Today we completed certification of Citrix XenServer 5.5 with Citrix Essentials 5.5 Platinum Edition. The result - there are now two hypervisor platforms Burton Group considers enterprise-production ready. Enterprise production-ready certification requires a hypervisor platform to meet 100% of our required features (27 in all). Our criteria also includes 42 preferred features and 24 optional features. Preferred and optional features often drive the feasibility of a particular platform across a number of different use cases, but are not considered must-haves for enterprise production workloads. Citrix added several key features for the 5.5 release, including directory service integration, security logging and auditing of administrative actions, and role based access controls (via the Lab Manager interface included in Essentials 5.5 Platinum Edition). Also, Citrix reworked its XenServer support policy to meet our minimum 3 year market support requirement.
If you haven’t seen the full feature list and don’t have access to Burton Group content, stay tuned. We’ll be presenting the complete criteria list at our Catalyst conference in a couple of weeks. By meeting 100% of our required features, Citrix has demonstrated that its platform meets the security, management, availability, storage, network, compute, scalability, and performance requirements typical of many enterprises. Today Citrix has reached a plateau. Like VMware they do not meet 100% of our preferred or optional features (and as expected VMware is further along). Still, XenServer has demonstrated itself as a virtualization platform worthy of the demands of large scale enteprise environments. Congratulations, Citrix.
Having multiple production-ready hypervisors on the market means more choice for the customer, and a greater push for vendors to continue furthering innovation and competitive differentation. Regardless of where your hypervisor loyalties stand, we’ll all benefit from the progress of the XenServer platform.
#1 by Joe Shonk - July 10th, 2009 at 09:35
What do yo mean Citrix has multiple production read hypervisors on the market? Citrix only has one (XenServer) hypervisor with a couple different packaging.
Vmware does the same thing.. Technically, they have multiple hypervisors (Type 1s and Type 2s) for sale. And also in multiple packages.
Joe
#2 by Chris - July 10th, 2009 at 09:47
Hi Joe,
Sorry for any confusion with the statement “having multiple production ready hypervisors on the market.” I was referring to the market in general and the fact that there are now two hypervisors that are production-ready: VMware ESX 3/4 and Citrix XenServer 5.5/Essentials Platinum 5.5.
#3 by John Lyristis - September 10th, 2009 at 10:07
Citrix Xenserver is far from production ready, yes they claim all the feature sets but in a real world production environment, those same production ready features do not live up to expectations. We wasted 3 weeks on setting up a production environment based on Xenserver based on all the “hype” by Citrix and others (re: this article) only to tear it all down and go with VMWare. Citrix has a lot of homework to do before their production ready claim can be substantiated. For those who are skeptical of what I say, just go read the forums. I would wait another year maybe 2 before seriously considering this product for production again. Buyer or user beware.
#4 by Jason - September 10th, 2009 at 10:38
Hi Chris,
The link to the 27 required features is restricted content, so it’s a little hard to really asess the certification by the Burton Group. Furthermore, I find it somewhat critical that it can pass a certification when AFAIK, XenServer is still missing true NIC bonding (ala LACP or something equivalent). They claim NIC bonding but tisk tisk on their marketing team, it’s more aptly called NIC failover.
#5 by Chris - September 11th, 2009 at 08:33
Hi Jason,
Thanks for the comment. I understand your concern regarding the criteria. We have publicly presented it in a number of forums, and it will be presented via the web at IT Virtualization Live next week. You could see it there for free. Our required features are based on what is needed to successfully run production workloads. The feature requirements have received endorsements from Citrix’s top two competitors: VMware and Microsoft. That being said, meeting the required features often is not enough to make a platform ideal for most environments. That is why we have the preferred and optional categories. There are 42 features in our preferred category, many of which are deal breakers for large enterprises. Being that organizational requirements are different, it was impossible to define a “one-size-fits-all” solution. We can’t dictate what is absolutely needed for every organization, be we can highlight features that are consistently needed in the typical environment. If you have time, I encourage you to watch next week’s web cast. That will detail all assessed features, and offer side-by-side hypervisor comparisons.
#6 by Chris - September 11th, 2009 at 08:38
Thanks for the comments, John. I understand your concerns and that’s why many clients consider our preferred and optional feature lists critical to their assessments. We have multiple very large enterprises successfully running production workloads on XenServer, and have been very satisfied with the results. As noted in a previous comment, our required feature list was never intended to be a “line of equality.” Instead, we encourage clients to evaluate our required, preferred, and optional features, since many organizations would consider certain features listed as “preferred” or “optional” as required.
#7 by Jason M. - October 8th, 2009 at 21:09
I’ve successfully implemented XenServer 5.0 and subsequent upgrades to 5.5 in an enterprise environment with over 150 virtual servers and 50 XenDesktop deployments. This was after a 6 month side by side test with VMware ESX 3.5. We choose XenServer over VM for performance and HA reasons. While ESX was obviously more mature a product and I did take a risk with XenServer it was worth it. There are a few features I’d like to see in XenServer, i.e. NIC bonding, memory over commit, and dynamic resource allocation. But according to Citrix, these are all coming out in the next major release of the platform. So for the best bang for the buck I’m still on the Citrix XenServer side! I’m also partial to the fact that you don’t have to rely on a physical SQL server to keep your infrastructure up.