New Enterprise Hypervisor comparison

Last year we published an Enterprise Hypervisor comparison and we got very positive comments and feedback on it.

During the last few weeks I received many update requests so I decided to update the old hypervisor comparison but this time I changed the setup a bit.

Changes:

No beta or pre-release versions are used. In the last document we also compared Hyper-V R2 beta which wasn’t officially released.
This time all software is available and no features are subject to change due to beta-test, etc.;
The versions used are the platinum/ultimate/fully-featured versions of the hypervisors. Product features can be limited by lower license versions;
No free versions have been used in this comparison.

I spend hours collecting information on Citrix XenServer 5.0 and 5.6, Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0 and R2 and VMware VI 3.5 and vSphere 4.1. Not all information is easy to find and some of it is even contradicting but I checked, double checked and Anne Jan did a full review so I’m pretty sure the information is 99,9999% accurate.

I hope you find the new Enterprise Hypervisor comparison useful and feel free to contact us when you have feedback for us to improve the list.

You can find our new Enterprise Hypervisor comparison here.

Last update: November 29th, 2011.

Tags: Citrix, Hyper-V, Microsoft, VMware, vSphere, XenServer

This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 15:54 and is filed under Citrix, ESX/ESXi, Hyper-V, Microsoft, VMware, vSphere, XenServer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

About Erik Scholten

Erik Scholten is the founder of VMGuru.nl and works for Imtech ICT as a Solution Architect creating the most ingenious virtual infrastructures. He has over 14 years experience as a system engineer and consultant and now he specializes in virtualization. His current job includes selling, presenting, designing and developing virtual infrastructures for some major companies in the Netherlands. In 2009, 2010 and 2011 VMware awarded him the vExpert award for his virtualization community efforts.

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Eric van Engelen

Nice comparison !

One comment if i may:

XenServer does not have 802.3 ad support it uses SLB which is based from open source ALB loadbalancing methode.

Should be supported in my opinion but maybe in the next release waiting for it for a long time makes our lives much easier.

Grt Eric van Engelen
Andrey Vakhitov

vSphere 4.1 don't require Intel VT;
Hyper-V supports dynamic disks (thin provisioning);
Xen Server 5.0 support thin provisioning only on local disks;
Xen Server 5.0 don't have role-based administration.
http://www.vmguru.nl Erik Scholten

Thanks, I changed the items and updated the comparison to version 2.1
http://www.vmguru.nl Erik Scholten

Thanks for the input. Regarding the mentioned items:
1. Intel VT is required to run x64 servers, so I added a comment.
2. Hyper-V 1.0 does idd support thin provisioning but it's 3 times slower and only used for templates and not for production use. Because of that it is considered not available. I added a comment to clarify.
3. Thin provisioning for XenServer 5 is only available on supported shared storage because it uses the storage to provide thin volumes. On local storage thin provisioning is always supported. I added a comment.
4. Regarding the role based admin you are correct.

I updated the comparison to version 2.1
dolphinalex

since they offer a hypervisor are you gonna Red hat virtualization?
http://www.vmguru.nl Erik Scholten

If we're going to add Red Hat virtualization?
No, for now Red Hat is not very interesting for us as we never use or encounter it in enterprise infrastructures. It's a niche product which is not used very often. As soon as Red Hat becomes interesting for larger enterprises and it is used, we will certainly add it in our hypervisor comparison.