Citrix vs. VMware, Users' experience?

[Lior Okman]

Ira Abramov wrote:

> I want to make life easy for two clients of mine who want to go virtual,
> but are set against MS as host (Not my work, I swear! :)
>
> Citrix XenServer is free, in case you missed it:
> http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/feature.asp?contentID=1686939
>
> ESXi has been free for a while as well:
> https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?p=esxi
>
> And of course, the Xen project alone is free and Free, but people tell me it's
> not for the beginners.
>
> This is what I need for the clients. Both are good at windows, only
> starting out in Linux. Both need something that's not too techie and CLI to
> manage. ESXi has been the automatic no-brainer choice, but with
> XenServer being free I'll need to ask the Lazyweb...
>
> I googled for comparisons, all I learned is how the I/O and CPU overhead
> and driver efficiency are, but thee's no information about the user
> experience, compatibility with hardware, and so on. Before I waste a day
> on tests, did anyone try this themselves?
>
> The second client also wants HA, I understand the XenServer comes with the
> LiveMotion thingy but no HA features (that will cost you a license of
> Xen Essentials, a remote management machine, etc). Should I tell him to
> go and add a few thousand $$$ to the project or is there a reliable hack
> to achieve a similar effect? (VM revival on another node if its host
> becomess unstable/dead)
>
> any ideas and experiences welcome...
>
>   
There's also Proxmox Virtual Environment ( 
http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Main_Page ) , which provide an OpenVZ and 
KVM hybrid solution, which a very usable web interface. A lot easier to 
install IMO than ESXi.

Lior