Citrix DaaS vs. Eco4Cloud Workload Consolidation

DaaS is ideal in large-scale environments that require centralized, secure management. Remote workforces at large organizations. Highly regulated industries like finance. It allows for easy security and monitoring over one aspect instead of multiple remote machines. DaaS is not ideal for organizations with small budgets due to the pricing and organizations with lousy network connectivity. This would make the end-user experience terrible.

Incentivized

Eco4Cloud is well suited in VMware farms that have standard VM deployments, especially with small VMs, with nothing blocking vMotion and hardware fully compatible with IPMI 2.0 (minimum). It doesn't work well if many VMs are nodes in a Microsoft cluster because they would be unmovable and therefore their host would never be put in stand-by mode. If every host in the cluster has at least one guest VM that is a node of a Microsoft cluster, no host in the cluster will ever be put in stand-by mode.

• All Management resources can now be installed on a single server. Reducing the overhead required to maintain a citrix environment.
• Granularity of the Delivery groups allow you to define allowing a remote user to connect to a random XenDesktop VM or individually assigning VMs to users.
• HDX RealTime Optimization Pack has stabilized some of the issues of utilizing all of the features of Skype for Business in a ZenDesktop VM.

Incentivized

• It consolidates workloads in VMware clusters using an algorithm that seems to work better than VMware DRS. It keeps headroom for workload peaks and to withstand the number of host failures set for the cluster in vCenter.
• If the workload is very variable, Eco4Cloud will not continuously turn a host on and off but it will settle to keep the host running. It sort of "rightsizes" the cluster keeping only the right number of hosts running. This is another main difference when comparing Eco4Cloud with VMware DRS/DPM which strictly follows the workload and sometimes isn't fast enough in turning on the hosts when the workload is ramping-up.
• To do a good job Eco4Cloud needs to analyze the hosts and the VMs. Therefore, the troubleshooting component of Eco4Cloud can figure out if there are problems in the configuration of the hosts (e.g. vMotion settings). It can also determine if a VM is stuck and can't vMotion (e.g. using the physical CD-ROM) or if it's oversized or undersized.
• Something Eco4Cloud has and others don't is a technology named Smart Ballooning. With Smart Ballooning Eco4Cloud recovers unused RAM from the VMs and gives it back to the host way before the host goes over the 94% RAM threshold. This allows us to reach higher levels of overbooking.

• A single console to manage the environment.
• The configuration is a bit complicated and we have hired Citrix administrators. But it's a good solution.
• User profiles need improvement. They could use more stability and more functionality as well as user profile redirection.

Incentivized

• It would be useful to have a version that works with OpenStack.
• It should be made compatible with VMware VSAN.
• It would be useful to have a version that works with hybrid clouds using the new "vMotion anywhere" or share nothing vMotion feature.

I would of given it a 10 but Citrix tech support is lacking.

Incentivized

From an end-user perspective, Citrix DaaS is ideal. No matter the device that the user connects with, the end user's experience is always the same. Desktop icons are there, along with the files. As a big name, Citrix allows for SAML authentication or a local account. End users do not need a beefy laptop to have a good experience in DaaS.

Incentivized

Next to zero downtime

Incentivized

The performance of XenDesktop is the best in the industry because of the fine-tuned protocol and years of updating. Overall, I don't think there is a better performer on the market. The question is if the added complexity of running XenDesktop is really worth the performance gain. While the latest version of XenDesktop is the easiest to deploy so far, it is still more challenging than the competitors.

Incentivized

The support is great when you get an engineer that knows what they are doing but getting that individual sometimes takes a while. Overall, they are professional and polite and competent in their knowledge. Sometimes the cases are open for an extended period of time which becomes very frustrating when dealing with critical issues.

Incentivized

I was self trained

Incentivized

Online training isn't bad just an over view more then anything else.

Incentivized

Take it slow and read the directions each step of the way. If you are not familiar with Citrix products, use a reseller or other experienced engineer to assist you in the setup of your environment

Incentivized

Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops is platform agnostic (we can use any underlying hypervisor technology) and really flexible for any use case. Using a golden image and provisioning it (with Machine Creation Services or Provisioning Services) is powerful and really straightforward, compared to the complexity in Microsoft RDS of maintaining a coherent farm, or the limitation of VMware Horizon to run on VMware Products.

Incentivized

We compared the consolidation feature and we obtained exactly the same amount of servers in stand-by. The main difference was that Eco4Cloud turned off the unneeded hosts in 2 days while VMTurbo Operations Manager required one day per host. This behavior is caused by the different algorithms implemented by these two products. Compared to Eco4Cloud, VMware DRS/DPM was very aggressive (we tried it in vSphere 5.0). We haven't tested it with vSphere 6 yet.

Easily scalable

Incentivized

• Being able to easily add new use cases with minimal "re-work" to existing workspace delivered by the solution has been a great ROI value.
• The Security features that are built-in have made the solution a go-to for any remote access or vendor access requests the business has needed to continue projects and expedite digital initiatives.
• While the overall environment stability is excellent there is an increase in support team and end user training required which can "steal" time from admin and engineers.

Incentivized

• Eco4Cloud causes a reduction in power consumption both on old VMware clusters and especially on new ones.
• It also causes a delay in CapEx investments because you buy more hosts only when really needed.