To provide enterprises with virtualization management capabilities, Citrix offers Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V in Enterprise and Platinum editions. What's interesting is that the pricing for the Hyper-V version is actually cheaper than it is for the XenServer version. In essence, Citrix is incentivizing customers to go with Hyper-V.
As of October 22, 2009 the per-server pricing is as follows:
- Citrix Essentials for XenServer, Enterprise Edition: $2,750 USD
- Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V, Enterprise Edition: $1,650 USD
- Citrix Essentials for XenServer, Platinum Edition: $5,500 USD
- Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V, Platinum Edition: $3,300 USD
In a nutshell, Citrix Essentials is
- $1,100 more expensive per physical server running XenServer for the Enterprise Edition
- $2,200 more expensive per physical server running XenServer for the Platinum Edition
What's even more interesting is that Citrix even offers a free Citrix Essentials Express Edition for Hyper-V but not for XenServer.
Regardless of the underlying platform selected, Lanamark Suite supports virtual infrastructure solution design (including licensing calculations) for both Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V. Citrix Essentials in Enterprise and Platinum Editions as well as Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager can be included in the what-if scenarios presented to enterprise customers by Lanamark partners.
