Citrix Systems commissioned Tolly to evaluate the performance of Citrix XenApp when running on Citrix XenServer 5 and compare that with XenApp running on VMware ESX 3.5u3.

Testing focused on system scalability and user quality-of-experience. This test report was approved for publication by VMware. The VMware End User License Agreement (EULA) requires such approval.

The testing was conducted in accordance with Tolly Common RFP #1101, Virtual Server Performance. That document is available for license and you can find more information about it on the Tolly Common RFP website.

Download the free Citrix/VMware report as below:

Register and Download!

Related posts:

1. VMware vSphere 4 Performance Troubleshooting Guide
2. Cisco Nexus 1000V

If you’re looking at technical point of view, personally I think VMware competitor is few year behind VMware vSphere. Check out more detail about VMware vSphere 4 Cheat Sheet posted by Jason Boche.

Referring to costing, I don’t agreed with what Citrix presented during the event this morning. You’re always try to tell customer pay if you need it. What are you talking about? Are you trying to tell Enterprise customers don’t use HA or don’t use those features provided? How about Microsoft Hyper-V cost comparison?

Again, I would said I’m not sure how true chart show as above and the most important is apple to apple comparison.

In fact, there are many many kind of comparison between VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix Xen. Please feel free to contact us, we’re willing to share with you!

Related posts:

1. Nexus 1000V come with free when Virtualization with VMware vSphere 4 on Cisco UCS
2. Extending VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Availability FAQ

As the article stated, there are 500 machines which will be virtualized in Citrix Xenserver, are not be used in production environment. Those machines are development, test and training environment for SAP internally.  We know SAP is 1 of the heavy user for VMware since years back. A move to Citrix  Xenserver did surprise myself, but obviously it does provide more choice to SAP internal.

Related posts:

1. Vblock and VCE Join Venture

I did a quick test and I would like to share my personal review about Citrix XenServer 5.0:

Personally I think network speed is fast compare to VMware ESX. I have a physical 1Gbps NIC network speed and I can get 2Gbps network speed after install XenTools on Windows 2008 server but require 2 times reboot(SuSE Linux require 1 reboot). Anyway VM guest shutdown and reboot process is faster than VMware ESX.

I was try to install SuSE Linux 10 using 4 ISO CD (both NFS or CIFS), the Citrix XenServer always give me an error “The VM rejected the attempt to detach the device xxxxx refusing to close” when switch ISO CD1 to ISO CD2. You have to extract 4 ISO CD into one single location to make it work or copy ISO to local storage(provider you have enough local disk space).

The enterprise product should not have similar issue and this is not make sense at all.

Anyway, you can try alternative way using “Install URL” instead of using ISO Image once you have extract ISO CD into single folder on your web server.

Install URL: http://xx.xx.xx.xx/inst/10/32/SP2/ALL
Advanced Boot OS Parameters:
console=ttyS0 xencons=ttyS hostip=xx.xx.xx.xx/24 gateway=xx.xx.xx.xx dnsserver=xx.xx.xx.xx

Please make sure your have correct IP, gateway and DNS setup properly else you will getting error during installation.

Add and remove any disk/storage on Window 2008 or SuSE Linux 10 no downtime or reboot required. The VM guest OS will detect automatically.

Convert to template and VM clone features which are another features behind VMware ESX.

Once you have converted to template, you won’t have another way to reverse back as VM guest machine. It’s one way operation which you will received a warning before convert to template as show below.

Right click VM guest, and click Copy VM will do VM cloning but require downtime. The Copy VM feature is disable during VM guest is power on.

Overall, I would said VMware ESX still my first choice.