisioning for virtualization management. | It supports dynamic resource allocation, fail-over, live migration, and thin provisioning for virtualization management. |
| Host Server Limits | It has 75 virtual machines, 1024 GB RAM, and 512 virtual disks. It offers 160 logical CPUs. Citrix Xenserver doesn't support virtual CPUs. | It has 120 virtual machines, 2048 virtual disks, and 2048 GB RAM. It offers 160 logical CPUs. VMware has 2048 virtual CPUs per host. |
| Virtual Machine Limits | Citrix provides 1024 GB per virtual machine. It offers a virtual disk of 2000 GB. Citrix provides 16 virtual machine CPUs. Citrix's XenServer provides 7 Network interface cards and 16 virtual disks. | VMware provides 1024 GB per virtual machine. It offers a virtual disk of 2000 GB. VMware gives 32 CPUs per virtual machine. 10 virtual NICs and 62 disks are provided by VMware vSphere for each device. |
Conclusion
After seeing the difference between Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere from different points of view, we can conclude that initially, you should start with Citrix XenServer as it is free and offers more flexibility in terms of setup. Once your organization grows and you need high virtualization and computing power, you can switch to VMware as it has more logical CPUs, virtual CPUs, NICs, and RAM.
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