How would you rate Citrix XenServer in comparison to these two?

XenServer is a bit of an odd one to me. We sometimes use it for Server Virtualisation, but we now primarily roll it out for Desktop Virtualisation (VDI) in which it does a very good job.

 

If it was a choice between current Gen Hyper-V and XenServer then I'd personally go for XenServer, but that's because I know it better than Hyper-V. I certainly don't think it's any worse than Hyper-V, but I'm not convinced it's objectively much better, either.

 

To say it has a few oddities would be an understatement, and the GUI is fairly limited meaning you very rapidly end up in the console whenever you want to do anything remotely exotic.

 

It's potentially less stable than Hyper-V, especially once you get into multi server (They call them "pools") deployments, but at the same time, it's also very rapid to deploy and fix so it's swings and roundabouts really. Also, this is purely anecdotal and we have may more XenServer customers than we do Hyper-V.

 

To be honest, the current generations (I'm excluding Hyper-V 2012 here) aren't a patch on VMWare VSphere and so if cost is lower down the priority list than most other things you almost certainly want VSphere. Other than that, take your pick based on cost/features/local expertise and accept the niggles!

 

That all said, I think VMWare need to watch their backs because everything else is getting better and VSphere is shockingly expensive still! I'm really looking forward to getting hands on with Server 2012 when I get off my summer projects.

:$ (heart)

Yeah, assuming you mean copy the VMDK's to the NAS - don't run them off it.

(bounce)

I did a demo with my VMWare rep. They tell me that it's very possible and they encourage people to run them off of something like this.

Yeah, that doesn't look too bad. No offence, but I was thinking consumer NAS rather than business.

 

Is it 10Gb?

2Gb, tbh.

There aren't any drives that come with it. I priced 10GB's for it.

But I have a question. Do you use anything like that for your VM's or a SAN? I can't spend a lot of money but I could build something like a NAS with a spare box and linux or something. What kind of interface does a SAN usually use? Should I keep the NAS on it's own vlan?

I do have another call set up with a service provider but I don't feel like being snowed by them because I don't know much about this kind of stuff.

I meant 10Gb network connectivity. No, I've never personally seen a NAS being used - it's always SAN or local storage in my world. I know it's possible in theory, but I'm still not convinced by performance.

 

The SAN's I've been involved in normally use Fiber Channel or iSCSI - iSCSI is by far the most popular because it's quick enough for most things, but doesn't need any extra infrastructure. You'd definitely want iSCSI on its own VLAN, though.

 

It's definitely possible to roll your own, but I wouldn't know where to start. You'd almost certainly be needing to run Linux, I can't imagine a Windows based box having the performance even if it's possible.

 

If you've only got one ESXi server (And no vSphere), then I'm not sure that a small SAN or expensive NAS is going to give you a huge amount of benefit. If you have vSphere and a couple of servers then I'd say you definitely want it for the benefits of live migration and all that jazz.

I'm about to get some brand new servers running Hyper-V on them, with a couple of Equallogic 10Gb SANs. Should be pretty nippy.

 

I'll let you know what it's like when it's all in. I have only mucked about with ESX3 briefly though, so I'm probably not much good at comparing Hyper-V to VMWare.

 

 

You might want to have a look at XEN Server. They offer an absolutely free edition (based on agreements of their take-over of the open source software). The free edition does not provide enterprise features like dynamic memory allocation, but the licensed version does (add-on product).

 

I have tested several virtualization platforms, but my fav is XEN. It's performance is incredible. Give it a try!

I think Xen is what Linode runs on, and Teh runs on Linode.

Whoa, it's inception for technology!

I'll give it a peek, thanks!

I have tried to install the open source XEN on a test machine, but I was not able to get all the drivers running. With the Citrix edition, everything comes highly maintained out of the box.

 

This was the solution which worked best for us, and we're operating three servers with up to 15 machines per server.

You know ESXi has a free edition, too, right?

 

And if you honestly think XenServer is an objectively better platform than VSphere then you're crazy! It's a pretty great product, but better? No chance!

Hi Dan - not sure he claimed that.

It was more a case of Xen was his favourite, it works for them, and there's a free edition to get a taste.

Can Xen server use the Citrix Receiver in the app store?

No, they're totally different products. Citrix Receiver is simply a client for connecting to XenApp / XenDesktop in an Remote Desktop esque way.

 

You have to use XenCenter to manage to your XenServer, in the same way as using the VSPhere Client to manage your VSphere ESXi servers.

 

As an aside, it's very important you refer to the Citrix product as XenServer, because Xen or Xen Server could easily be taken to mean 'pure' Xen, which it's based on. Although there are, of course, similarities, they're discrete products for nearly all intents and purposes.