Virtualization comparison & reviews

Summary
Rank
2nd 5th 4th
Score
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User Reviews
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Analysis expand by Roman Macek Gica Livada
The Virtualists
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General expand
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  • Fully Supported
  • Limitation
  • Not Supported
  • Information Only
Pros
  • + mature and feature-rich offering
  • + great ecosystem & support
  • + skills prevelant
  • + - Citrix Hypervisor (former XenServer) it is OpenSource based
  • + - It is highly optimized for XenApp and XenDesktop workloads
  • + - Leader in virtual delivery of 3D professional graphics
  • + OVM subscription includes license for Enterprise Manager
  • + Use OVM to control Oracle Licenses for better TCO
  • + Default choice for Oracle apps (support)
Cons
  • - needs clear strategy for public cloud future
  • - comprehensive capability but can become expensive
  • - NSX leading SDN solution but skills scarce
  • - - Less features in free edition. See https://tinyurl.com/yy2z5y6o
  • - - Niche product
  • - Skills - OVM not as widely known as Vmware
  • - Xen Based - Market is working more toward KVM
  Content  
  •  
Content Creator
THE VIRTUALIST
The VIRTUALIST (Gica Livada) and Enzo Raso (Citrix)
WhatMatrix
  Assessment  
  •  
Overview
vSphere 6.7 with Operations Management Enterprise Plus - Click Here For Overview
Citrix Hypervisor 8 Enterprise Edition includes features that are not available in the Standard Edition, focused on enterprise customers needs, as well as Citrix support:
- Live patching and automated updates
- Conversion manager for vSphere
- Dynamic Workload Balancing & Audit Reporting (WLB)
- Accelerate Citrix Provisioning Services performance

For Standard vs Enterprise edition, please check: https://tinyurl.com/yy2z5y6o
NEW
Oracle VM 3.3 with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control and OpenStack
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Maturity
Release Dates:
vSphere 6.7 : April 17th 2018
Citrix Hypervisor 8 Release date April 2019
Current Stable Release OVM 3.3: July 2nd 2014 - Initial Release Date - July 31st of 2008
  Pricing  
  •  
Virtualization
OM Ent+ :
$4,275/socket + S&S 1Y: $897 (B) or $1,068 (Prod)
Free or two commercial editions, pricing for Standard Edition is: $763 / socket, Premium: $1525/ socket - both including 1 year of software maintenance.
The Express Edition provides a reduced set of features and is not eligible for Citrix Support and Maintenance. Express Edition does not require a license. Hosts that are running the Express Edition of Citrix Hypervisor are labeled as “Unlicensed” in XenCenter.

Express Edition was called Free Edition in previous releases of Citrix Hypervisor. The name of the edition has changed to align with other Citrix products, but the features and capabilities provided by the edition have not changed.

Citrix Hypervisor uses the same licensing process as other Citrix products, and as such requires a valid license to be installed on a License Server.
Oracle VM Premier Limited for 2 Sockets Servers 1 Yr - $599.00; Oracle VM Premier for more than 2 Sockets Servers 1 Yr - $1,199.00;
  •  
Management
$5,835(Std) + $1,224(B) or $1,458 (P)
Free (XenCenter)
$0.00
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Bundle/Kit Pricing
yes
Yes
$0.00
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Guest OS Licensing
No
VM Mobility and HA expand
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  VM Mobility  
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Live Migration of VMs
Yes (vMotion)
Yes XenMotion
Yes - Live Migration
  •  
Migration Compatibility
Yes (EVC)
Yes (Heterogeneous Pools)
Yes
  •  
Maintenance Mode
Yes
Yes
Yes - Maintenance Mode
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Automated Live Migration
Yes (DRS) - CPU, Mem
Yes Workload Balancing
Yes
  •  
Power Management
Yes (DPM)
Yes Workload Balancing
Yes
  •  
Storage Migration
Yes (Live Storage vMotion)
Yes (Storage Live Migration)
Yes
  HA/DR  
  •  
Cluster Size
max 64 nodes / 8000 vm per cluster
64 hosts / resource pool
NEW
32 Hosts in Cluster/Pool
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Integrated HA (Restart vm)
Yes (VMware HA)
Yes
Yes - Clustered Pool
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Automatic VM Reset
Yes (VMware HA)
No
Yes
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VM Lockstep Protection
Yes (Fault Tolerance) 8 vCPUs. 128 GB RAM.
NEW
No
  •  
Application/Service HA
App HA
No
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Replication / Site Failover
Yes (vSphere Replication)
DR Orchestration (Vendor Add-On: VMware SRM)
Integrated Disaster Recovery
NEW
Yes
Management expand
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  General  
  •  
Central Management
Yes (vCenter Server Standard)
Yes (XenCenter)
Yes - OVM Manager & Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control
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Virtual and Physical
Limited (plug-ins)
Limited (plug-ins)
Yes - Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control
  •  
RBAC / AD-Integration
Yes (vCenter and ESXi hosts)
NEW
Yes (hosts/XenCenter)
Yes - Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control
  •  
Cross-Vendor Mgmt
vRealize Automation (Vendor Add-On)
No (native)
Yes (Vendor Add-On: CloudPlatform)
  •  
Browser Based Mgmt
Yes (vSphere Web Client, HTML5 Web Client)
Not directly with XenCenter but possible with XenOrchestra (Open Source)

More info: https://bit.ly/1gcmTYN
Yes - OVM Manager & Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control
  •  
Adv. Operation Management
Yes (VMware vRealize Operations)
Not included but available via Citrix Director
Yes - Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control
  Updates and Backup  
  •  
Hypervisor Upgrades
Yes (Update Manager)
The XenCenter released with XenServer 7.0 allows updates to be applied to all versions of XenServer (commercial and free)
XenServer 7.1 introduced Live patching
Yes
  •  
VM Patching
Limited (Update Manager)
Yes
Yes
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Live VM Snapshot
Yes
Yes
Yes - Hot Clones
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Backup Integration API
Yes (vStorage API Data Protection)
Yes
Yes
  •  
Integrated Backup
Yes (vSphere Data Protection) - Replication of backup data, granular backup and scheduling
No (Retired)
  Deployment  
  •  
Automated Host Deployments
Yes (Auto Deploy)
Yes, via UEFI boot
NEW
Yes
  •  
VM Templates
Yes (Content Library)
Yes
Yes
  •  
Tiered VM Templates
Yes (vApp/OVF)
vApp
Yes
  •  
Host Profiles
Yes (Host Profiles)
No
Yes
  •  
Storage Profiles
Yes (Storage Based Policy Management)
No
  Other  
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Resource Pools
Yes
No
  •  
P2V
Yes (vCenter Converter)
No (XenConvert: retired), V2V: yes
Yes
  •  
Self Service Portal
No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: vCloud Suite, vRealize Automation)
No (Web Self Service: retired)
Yes
  •  
Orchestration / Workflows
Yes (vRealize Orchestrator)
Yes (Workflow Studio)
Yes
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Security
Yes (ESXi Firewall, vShield Endpoint, VM Encryption)
NEW
Direct Inspect APIs and Basic (NetScaler - Fee-Based Add-On)
Yes
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Systems Management
vSphere’s REST API, PowerCLI, vSphere CLI, ESXCLI, Datacenter CLI
Yes (API / SDKs, CIM)
Yes
Network and Storage expand
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  Storage  
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Supported Storage
DAS, NFS, FC, iSCSI, FCoE (HW&SW), vFRC, SDDC
NEW
DAS, SAS, iSCSI, NAS, SMB, FC, FCoE, openFCoE
NEW
Yes
  •  
SAN Multipath
Yes (enhanced APD and PDL) PDL AutoRemove
Yes
NEW
Yes
  •  
Shared File System
Yes (VMFS v6)
Yes (SR)
Yes
  •  
Boot From SAN
Yes (FC, iSCSI, FCoE and SW FCoE)
Yes (iSCSI, FC, FCoE)
Yes
  •  
Boot from USB
Yes
No
Yes
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Virtual Disk Format
vmdk, raw disk (RDM)
vhd, raw disk (LUN)
Raw Images (*.img files)
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Max Disk Size
64TB
2TB (16TB with GFS2)
10 TB (Virtual Disk on OCFS2), Maximum supported on the Guest OS (Raw Disks)
  •  
Thin Disk Provisioning
Yes
Yes
Yes
  •  
NPIV Support
Yes (RDM only)
No
  •  
Linked Images
No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: vCloud Suite, vRealize Automation)
Yes - Clone on boot, clone, PVS, MCS
Yes
  •  
SW Storage Replication
Yes (vSphere Replication)
No
  •  
Caching
Yes (vSphere Flash Read Cache)
IntelliCache and in-memory read cache
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Virtual SAN
No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: vSAN 6.7)
No
  •  
Storage Integration (API)
Yes (VASA, VAAI and VAMP)
Integrated StorageLink (deprecated)
Yes
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Storage QoS
Yes (Storage IO Control )
Basic
  Networking  
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Advanced Network Switch
Yes (vDS)
Yes (Open vSwitch) - vSwitch Controller
Yes
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NIC Teaming
Yes (up to 32 NICs)
Yes
Yes
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VLAN
Yes
Yes
NEW
Yes
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PVLAN
Yes
No
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IPv6
Yes
Yes (guests only)
Yes
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I/O Pass-Through
Yes (SR-IOV and VMDirectPath)
SR-IOV
NEW
Yes
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Jumbo Frames
Yes
Yes
Yes
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Offload Support
Yes (TSO, NetQueue, iSCSI)
Yes (TSO)
Yes
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Network QOS
Yes (NetIOC)
Yes (outgoing)
  •  
Traffic Monitoring
yes (Port Mirroring)
Yes (Port Mirroring)
Yes
Hypervisor expand
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  General  
  •  
Hypervisor Details/Size
Virtual Hardware version 14
Citrix Hypervisor 8: Xen 4.11 -based
NEW
Xen Hypervisor - Bare Metal - Java Based Centralizaed Management Interface
  Host Config  
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Max Consolidation Ratio
1024 VMs
NEW
1000 VMs per host
Max Virtual CPU per Host - 900
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Max CPU / Host
768 physical
NEW
288 (logical)
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Max Cores per CPU
unlimited
unlimited
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Max Memory / Host
16TB
NEW
5TB
  VM Config  
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Max vCPU per VM
128 vCPU
32
128
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Max RAM per VM
6TB
1.5TB
2 TB
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Serial Ports
32 ports
No
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USB Support
Yes (USB 1.x, 2.x and 3.x) with max 20 USB devices per vm
Yes
  •  
Hot Add/Plug
Yes (CPU, Mem, Disk, NIC, PCIe SSD)
Yes (disk, NIC)
Yes
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Graphic Acceleration
Yes (NVIDIA vGPU)
Yes
NEW
  Memory  
  •  
Dynamic / Over-Commit
Yes (Memory Ballooning)
Yes (DMC)
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Memory Page Sharing
Yes (Transparent Page Sharing)
No
  •  
Large Pages
Yes
No
Yes
  •  
HW Memory Translation
Yes
Yes
Yes
  Interoperability  
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OVF Support
Yes
Yes, incl. vApp
Yes
  •  
HW Compatibility
Very Comprehensive (see link)
Improving
Yes
  •  
Guest OS Support
Very Comprehensive (see link)
Good
NEW
Yes
  •  
Container Support
Yes
Yes
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Scripting / APIs
Web Services API/SDK, CIM, Perl, .NET, Java SDKs, Client Plug-In API, vSphere Clip, vMA
Yes (SDK, API, PowerShell)
Yes
  •  
Cloud API
vCloud API
CloudStack APIs, support for AWS API
Yes
Extensions expand
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  Cloud  
  •  
Overview Cloud
VMware Cloud Foundation
CloudPlatform; OpenStack
Oracle Enterprise Manager is capable of providing IaaS, PaaS and SaaS
  Desktop Virtualization  
  •  
Overview VDI
VMware Horizon 7 (Vendor Add-On)
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
  1  
  •  
Virtual SAN
vSAN 6.7 (Vendor Add-On)
no
  2  
  •  
Application Management
App Volumes
Vendor Add-On: XenDesktop
Citrix Director
  3  
  •  
Security Add On
NSX (Vendor Add-On)
Vendor Add-Ons: NetScaler Gateway, App Firewall, CloudBridge
  4  
  •  
Workflow / Orchestration
vRealize Orchestrator
Workflow Studio (incl.)
Yes
  5  
  •  
Site Failover
Site Recovery Manager (Vendor Add-On)
Integrated Site Recovery (incl.)
Yes
  6  
  •  
Chargeback
vRealize Business (Vendor Add-On)
Vendor Add-On: CloudPortal Business Manager, CloudStack Usage Server (Fee-Based Add-Ons)
Yes
  7  
  •  
Network Extensions
NSX (Vendor Add-on)
NSX (Vendor Add-on)

Matrix Score

  •  
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  • Microsoft
  • Citrix
  • Oracle
  •  
  • 2 nd
  • 5 th
  • 4 th
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