{"id":106,"date":"2009-10-10T22:10:49","date_gmt":"2009-10-11T06:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/?p=106"},"modified":"2009-12-02T08:23:58","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T16:23:58","slug":"comparison-of-citrix-xenserver-essentials-with-vmware-vsphere-essentials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/?p=106","title":{"rendered":"Comparison of Citrix XenServer Essentials with VMware vSphere Essentials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>XenServer is free.\u00a0 vSphere is pricey, or so they say.\u00a0 You really need to compare feature by feature.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Some of the key features that virtualization users want are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hypervisor (XenServer or vSphere)<\/li>\n<li>Central multi-hypervisor management (XenCenter or vCenter)<\/li>\n<li>If a physical host fails, restart virtual machines on surviving hosts (XenServer High Availability or VMware HA)<\/li>\n<li>Move a virtual machine from host to host while running (XenMotion or vMotion)<\/li>\n<li>Backup and recovery for virtual machines (No Citrix equivalent or VMware Data Recovery)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.citrix.com\/English\/ps2\/products\/feature.asp?contentID=1686939&amp;ntref=prod_top\">Citrix Xenserver<\/a> is free.\u00a0 It includes XenMotion.\u00a0 To get HA, you need to buy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.citrix.com\/English\/ps2\/products\/feature.asp?contentID=1686940\">Citrix Essentials for XenServer<\/a>.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not aware of a Xen equivalent of VMware Data Recovery.\u00a0 List price on Essentials is $2750.<\/p>\n<p>VMware offers a small business package called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vmware.com\/products\/vsphere\/small-business\/buy.html\">VMware vSphere 4 Essentials Bundle<\/a>.\u00a0 This includes licenses for the hypervisor and management server (vCenter).\u00a0 The plain Essentials bundle does not include HA, vMotion, or VDR.\u00a0 The list price is $995.00.<\/p>\n<p>You can get an upgraded Essentials, called VMware vSphere 4 Essentials Plus, that includes everything but vMotion for list $3624.<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s the bottom line?\u00a0 You probably <strong>*HAVE*<\/strong> to buy something.\u00a0 If you want high availability, then you have to buy Citrix Essentials or VMware Essentials Plus.\u00a0 The price is pretty similar ($2750 or $3624 list).\u00a0 If you go with XenServer, you&#8217;ll get XenMotion.\u00a0 If you go with vSphere, you get VDR.<\/p>\n<p>Backup or the ability to move running machines?\u00a0 That&#8217;s a hard choice.\u00a0 You really need both in a production environment.\u00a0 Neither vendor at this entry price point offers everything you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>XenServer is free.\u00a0 vSphere is pricey, or so they say.\u00a0 You really need to compare feature by feature. Some of the key features that virtualization users want are: Hypervisor (XenServer or vSphere) Central multi-hypervisor management (XenCenter or vCenter) If a&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/?p=106\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}