Virtualization comparison & reviews

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Pros
  • + mature and feature-rich offering
  • + great ecosystem & support
  • + skills prevelant
  • + not specified
  • + Not Specified
Cons
  • - needs clear strategy for public cloud future
  • - comprehensive capability but can become expensive
  • - NSX leading SDN solution but skills scarce
  • - not specified
  • - Not Specified
User Reviews
Details (by section) Expand All Data
General
60%
86%
58%
Content
Content Creator
THE VIRTUALIST
THE VIRTUALISTS
WhatMatrix
Assessment
Overview
vSphere 6.7 with Operations Management Enterprise Plus - Click Here For Overview
XenServer 6.5 is available in Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition
WS 2016 + SC 2016 (Standard)  - Click Here For Overview
Maturity
Release Dates:
vSphere 6.7 : April 17th 2018
6.5 Release Date January 2015 (Xen - 2003, Citrix XenServer 2007, 5.6SP2 March 2011, v6: Sep 2011, 6.1: Sep 2012, 6.2 June 2013)
Release Dates - W2016, SC2016: October 2016 (initial Hyper-V: Jun 08, SCVMM Sep 08)
NEW
Pricing
Virtualization
OM Ent+ :
$4,275/socket + S&S 1Y: $897 (B) or $1,068 (Prod)
Open Source (free) or two commercial editions, pricing to be announced at GA: Annual: $500 / socket, Perpetual: $1250 / socket (incl. SA and support)
Standard: $882 for 16 physical cores.
NEW
Management
$5,835(Std) + $1,224(B) or $1,458 (P)
Free (XenCenter)
System Center 2016 Datacenter: $3,607 or Standard $1,323 per managed endpoint (up to 16 physical cores)
NEW
Bundle/Kit Pricing
yes
No
Vmware switch offer until July 2017
NEW
Guest OS Licensing
No
No
yes - up to two virtual OSEs with Standard (Windows Server vms)
VM Mobility and HA
60%
86%
58%
VM Mobility
Live Migration of VMs
Yes (vMotion)
Yes XenMotion (1)
Yes (Unlimited Concurrent, Shared Nothing; new compression & SMB3 options)
Migration Compatibility
Yes (EVC)
Yes (Heterogeneous Pools)
Yes (Processor Compatibility)
Maintenance Mode
Yes
Yes
Yes
Automated Live Migration
Yes (DRS) - CPU, Mem
Yes Workload Balancing
Yes - Dynamic Optimization (CPU, mem, disk I/O, Net I/O) and VM Load Balancing
NEW
Power Management
Yes (DPM)
Yes Workload Balancing
Yes - Power Optimization
Storage Migration
Yes (Live Storage vMotion)
Yes (Storage XenMotion)
Yes (Live and Shared Nothing)
HA/DR
Cluster Size
max 64 nodes / 8000 vm per cluster
16 hosts / resource pool
64 nodes / 8000 vims
Integrated HA (Restart vm)
Yes (VMware HA)
Yes
Yes (NIC and unmanaged Storage failure detection - Virtual Machine Compute Resiliency - NEW)
NEW
Automatic VM Reset
Yes (VMware HA)
No
Yes (Heartbeat)
VM Lockstep Protection
Yes (Fault Tolerance) 8 vCPUs. 128 GB RAM.
NEW
No
No
Application/Service HA
App HA
No
Yes (VM Compute Resiliency)
NEW
Replication / Site Failover
Yes (vSphere Replication)
DR Orchestration (Vendor Add-On: VMware SRM)
Integrated Disaster Recovery (no storage array control)
Hyper-V Replica - Storage Replica
NEW
Management
60%
86%
58%
General
Central Management
Yes (vCenter Server Standard)
Yes (XenCenter), SCVMM (see details)
Yes (System Center 2016 / VMM) 
NEW
Virtual and Physical
Limited (plug-ins)
No
Yes (Complete SC mgmt, Fabric Updates, Storage Management)
RBAC / AD-Integration
Yes (vCenter and ESXi hosts)
NEW
Yes (hosts/XenCenter)
Yes (SCVMM)
Cross-Vendor Mgmt
vRealize Automation (Vendor Add-On)
No (native)
Yes (Vendor Add-On: CloudPlatform)
Improved (VMware) & removed (Citrix)
Browser Based Mgmt
Yes (vSphere Web Client, HTML5 Web Client)
No (Web Self Service: retired)
Limited (SSPs)
Adv. Operation Management
Yes (VMware vRealize Operations)
No
Yes (SC Operations Manager)
Updates and Backup
Hypervisor Upgrades
Yes (Update Manager)
The XenCenter released with XenServer 6.5 allows updates to be applied to all versions of XenServer (commercial and free)
Yes (Cluster Aware Updates, Fabric Updates; Management Servers - NEW)
VM Patching
Limited (Update Manager)
No
Yes (WSUS, SCCM, VMST)
Live VM Snapshot
Yes
yes
Yes (Checkpoint) - NEW: Production Checkpoint
NEW
Backup Integration API
Yes (vStorage API Data Protection)
Limited
Yes (VSS API)
Integrated Backup
Yes (vSphere Data Protection) - Replication of backup data, granular backup and scheduling
No (Retired)
Yes (WSB & DPM incl. Linux VMs - NEW), Azure Backup (New Fee Based Offering)
NEW
Deployment
Automated Host Deployments
Yes (Auto Deploy)
No
Yes (bare metal through VMM), incl. Storage Spaces Direct - NEW
NEW
VM Templates
Yes (Content Library)
Yes
Yes (now incl. Gen 2 templates)
Tiered VM Templates
Yes (vApp/OVF)
vApp
Yes (Service Templates), guest cluster support - NEW
Host Profiles
Yes (Host Profiles)
No
Yes (physical computer profiles)
NEW
Storage Profiles
Yes (Storage Based Policy Management)
No
Yes (Storage Classifications - incl. file shares - NEW)
Other
Resource Pools
Yes
No
Yes (Host Groups)
P2V
Yes (vCenter Converter)
No (XenConvert: retired), V2V: yes
No (use down-level VMM versions)
Self Service Portal
No (native)
Yes (with Vendor Add-On: vCloud Suite, vRealize Automation)
No (Web Self Service: retired in XS6.2)
Yes (VMM console, Service Manager, Azure Pack, Azure Stack -NEW)
NEW
Orchestration / Workflows
Yes (vRealize Orchestrator)
Yes (Workflow Studio)
Yes (SC Orchestrator, SC Service Mgr)
Security
Yes (ESXi Firewall, vShield Endpoint, VM Encryption)
NEW
Basic (NetScaler - Fee-Based Add-On)
Windows Security, Hyper-V Extensible Switch (DNSSEC, PVLANs, port ACLs, BitLocker etc., Shield VM - NEW)
NEW
Systems Management
vSphere’s REST API, PowerCLI, vSphere CLI, ESXCLI, Datacenter CLI
Yes (API / SDKs, CIM)
Yes (WMI + PowerShell)
Network and Storage
60%
86%
58%
Storage
Supported Storage
DAS, NFS, FC, iSCSI, FCoE (HW&SW), vFRC, SDDC
NEW
Yes (limited for SAS)
SMB3, virtual FC, SAS, SATA, iSCSI, FC, FCoE; shared vhdx - NEW Storage Spaces Direct
NEW
SAN Multipath
Yes (enhanced APD and PDL) PDL AutoRemove
Yes (SR)
Yes (MPIO and SMB Multichannel)
NEW