Citrix XenServer or VMware ESXI

As stated in a post back in December I am working on rebuilding my home network, I looking to go “Green” and cut down on some of the excess energy. So what better way to do that than to virtualized my network. However with virtualization come decisions such as XenServer or VMware. So the purpose of this post is to go through my thought pattern as to why I want to leave WMware and migrate to XenServer.

Just for the record I am still using both ESXi and ESX enterprise at work, and soon going to be upgrading to Vsphere, so from time to time I will still be posting information about VMware. Now using the above chart you can clearly see lots of good reasons why you should give XenServer a try and not be too quick to choose ESXi. I will highlight some reasons for wanting to go the Xen side of things.

Reason one: Hardware

I have an HP DL 380 G4, and a DL360 G3 that I am planning on using for this project, now by default this Server‘s architecture does not natively support VMware’s new Vsphere. So instead of installing ESXi 3.5 and being locked into a product with a limited life cycle I started thinking of an alternative virtual solution hence Citrix XenServer.

Reason two: Ease of management

As stated above “centralized multi-server management”, currently at work we have several ESXi installations across the network and managing them at times can be a pain. VMware offers a solution for there paid product called “Virtual Center” however the free product does not have this function. So instead you have to log into each machine individually to apply patches or make system changes. After a while even if you have six ESXi servers this can easily become a hassle.

Reason three: Innovation

XenServer was the first solution on the market to employ paravirtualization, which allows a guest OS to be fully aware that it is being run on virtualized hardware. This collaboration between the OS and the virtualization platform enables the development of a simpler, leaner hypervisor, as well as highly optimized performance.

Reason four: System Maintenance

The VMware VI 3.5 updates site lists hundreds of patches that have been issued since the product was launched in December 2007 and the automated update process is touted by VMware as a way of managing the application of these updates. By contrast, Citrix has issued just five hotfixes for XenServer 4.0 since its release in August 2007 and includes automated update features in XenCenter for applying system updates.

Reason five: Budgetary Concerns

If you are a small to mid size business that's now getting into virtualization your managment will want to first see how much return on invest (ROI) the can get on any solution before putting extra funding into it. With the enterprise level solution offered by Citrix you are able to do this at 3X less than the cost of using Vmware.

In conclusion I am not saying that VMware is any less superior than ZenServer  I am mainly tring to encourage others to not only lean towards the popular product in the marketplace but always try other options.

Reference links

http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/salesdocs/XS_vs_VMware_comparison.pdf