Sales Reference Card VMware Infrastructure 3.5 http://www.vmware.com/ October 2008 Vendor and Solution Overview VMware Infrastructure 3.5 is a server suite that includes the ESX and associated management tools. Quick Facts VMware has the largest market share in server virtualization, and enjoys strong brand Corporate Profile: awareness as a virtualization provider. Founded 1998 VMware offers free versions of some of its software (e.g. VMware Server, ESXi) to broaden adoption Ownership Public (VMW) VMware was first to create bare-metal virtualization solutions, and has built up its 2007 Revenue $1.33B leading market share while facing limited competition. Given that its solution was built prior to the availability of virtualization-aware processors Employees 6,000+ and operating systems, VMware’s solution features a first-generation architecture that Office Headquarters Palo Alto, CA USA employs a “binary translation” approach to virtualization that tricks an OS into thinking it is running on physical hardware. Regional Offices Worldwide Recent innovations such as assist (Intel VT and AMD-V) and Market Share 86% (2007) paravirtualization have cut into VMware’s technology lead. Paravirtualization enables full cooperation between the OS and the hypervisor to deliver the best performance. Hardware-virtualization assist refers to virtualization-aware processors which eliminate Related Products VMware Server the need to perform binary instruction translation in the hypervisor’s software stack. VMware Workstation These developments are more and more disruptive to VMware given its reliance on an VMware VDI older architecture, similar to the “Innovator’s Dilemma” effect chronicled in the book by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen. Second-generation solutions like XenServer employ both paravirtualization and hardware virtualization assist. Due to these innovations, VMware now faces significantly more competition. Competi- tors like Citrix XenServer that exploit these innovations are able to develop more ele- gant solutions that can be innovated at a faster pace, and bring them to market at price that is reflective of a more mature, competitive market.

Pricing and Packaging Basics

Citrix XenServer pricing and packaging is simple and straightforward. Pricing below is for 2 or 4-socket systems.

XenServer Express Edition: Free XenServer Standard Edition: $900 per server (includes 12 months of Subscription Advantage) Citrix XenServer XenServer Enterprise Edition: $3,000 per server (includes 12 months of Subscription Advantage) XenServer Platinum Edition: $5,000 per server (includes 12 months of Subscription Advantage)

Phone and Web-based support is available via XenServer Preferred ($1,500) or Citrix Preferred (starting at $7,500) agreements. Annual licensing is also available. VMware pricing and packaging for VI3 3.5 is complex and often confusing. The VI3 3.5 product line includes support for either the ESX or ESX 3i . ESX is free (as part of VI3 3.5) and custom- ers need to install it themselves on their servers. ESX 3i will be delivered for $495 per two-processor server on-board systems from Dell, HP, and others in 2008. New features in VI3 3.5 include Update Manager, Distributed Power Management (part of DRS), Storage VMotion (part of VMotion), and Guided Consolidation (part of VirtualCenter)

Virtual Infrastructure Foundation (previously “Starter”). This version is targeted at smaller organiza- tions. The Foundation edition includes consolidated backup and Update Manager, but lacks high- availability or VMotion capabilities. Prices for this edition start at $995 per server (not including $545 for 1 year of Gold Support and Subscription). Customers can purchase multi-server management via the VirtualCenter Foundation edition for $1,495 (not including support for $545), which is limited to managing three servers or less.

VMware VI 3.5 Virtual Infrastructure Standard is targeted at organizations with more than three physical servers. Standard Edition includes high-availability features, but not VMotion. List price is $2,995 per server (for a two-processor server) and includes 1 year of subscription. Gold support includes unlimited phone incidents (5x12 coverage) for an additional $629 per server while Platinum support includes 24x7 cov- erage for $749 per server. Customers also need to purchase VirtualCenter for multi-server manage- ment separately at a list price of $4,995 (not including $1,049 for Gold support or $1,249 for Platinum support).

Virtual Infrastructure Enterprise includes all the features of Standard and adds VMotion, Storage VMotion, and DRS features. List price is $5,750 per server (for a two-processor server). Platinum support includes unlimited phone incidents (24x7 coverage) for an additional $1,438 per server. Cus- tomers will need to purchase VirtualCenter for multi-server management separately at a list price of $4,995 (not including an additional $1,249 for Platinum support).

Citrix Confidential—Internal and Authorized Partner Use Only Sales Reference Card VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Citrix Confidential—Internal and Authorized Partner Use Only Solution Cost Comparison The following chart compares the bottom-line costs (SRP) of several comparable server virtualization deployments.

Citrix XenServer (pricing effective September 2008) VMware VI3 3.5 (pricing effective March 2008) Note: All options include 12 months of Subscription Note: VMware pricing does not include the cost of a second Virtual- Advantage; Citrix Preferred 25 support available in NA Center license required for a disaster recovery site. and EMEA.

XenServer pricing is the same for both 2 and 4-socket VMware pricing is typically quoted for 2-socket servers. Pricing for 4- systems. socket systems is 2x the price for 2-socket servers.

Option 1: Standard Edition with XenServer Preferred (includes multi-server management, but not XenMotion Option 1: Foundation Edition with Gold Support live migration or resource pools) (does not include high availability or VMotion live migration) 5 pack XenServer Standard Edition—$4,050 1 license VirtualCenter—$4,995 XenServer Preferred Support (5 incidents) —$1,500 Gold Support for VirtualCenter—$1,049 TOTAL—$5,550 (2 or 4 socket systems) 5 licenses VMware VI3 Foundation Edition—$4,975 for 2 sockets Gold Support for 5 servers—$2,725 for 2 sockets Option 2: Enterprise Edition with XenServer Pre- TOTAL—$13,744 (2-socket systems) ferred (includes multi-server management, XenMotion TOTAL—$21,444 (4-socket systems) live migration, and resource pools) 5 pack XenServer Enterprise Edition—$13,500 Option 2: Standard Edition with Gold Support XenServer Preferred Support (5 incidents) —$1,500 (does not include VMotion live migration features) 5 physical servers TOTAL—$15,000 (2 or 4 socket systems) 1 license VirtualCenter—$4,995 Gold Support for VirtualCenter—$1,049 Option 3: Platinum Edition with Preferred 25 5 licenses VMware VI3 Standard Edition—$14,975 for 2 sockets (includes multi-server management, XenMotion live Gold Support for 5 servers—$3,145 for 2 sockets migration, resource pools, and physical and virtual TOTAL—$24,164 (2-socket systems) server provisioning) TOTAL—$42,284 (4-socket systems) 5 pack XenServer Platinum Edition—$22,500 Citrix Preferred 25 (25 incidents)—$7,500 Option 3: Enterprise Edition with Platinum Support TOTAL—$30,000 (2 or 4 socket systems) (includes VMotion live migration features) 1 license VirtualCenter—$4,995 Platinum Support for VirtualCenter—$1,249 5 licenses VMware VI3 Enterprise Edition—$28,750 for 2 sockets Platinum Support for 5 servers—$7,190 for 2 sockets TOTAL—$42,184 (2-socket systems) TOTAL—$78,124 (4-socket systems)

1 licenses VirtualCenter—$4.995 Platinum Support for VirtualCenter —$1,249 Two 10 packs XenServer Platinum Edition—$80,000 20 licenses of VMware VI3 Enterprise—$115,000 for 2 sockets 20 physical servers Citrix Preferred 25 (25 incidents)—$7,500 Platinum Support for 20 servers—$28,760 for 2 sockets TOTAL—$87,500 TOTAL—$150,004 (2-socket systems) TOTAL—$293,764 (4-socket systems)

VMware Areas to Question

Summary: VMware has historically faced little competition, thereby allowing them to capitalize on a closed, proprietary product design. The weaknesses from its legacy, early-generation design are starting to show. The next-generation, open design of XenServer (backed by a trusted vendor like Citrix) creates increased competition for VMware providing real choice for customers and solution providers.

VMware continues to charge a premium for its products, which is a holdover from the days when it faced little to no competition. For example, VMware charges customers extra for its multi-server VirtualCenter Value management console. For site failover/disaster recovery (one of the key business drivers of server virtu- alization), VMware requires customers to purchase VirtualCenter twice—once for each site.

VMware’s offering only support the VMware hypervisor, offering clear evidence of Desktop Virtualization Lock-in their aim to “lock in” customers to their platform. By comparison, Citrix XenDesktop supports Hyper-V, XenServer, and VMware, thereby allowing customers much broader choice.

VMware is experiencing a classic case of “innovator’s dilemma” finding it difficult to prioritize its engineer- ing investment between support for legacy products and exploiting new architectures. VMware’s technol- ogy is based on “binary translation,” an approach which pre-dates both virtualization-enabled operating Legacy architecture and design systems and processors. As a result, VMware has to perform many operations in software that -

Server simply leverages from the (paravirtualization-enabled) OS or (hardware virtualization assist- enabled) processor. Additionally, the XenServer codebase is much simpler and lends itself to faster innovation. Sales Reference Card VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Citrix Confidential—Internal and Authorized Partner Use Only VMware Areas to Question, continued

VMware VI 3.5’s management infrastructure as well as many of its advanced features carry significant infrastructure complexity. For example, VirtualCenter uses a management framework that depends on a Complexity, cost, and fault-tolerance of database (e.g. SQL Server or Oracle) to store configuration information. For fault-tolerance, this data- management infrastructure base needs to be clustered which requires specific hardware, skills, and additional cost. By contrast, XenServer employs a built-in management framework, whereby each node maintains a copy of the con- figuration information and does not require an external database or third-party clustering.

VMware has chosen to compete head-to-head with Microsoft which history has shown may offer short- term gains, but prove problematic in the long-term. Furthermore, VMware’s offerings promote vendor lock-in while Citrix supports customer choice and interoperability. Citrix strongly supports the Microsoft Windows platform and has an established track record extending and adding value to it. Citrix and Micro- Competitive stance towards Microsoft soft have also announced a number of virtualization initiatives around XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V including sharing a common virtual disk format (VHD), offering “plug compatible” virtual machines, and future collaboration on Microsoft System Center. As a result, Citrix customers can leverage the rich ca- pabilities of XenServer knowing that their virtual infrastructure will work harmoniously with Microsoft’s key platforms.

Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) allows server virtualization solutions to go through a validation process with the Windows Server OS. Once the validation process is complete, Microsoft will agree to take support calls for Windows Server guests running on the validated configura- tions, without the possible requirement of reproducing an issue on physical hardware. As of October Limited Microsoft support for Windows 2008, VMware had not completed any certification for x64 Windows guests or servers with > 4 proces- guests sors. Furthermore, neither ESXi nor VMware Server have any SVVP accreditation whatsoever.

XenServer was the first solution to be fully certified according to Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Valida- tion Program (SVVP), for 32-bit and x64 guests, Intel and AMD processors, and up to 8 CPUs.

XenServer Platinum Edition offers the ability to stream a virtual disk to either a physical or virtual server. This allows customers to increase agility and streamline administration in both physical and virtual server No Physical Server story environments. VMware lacks a value proposition for customers that wish to maintain physical servers in their .

Citrix testing has shown that running XenApp on XenServer allows servers to host at least 30% more users per server than with competitive alternatives.

XenApp Performance If asked, VMware may recommend that customers not implement XenApp VM’s with more than 1 virtual CPU. Customers should ask VMware if performance suffers if more than 1 VCPU is implemented, and ensure that the solution is scalable enough with today’s quad-core processors.

VMware has very limited support for paravirtualization (Ubuntu and SLES 10 SP2 only). Paravirtualiza- tion is the key enabler of optimal Linux guest performance. By comparison, XenServer has long offered Linux Performance paravirtualization support for a broad set of Linux distros—including RHEL, SLES, CentOS, Debian, and Oracle. Since its release in December 2007, VMware has had to release over 150 patches and hotfixes to ad- dress issues with the product. Furthermore, VMware experienced a very high profile reliability issue with the VI 3.5 Update 2 bug which prevented virtual machines from being started. Customers should ask VMware if the high level of maintenance is required with ESX due to its bloated code base. Platform Reliability and Maintenance By comparison, XenServer has an elegant design that aligns with the current generation of operating systems (paravirtualization) and processors (Intel VT and AMD-V hardware virtualization assist) and a smaller code base. This design yields maintenance benefits for customers; in the 1+ year since the re- lease of XenServer 4, just 4 hotfixes have been issued. ESXi has a more limited feature set than ESX and is not license-key upgradeable to ESX. Prospective customers should ask VMware for a list of technical differences between the ESXi and ESX hypervisors. For example, as of October 2008 ESXi has not been certified with the Microsoft SVVP program; as a result, Microsoft will not take a support call for Windows guest running on ESXi without the contingency that the problem might need to be replicated on physical hardware. ESXi’s hardware compatibility is far more limited than the full ESX hypervisor. ESXi vs. ESX VMware claims that ESXi has “no general purpose OS.” In fact, ESXi uses BusyBox which is a embed- ded Linux distribution. Furthermore, VMware may advise customers to implement a service VM on top of ESXi to enable hardware-level management features.

By comparison, XenServer’s free Express Edition is the same codebase as higher level editions, and is easily upgraded to Standard or Enterprise Edition with the simple application of a license key. Sales Reference Card

VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Citrix Confidential—Internal and Authorized Partner Use Only

Objection Handling—Countering VMware FUD

Summary: VMware will sometimes make claims that refer to older versions of XenServer. For example, some VMware documents (wrongly) state that XenServer lacks features like High Availability or Live Migration. As a result of its more elegant design and the open nature of the Xen hypervisor, the commercial XenServer product is being rapidly innovated and VMware’s claims are often out of date.

VMware claim Citrix response For hardware released since 2006, XenServer will actually run on a broader set of hardware than VMware. XenServer has been designed to leverage the latest generation of Intel and AMD processors designed for server virtualization. This trait is a strength, as the vast majority of new virtualization de- ployments will leverage virtualization-enabled processors. In addition, XenServer leverages stock Linux “XenServer hardware compatibility is more device drivers, as opposed to the proprietary device drivers used by VMware. For evaluation purposes, limited than VMware.” customers can test XenServer on many laptop and workstations using recent versions of the popular Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Such deployments are far less likely to work with VMware ESX due to its proprietary driver model. Prospective customers should be aware that ESXi’s hardware compatibility is far more limited than the full ESX hypervisor. XenServer offers support for the most popular x86 operating systems, including the latest releases of “XenServer supports fewer guest operating Microsoft Windows, RedHat Enterprise Linux, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise, and others. The open systems than VMware.” nature of the Xen hypervisor provides a framework for additional operating systems to be supported very easily in the future, such as FreeBSD, Ubuntu, and Solaris.

XenServer is based on the widely-deployed and robust open source Xen hypervisor which dates back as long as VMware’s hypervisor technologies. Xen is an open, industry-standard technology—the “engine” at the heart of commercial virtualization products from a number of vendors, including Citrix, Symantec, Oracle, Red Hat, Novell, Sun, Stratus, Marathon, Egenera, Neocleus, and Phoenix Tech- nologies. Furthermore, some of the largest virtualization deployments in the world (such as the Ama- “VMware is the industry standard, and Xen- zon Elastic Compute Cloud) are powered by the Xen hypervisor, which is a significant validation of the Server is not as proven.” scalability and robustness of the underlying Xen technology.

In addition, leading server vendors like HP, Dell, NEC, and Lenovo have added their validation through OEM partnerships with Citrix. For instance, Dell and HP offer an integrated version of XenServer on their servers. DRS: DRS is essentially automated VMotion. It automates what may be better done manually in many cases. XenServer takes a different approach. For example, when a VM is started up on XenServer, XenCenter automatically chooses the most capable server on which to run a new VM. Furthermore, alerts can be sent to administrators if CPU utilization exceeds a threshold. This can then prompt the admin to intervene and decide if a XenMotion or some other administration action is warranted.

Site Recovery Manager. Site Recovery Manager is a workflow engine for Disaster Recovery that only works with servers that are virtualized with VMware’s hypervisor. Just like VMware, XenServer works “VMware offers features like DRS, Site Re- with replication capabilities on nearly every SAN array to deliver multi-site DR—for both virtualized and covery Manager, Lab Manager, and Stage physical servers. Citrix also has ecosystem partners like SteelEye and DoubleTake that assist with DR. Manager.” Citrix also offers Workflow Studio as an orchestration engine for much more than just DR.

Lab Manager. Lab Manager is for niche use cases of virtualization, such as software development environments. Citrix partners with VMLogix for Lab Management functionality with XenServer.

Stage Manager. Like Site Recovery Manager, stage manager is a workflow engine for bringing servers into production. SRM only supports servers virtualized with VMware’s hypervisor. XenServer has a unique provisioning features that applies to both physical and virtualized servers. VMware has provided many in-built storage capabilities into their proprietary VMFS file system. The consequence is functional overlap with nearly every enterprise storage solution (e.g. NetApp, EMC, and “VMware offers better backup and recovery others). Instead of creating a proprietary file system that locks in customers, Citrix has focused on capability than XenServer, including snap- integration with industry-standard storage solutions, such as NetApp and EqualLogic, enabling support shots.” for native storage capabilities such as backup and recovery, snapshots, cloning, data replication, dedu- plication, and more. VMware prospects should be made aware that VI3.5 does not support Storage VMotion for virtual machines with snapshots.

VMware’s marketing literature touts that memory overcommit features increase the number of VM’s per server. VMware is far less open about the negative performance implications, and that VMware support “VMware’s price per VM is lower because of documents have recommended disabling the feature for this reason. Testing of this feature shows that memory overcommitment” transient performance issues can occur (i.e. during and immediately after a VM reboot) if the environ- ment is not carefully managed. Customers may find that this feature’s real usefulness is confined to non-mission critical test & development environments. Citrix is committed to Xen and contributes an estimated $10 Million in R&D to the open source Xen project annually. Citrix is also three-time Microsoft partner of the year and always seeks to add value to “Citrix is not committed to Xen and will switch the Windows platform. Citrix/XenSource has contributed to the development of Hyper-V and offers to Hyper-V” complementary value-add solutions for Hyper-V that accommodate choice, and the heterogeneous environments that customers may have. Citrix’s support for Xen and Hyper-V is not “either or” but rather “in addition to.”

Sales Reference Card VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Citrix Confidential—Internal and Authorized Partner Use Only

Response to VMware feature comparison

Capability VMware VI3.5 Citrix XenServer 5.0 Yes, includes built-in XenMotion capabilities plus integration leading storage virtualization vendors (e.g. NetApp, IBM Storage N Series, Dell EqualLogic). Yes, VMotion and Storage Moving a VM disk from one array to another (which is a rare occurrence, far Live VM and storage migration VMotion less needed than live migration from one host to another) can be done with minimal downtime using the “VM copy” option in XenCenter. VMware’s Stor- age Vmotion doesn’t work for VM’s that have snapshots. XenServer automatically places virtual machines on hosts able to support their load. Furthermore, host-level alerting informs administrators when a specific Dynamic load balancing Yes, VMware DRS VM may be overutilizing a particular host. While VM’s are not automatically moved without administrative intervention, this is exactly how many customers use VMware DRS in practice. Yes, and extendable to full Fault Tolerance (FT) through third-party offerings High availability Yes, VMware HA from Marathon and Stratus Technologies. VMware does not offer FT through its VI 3.5 product or via any partners. Yes. Unlike VMware, Citrix XenServer does not have its own proprietary file system that diminishes the feature set of storage arrays. Instead, XenServer Cluster file system Yes, VMFS extends open standards like LVM, NFS, and Microsoft VHD with a cluster layer to enable features like XenMotion. VMware touts this in marketing literature, but support documents often recom- mend disabling this due to performance degradation. Testing of this feature Memory oversubscribe Yes shows that transient performance issues can occur if the environment is not carefully managed. Customers may find that this feature’s real usefulness is confined to non-mission critical test & development environments. VCB is not a backup solution per se. Instead, it acts as a sort of proxy server between an enterprise backup solution and the virtualized hosts. VCB is most useful for customers already standardized on Symantec Netbackup; customers standardized on other backup solutions tend to reject VCB due to weaker inte- gration with those enterprise backup solutions. Many customers and partners Centralized backup and recovery Yes, VMware VCB reject VCB and prefer Vizioncore Ranger instead. XenServer leverages exist- ing backup tools and directly integrates with array-level snapshots for backup/ recovery. Integrating with storage-level snapshots is a more elegant approach since it requires no new infrastructure. VCB, by comparison, requires at least one more (typically physical) server to set up and maintain. Yes. Windows SUS (free) and other tools do a fine job of patching guest OS’s. Why “reinvent the wheel?” Unlike VMware’s offering, XenServer can actually Automated patching of guest OS Yes, Update Manager reduce the number of images that need to be managed via the unique provi- sioning features. Yes; XenServer includes built-in tools to manage and update the base plat- form. In any case, VMware Update Manager couldn’t help with the VI 3.5 Up- date 2 bug. XenServer has been proven to be much more low-maintenance Automated update of platform Yes, Update Manager than ESX. Example: XenServer 4.0 has had just four hotfixes issued in a year since it was released. By comparison, VMware VI 3.5 has had over 150 patches released between December 2007 and October 2008. Yes, VMware Site Recovery Integrated disaster recovery Yes, XenServer includes features to enable disaster recovery. Manager Yes, VMware Lab Manager Partner. For customers requiring this functionality, VMLogix offers a best-of- Software Lifecycle Management Tools and Stage Manager breed solution that supports XenServer as well as VMware and Hyper-V. Yes, many support state- ISV support 100+ ISV partners and counting ments

This information is subject to change without notice. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. , INC. (“CITRIX”), SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR TECHNICAL OR EDITORIAL ERRORS OR OMISSIONS CONTAINED HEREIN, NOR FOR DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR ANY OTHER DAMAGES RESULTING FROM THE FURNISHING, PERFORMANCE, OR USE OF THIS INFORMATION, EVEN IF CITRIX HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES IN ADVANCE. The exclusive warranty for any Citrix products discussed in this publication, if any, is stated in the product documentation accompanying such product. Citrix does not warrant products other than its own. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. © 2008 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Citrix® and XenServer®, are registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Sales Reference Card VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Citrix Confidential—Internal and Authorized Partner Use Only

Citrix XenServer / VMware offering comparison

Capability Citrix XenServer 5.0 VMware VI3.5 Expensive, as much as 3x more expensive Cost Effectiveness Cost-effective than XenServer.

Open; many management tools (i.e. XenDesk- top, Provisioning Server) work with multiple hy- Proprietary; management tools only work Customer Choice and interoperability pervisors including VMware, XenServer, and with VMware hypervisor Hyper-V Yes, XenServer Express Edition leverages the Free, open source hypervisor No, proprietary. native 64-bit Xen hypervisor No, ESXi, ESX and VMware Server are all separate code bases, leading to complexity. Yes, customers can move from Express Edition Customers could ask VMware about the proc- License-key upgradeable codebase to Standard or Enterprise with simple application ess of moving from ESXi or VMware Server of a license key. to the full ESX product, especially given sig- nificant differences in hardware compatibility.

Yes, supports Intel VT and AMD-V hardware High Performance: Hardware-assisted virtualization Limited, largely relies on legacy binary trans- virtualization technologies for the best perform- for the best performance lation approach ance.

Limited, VI 3.5 is the first VMware product to High Performance: paravirtualization support, ena- Yes, Xen was the first solution to adopt paravir- support any form of paravirtualization. Very bling co-operation between guest OS and hypervisor tulization and deliver unrivaled performance for few Linux distro’s / versions are supported for the best performance Linux and Windows guests. (Ubuntu and SLES 10 SP2 only)

Yes, leverages industry-standard, open source Industry-standard device drivers No, relies on proprietary device drivers drivers

Yes, native integration with NetApp, Dell/ No, use of proprietary VMFS file system limits Native support for advanced storage functionality EqualLogic, and IBM Storage N Series (and access to features provided by advanced more coming). arrays.

Yes, support for the Microsoft VHD standard enables a level of interoperability between Hyper Interoperability with Hyper-V No -V and XenServer. XenDesktop and Provision- ing Server both support Hyper-V today. Provisioning physical servers and VM’s from com- Yes, XenServer Platinum No mon vDisk

VM provisioning; one vDisk can be used by multiple Yes, XenServer Platinum No virtual machines to simplify management

No, third-party clustering software recom- Built-in high availability for management Yes mended with VI 3.5.

Limited. As of October 2008, neither x64 Yes. XenServer was the first solution to be Mi- Windows Server guests nor systems with > 4 Official Microsoft support for Windows guests crosoft certified, for 32-bit and x64 guests, Intel CPU’s were supported according to Micro- and AMD processors, and up to 8 CPUs. soft’s SVVP program. ESXi and VMware Server have no certification whatsoever.

Eight-way virtual processor support Yes No

High Maintenance; Hundreds of patches and Low Maintenance: Just 4 hotfixes in the year hotfixes for VI 3.5 since release in Dec 2007. Reliability and Maintainability since XenServer 4.0 was released, and many Experienced high-profile reliability issue with customers would not have required any of them. the VI 3.5 Update 2 bug.

This information is subject to change without notice. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. CITRIX SYSTEMS, INC. (“CITRIX”), SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR TECHNICAL OR EDITORIAL ERRORS OR OMISSIONS CONTAINED HEREIN, NOR FOR DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR ANY OTHER DAMAGES RESULTING FROM THE FURNISHING, PERFORMANCE, OR USE OF THIS INFORMATION, EVEN IF CITRIX HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES IN ADVANCE. The exclusive warranty for any Citrix products discussed in this publication, if any, is stated in the product documentation accompanying such product. Citrix does not warrant products other than its own. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. © 2008 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Citrix® and XenServer®, are registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.