VMware ESXi vs. XenServer

VMware ESXi

810 Reviews and Ratings

XenServer

74 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
VMware ESXi	Score7.6 out of 10	N/A	A bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.	N/A
XenServer	Score7 out of 10	N/A	XenServer (formerly Citrix Hypervisor) is a virtualization management platform optimized for application, desktop and server virtualization infrastructures.	N/A

Pricing

VMware ESXi

XenServer

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
VMware ESXi	XenServer
Free Trial
No	No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

No setup fee

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	VMware ESXi	XenServer
Considered Both Products	VMware by Broadcom Satchidananda Rout Senior Software Engineer in Information Technology at Orange Business Services (Telecommunications, 10,001+ employees) Chose VMware ESXi VMware ESXI is straight forward dependable hypervisor, with some users experience consistent server uptime even during hardware failure and other setbacks. It requires few hardware resources, making a minimal impact on its host machine. Deploying new servers with VMware ESXI is … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi VMware has been the #1 vendor for virtualization for 10 years, is used in top incorporations, supports almost every software around there, and runs smoothly with every hardware vendor. The con is the price, it's the most expensive solution. Incentivized Helpful? Arvind Kumar Senior Consultant - VMware & Infrastructure in Information Technology at Versetal Information Systems (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose VMware ESXi Easy to manage, standard licenses and bundle licenses are customizable, provides a much more stable infrastructure. Cost-effective, Comes with special features like HA, DRS, FT. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi Much more reliable and well-integrated than competitors, with a solid central management console. Citrix is having good performance but requires a specific kernel to leverage, HyperV is good only for windows OS. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi VMware ESXi is a better solution for medium and small-sized businesses. It does not require any pre-requisites most of the time. Also, VMware offers more RAM per VM than Xenserver (Citrix). And, VMware supports more operating systems whereas Hyper-V supports only a few … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi ESXi is becoming industry standard and with range of certifications to excel your skills in VMware [and] open doors to great opportunities. VMware products knowledge space makes it easier to implement, use, and troubleshoot the products specially ESXi as the popularity of this … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi Building and operating in a virtual environment would be impossible without a reliable and efficient virtualization platform, such as VMware and Hyper-V. Before deciding which platform to choose for conducting your business operations, consider the differences in VMware and Hype… Incentivized Helpful? Ashley Davis Self-employed in Information Technology at Airside Networks (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose VMware ESXi vSphere has been in the virtualization game for a long time. It's hard to overlook this fact as you compare ESXi to Microsoft's less robust HyperV, Proxmox's immaturity and lack of polish. VMware has made clear that virtualization is its blood and has done a lot to push … Incentivized Helpful? Kenny McGarrity IT Infrastructure Manager in Information Technology at Pace Supply (Wholesale, 1001-5000 employees) Chose VMware ESXi ESXi is hands down the winner when compared to its competitors, in terms of technical capability. VMware has maintained its leadership role in virtualization technology. Hypervisors from Microsoft, Oracle, Citrix pales in every way when compared to ESXi. Have you ever heard … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi At the time of standardizing, Vmware ESXi was a more industry mature product with better support and best integration with 3rd party offerings. Incentivized Helpful? Dan Lepinski System Administrator in Information Technology at Proto Labs (Industrial Automation, 1001-5000 employees) Chose VMware ESXi VMware ESXi has always felt more like an industry standard. VMware ESXi comes with great support through their contact methods, their knowledge base articles, and the massive online community of users who have been using and experimenting with VMware ESXi for years. VMware's … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi Comparing ESXi to the other big three hypervisors, VMWare ultimately comes out on top. Initially, we built our server farm on top of XenServer for a few years, since it was stable and everyone was already somewhat familiar with it. However, given the recent drama with XenServer … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi ESXi outperforms both Citrix and MS in just about every aspect of virtualization. Plus, coupled with vCenter, the management of the hypervisor cluster is second to none. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi We used Oracle VM VirtualBox for sandbox and local testing. It is not a HyperVisor, but a virtualization platform. It requires a Host OS to install on. When we implemented VMWare ESXi, the cost of Citrix Hypervisor was more, and Hyper-V was still in its infancy. Ultimately the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi The interface was simpler for me understand since I don't have a heavy background with Linux. VMWare has double the amount of virutal CPUs than Citrix Hypervisor. VMware also has a host limit of 120 virtual machines vs Citrix Hypervisor's 75 virtual machines which allows for … Incentivized Helpful? Mitch Hubbell System Administrator in Information Technology at Bauer Built Mfg. (Machinery, 51-200 employees) Chose VMware ESXi I would say VMware is much easier to pick up compared to Citrix or Hyper-V. The interface is straightforward while still giving you the options to dive deep into the configuration if required. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose VMware ESXi ESXi has much better performance in real-time than Hyper-V. Performance with XenServer is comparable, however, ESXi has more functionality on offer and more mature monitoring services. Incentivized Helpful? Ben Liebowitz Senior Systems Engineer in Information Technology at Associated Press (Media Production, 1001-5000 employees) Chose VMware ESXi VMware is known to be the market leader for server virtualization for a reason. The other products are always trying to catch up and mimic the same features as ESXi. And now, with vSAN and NSX, vSphere is light years ahead of the competition. Incentivized Helpful? Curtis Jackson Network Admin in Information Technology at School City of Hammond (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees) Chose VMware ESXi VMware was a much more robust product than XenServer. Incentivized Helpful?	Citrix Kristopher Leslie IT Director in Information Technology at The Dannon Project (Non-Profit Organization Management, 51-200 employees) Chose XenServer Feature for feature they are neck and neck. I have used Hyper-V 2012 and 2016, VMware ESXi and XenServer evenly. XenServer is a fast install, good documentation, with enterprise features out the box that compare or exceed what VMWare offered with a higher cost of entry. Incentivized Helpful? Stênio Pereira Filho Senior System Analyst in Information Technology at Universidade de São Paulo (Education Management, 10,001+ employees) Chose XenServer There are other hypervisors that are more eficient than Xenserver, but it is necessary to spend some money to buy them. If your demand is to compute processing, Xenserver permits you to create good environments to do this. If you need to integrate the hypervisor with other … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose XenServer VMware requires an Enterprise Plus license to use GPU's, which is more expensive. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose XenServer VMware seems to be the standard and is more widely accepted. However, Citrix Hypervisor, is easily learned and cheaper. We have also used VirtualBox to offer up ideas for other free products. VirtualBox seems to be easier for end users who just want simple VMs and not … Incentivized Helpful? Scott McGee Information Technology Manager in Information Technology at Hampden Township (Government Administration, 51-200 employees) Chose XenServer Because we utilize Citrix for our VDI this solution made the most sense moving forward. Citrix Hypervisor was designed to work with Citrix VDI solutions out of the box. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose XenServer XenServer like the similar product I've used in the hypervisor market stacks up well in regards to compatibility with virtual machine [operating systems]. It is also capable of allowing for large, powerful VMs to be run upon it. The main selection of XenServer in environments … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

Features

VMware ESXi

XenServer

Comparison of Server Virtualization features of VMware ESXi and XenServer
Feature	VMware ESXi 8.2 128 Ratings	XenServer 7.6 12 Ratings
Virtual machine automated provisioning	8.0116 Ratings	7.011 Ratings
Management console	9.0128 Ratings	7.012 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup	8.0112 Ratings	8.010 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration	8.0116 Ratings	8.012 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security	8.0117 Ratings	8.011 Ratings

User Ratings
	VMware ESXi	XenServer
Likelihood to Recommend	9.0 (129 ratings)	7.0 (12 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	10.0 (6 ratings)	10.0 (3 ratings)
Usability	9.0 (6 ratings)	7.0 (3 ratings)
Availability	10.0 (2 ratings)	5.5 (1 ratings)
Performance	9.0 (2 ratings)	6.4 (1 ratings)
Support Rating	10.0 (55 ratings)	6.4 (1 ratings)
In-Person Training	- (0 ratings)	2.7 (1 ratings)
Implementation Rating	10.0 (3 ratings)	7.3 (1 ratings)
Configurability	10.0 (2 ratings)	5.5 (1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model	5.1 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Ease of integration	10.0 (2 ratings)	5.5 (1 ratings)
Product Scalability	10.0 (2 ratings)	6.4 (1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	10.0 (2 ratings)	8.2 (1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	10.0 (2 ratings)	8.2 (1 ratings)