Virtualization comparison & reviews

Summary
Rank
3rd 5th 3rd
Score
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Analysis expand ManageIQ Community
Gica Livada
ManageIQ Community
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General expand
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  • Fully Supported
  • Limitation
  • Not Supported
  • Information Only
Pros
  • + not specified
  • + - XenServer it is OpenSource based
  • + - It is highly optimized for XenApp and XenDesktop workloads
  • + - Leader in virtual delivery of 3D professional graphics
  • + pending
Cons
  • - not specified
  • - - Less features in free edition. See http://bit.ly/2ddQiVL
  • - - Niche product
  • - pending
  Content  
  •  
Content Creator
The VIRTUALIST and Enzo Raso (Citrix)
Content created by Virtualizationmatrix; (Contributors: Jon Benedict, Yaniv Dary, Raissa Tona, Larry W. Bailey)
  Assessment  
  •  
Overview
vSphere 6.0 Free Hypervisor - Click Here For Overview
NEW
XenServer 7.3 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: http://bit.ly/2ddQiVL
NEW
RHV 4.1 - Click Here For Details
  •  
Maturity
XenServer 7.3 Release date December 2017
RHV 4.1 released in April 2017
NEW
  Pricing  
  •  
Virtualization
Free
Open Source (free) or two commercial editions, pricing for Standard Edition is: Annual: $763 / socket, Perpetual: $1525/ socket - both including 1 year of software maintenance.
Included in hypervisor subscription
  •  
Management
vSphere Client: Free
Free (XenCenter)
Yes, combined RHEL and RHV offering 26% savings
  •  
Bundle/Kit Pricing
Yes
RHV: No included (RHEL: 4/unlimited)
  •  
Guest OS Licensing
No
Yes (RHV-M)
NEW
VM Mobility and HA expand
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  VM Mobility  
  •  
Live Migration of VMs
No
Yes XenMotion
Yes
  •  
Migration Compatibility
No
Yes (Heterogeneous Pools)
  •  
Maintenance Mode
No
Yes
Yes - Built-in (CPU\Memory) and plugable scheduler
  •  
Automated Live Migration
No
Yes Workload Balancing
Yes
  •  
Power Management
No
Yes Workload Balancing
Yes
  •  
Storage Migration
No
Yes (Storage XenMotion)
200 hosts/cluster
  HA/DR  
  •  
Cluster Size
No DRS/HA
16 hosts / resource pool
Yes
  •  
Integrated HA (Restart vm)
No
Yes
Yes (HA, WatchDog)
  •  
Automatic VM Reset
No
No
No
  •  
VM Lockstep Protection
No
No
No (native);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: Red Hat Cluster Suite)
  •  
Application/Service HA
No
No
No - See Details
  •  
Replication / Site Failover
No
Integrated Disaster Recovery (no storage array control)
Yes
Management expand
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  General  
  •  
Central Management
No
Yes (XenCenter)
Third-party plug-in framework
NEW
  •  
Virtual and Physical
No
Limited (plug-ins)
NEW
Yes
  •  
RBAC / AD-Integration
Yes (ESXi hosts only)
Yes (hosts/XenCenter)
No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: CloudForms)
  •  
Cross-Vendor Mgmt
No
No (native)
Yes (Vendor Add-On: CloudPlatform)
Yes (RHV-M, Power User Portal)
  •  
Browser Based Mgmt
No
Not directly with XenCenter but possible with XenOrchestra (Open Source)

More info: http://bit.ly/2m7FVIG
Yes (extended functionality with CloudForms - Fee-Based Add On)
  •  
Adv. Operation Management
No
No
Yes
NEW
  Updates and Backup  
  •  
Hypervisor Upgrades
No (CLI only)
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 (Red Hat Network)
  •  
VM Patching
No
Yes
Yes; Including RAM
  •  
Live VM Snapshot
Yes
Yes
Yes
  •  
Backup Integration API
No
Yes
NEW
No
  •  
Integrated Backup
No
No (Retired)
No (native);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: Satellite 6)
  Deployment  
  •  
Automated Host Deployments
No
No
Yes
  •  
VM Templates
No
Yes
No (native);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: CloudForms, Ansible)
  •  
Tiered VM Templates
No
vApp
Yes (limited native);
Advanced options with Vendor Add-On: Satellite
  •  
Host Profiles
No
No
No
  •  
Storage Profiles
No
No
Yes
  Other  
  •  
Resource Pools
Limited (hosts-level only)
No
V2V, P2V
  •  
P2V
Yes (Converter)
No (XenConvert: retired), V2V: yes
User Portal
  •  
Self Service Portal
No
No (Web Self Service: retired)
RHV supports the most common server and technical workstation OSs as well as PPC guests, current support includes:
For X86_64 hosts:
- Microsoft Windows 10, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows 7, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows 8, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows 8.1, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Tier 1, 64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Tier 1, 64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Tier 1, 64 bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Tier 1, 32\64 bit
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Tier 2, 32\64 bit
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, Tier 2, 32\64 bit
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, Tier 2, 32\64 bit

For PPC hosts:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Tier 1, LE\BE
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Tier 1, BE
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, Teir 2, LE
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4, Teir 2, BE
  •  
Orchestration / Workflows
No
Yes (Workflow Studio)
sVirt, SELinux, iptables, VLANs, Port Mirroring
  •  
Security
No
Direct Inspect APIs and Basic (NetScaler - Fee-Based Add-On)
Agent-based, CIM, SNMP
  •  
Systems Management
Yes (API / SDKs, CIM)
RHV-H or RHEL with KVM - details here
Network and Storage expand
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  Storage  
  •  
Supported Storage
DAS, SAS, iSCSI, NAS, SMB, FC, FCoE, openFCoE
Yes (FC, FCoE, iSCSI)
NEW
  •  
SAN Multipath
Yes (limited for SAS)
Yes
  •  
Shared File System
No
Yes (SR)
Yes
  •  
Boot From SAN
Yes (iSCSI, FC, FCoE)
Yes
  •  
Boot from USB
No
RAW, Qcow2
  •  
Virtual Disk Format
vhd, raw disk (LUN)
Default max virtual disk size is 8TB (but its configurable in RHV DB)
  •  
Max Disk Size
2TB
Yes
  •  
Thin Disk Provisioning
Yes (Limitations on block)
Yes (Limited)
NEW
  •  
NPIV Support
No
Yes
  •  
Linked Images
Yes - Clone on boot, clone, PVS, MCS
No (native);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: Red Hat Gluster Storage)
  •  
SW Storage Replication
No
FS-Cache
  •  
Caching
No
IntelliCache and in-memory read cache
Yes
  •  
Virtual SAN
No
No
Yes (Limited)
  •  
Storage Integration (API)
No
Integrated StorageLink (deprecated)
Yes (Quota, Storage I/O SLA)
  •  
Storage QoS
Yes (basic, no SIOC)
Basic
Various new enhancements + Neutron Integration (Tech Preview) - click for details
  Networking  
  •  
Advanced Network Switch
Yes (Open vSwitch) - vSwitch Controller
Yes
  •  
NIC Teaming
Yes (incl. LACP - New)
Yes
  •  
VLAN
Yes (limited for mgmt. and storage traffic)
NEW
Yes (via host hooks)
  •  
PVLAN
No
Guests fully, hypervisors partially
  •  
IPv6
Yes (guests only)
Yes
  •  
I/O Pass-Through
SR-IOV
Yes
  •  
Jumbo Frames
Yes
TOE
  •  
Offload Support
Yes (TSO)
Yes (vNIC Profile)
  •  
Network QOS
Yes (outgoing)
Yes (Port Mirroring)
  •  
Traffic Monitoring
Yes (Port Mirroring)
Yes (virtio), Mem Balloon optimization and error messages
Hypervisor expand
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  General  
  •  
Hypervisor Details/Size
XenServer 7.1: Xen 4.7 -based
No limit stated
  Host Config  
  •  
Max Consolidation Ratio
1000 VMs per host
x86: 288
PPC: 192
  •  
Max CPU / Host
288 (logical)
Unlimited
  •  
Max Cores per CPU
unlimited
x86: 12TB
PPC: 2TB
  •  
Max Memory / Host
5TB
240 vCPUs per VM
  VM Config  
  •  
Max vCPU per VM
32
4TB
  •  
Max RAM per VM
1.5TB
Yes
  •  
Serial Ports
No
Yes
  •  
USB Support
No (except mass storage)
Yes
  •  
Hot Add/Plug
Yes (disk, NIC)
Yes (RHV 4.2 full support)
  •  
Graphic Acceleration
Yes
NEW
DAS, iSCSI, NFS, GlusterFS, FC, POSIX;
Virtio SCSI support
  Memory  
  •  
Dynamic / Over-Commit
Yes (DMC)
Yes (KSM)
  •  
Memory Page Sharing
No
Yes
  •  
Large Pages
No
Yes
  •  
HW Memory Translation
Yes
Yes
  Interoperability  
  •  
OVF Support
Yes (only VA import)
Yes, incl. vApp
Comprehensive
  •  
HW Compatibility
Improving
Limited
  •  
Guest OS Support
Good
NEW
Yes (Limited);
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform)
  •  
Container Support
Yes
REST API, Python CLI, Hooks,
Python/Java/Ruby SDKs, Ansible
  •  
Scripting / APIs
=EH98
Yes (SDK, API, PowerShell)
REST API
  •  
Cloud API
CloudStack APIs, support for AWS API
RHCI: CloudForms, OpenStack, RHV; Satelite, OpenShift (Fee-Based Add-Ons)
Extensions expand
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  Cloud  
  •  
Overview Cloud
CloudPlatform; OpenStack
VDI Included in RHV; HTML5 support (Tech Preview)
  Desktop Virtualization  
  •  
Overview VDI
Citrix Desktop Virtualization (XenDesktop & XenApp 7.6 - NEW; ViaB; associated products)
Yes
  1  
  •  
Virtual SAN
No
no
3rd Party
  2  
  •  
Application Management
No
Vendor Add-On: XenDesktop
Citrix Director
sVirt & Security Partnerships
  3  
  •  
Security Add On
No
Vendor Add-Ons: NetScaler Gateway, App Firewall, CloudBridge
Ansible 2.3 oVirt modules
  4  
  •  
Workflow / Orchestration
No
Workflow Studio (incl.)
No - See Details
  5  
  •  
Site Failover
No
Integrated Site Recovery (incl.)
Vendor Add-On: CloudForms
  6  
  •  
Chargeback
No
Vendor Add-On: CloudPortal Business Manager, CloudStack Usage Server (Fee-Based Add-Ons)
Vendor Add-Ons: Load Balancer, High Performance
  7  
  •  
Network Extensions
No
NSX (Vendor Add-on)
NSX (Vendor Add-on)

Matrix Score

  •  
  •  
  • Red Hat
  • Citrix
  • Red Hat
  •  
  • 3 rd
  • 5 th
  • 3 rd
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