On March 30, 2009 Citrix opened the floodgates and started offering Citrix XenServer Enterprise for free. However to get some of the enterprise features such as High Availability it is necessary to purchase Citrix Essentials for XenServer. Here is a comparison of enterprise virtualization offerings from Citrix and VMware:

• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2,750 per server with one year Subscription Advantage.
• VMware vSphere Enterprise: $2,875 per CPU (up to 6 cores) + VMware vCenter Server Standard: $4,995.

Price Comparison

• N two-way servers (N > 3): $4,995 + N x $3,000
• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2,750 x N
• Citrix XenCenter: $0
• VMware vSphere Enterprise: $5,750 x N
• VMware vCenter Server Standard: $4,995

• N four-way servers (N > 3): $4,995 + N x $8,750
• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2750 x N
• Citrix XenCenter: $0
• VMware vSphere Enterprise: $11,500 x N
• VMware vCenter Server Standard: $4,995

  Examples

• 5 two-way servers: $4,995 + 5 x $3,000 = $19,995 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 5 four-way servers: $4,995 + 5 x $8,750 = $48,745 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 10 two-way servers: $4,995 + 10 x $3,000 = $34,995 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 10 four-way servers: $4,995 + 10 x $8,750 = $92,495 savings with Citrix XenServer

To take full advantage of VMware vSphere Enterprise six-core licensing limit, it may be worthwhile to consider the following servers with six-core AMD and Intel processors to maximize VM density:

• HP ProLiant BL465c G6, BL495c G6, BL685C G6
• HP ProLiant DL385 G6, DL585 G6, DL785 G6
• IBM BladeCenter LS22, LS42
• IBM System x3755
• Sun Blade X6240, X6440
• Sun Fire X4140, X4240, X4440

• HP ProLiant BL680c G5
• HP ProLiant DL580 G5
• IBM System x3850 M2, x3950 M2
• Sun Blade X6450
• Sun Fire X4450

Of course software licensing costs are only a component of the total cost of ownership and a number of other factors such as performance and management applications available must be considered when choosing a virtualization platform. This is exactly what solution providers using Lanamark Suite try to accomplish when presenting enterprise customers with side-by-side comparisons across end-to-end virtualization solutions that encompass hardware, software and service components.

As speculation looms around plans from Citrix to release Citrix XenServer as open source, it's worthwhile to analyze how such a move would impact other leading software vendors in the virtualization space.

On February 23, 2009 Citrix announced that it will give away the full version of Citrix XenServer for free. Since Citrix is not generating any revenue from XenServer, open sourcing it seems like a logical step. But how will such a move impact the marketplace? Why would Citrix spend $500M on XenSource and then make Citrix XenServer open source?

As a Microsoft partner, Citrix understands that it's better to cooperate than to compete with the software giant, particularly in the server virtualization space. By open-sourcing Citrix XenServer, Citrix would:

1. Expand Citrix XenServer market share and drive additional revenue through virtualization management software such as Citrix Essentials.
2. Offer enterprises an open-source alternative to Microsoft Hyper-V with feature parity and high degree of interoperability.
3. Increase community-based support for development and maintenance of Citrix XenServer, rather than funding R&D completely.
4. Enhance adoption and survivability of Citrix XenServer by getting other software vendors such as Novell and Oracle to support it.

Microsoft

Microsoft benefits the most from this move because there would be an open-source server virtualization alternative that would isolate two other Linux-based virtualization platform vendors: Red Hat and VMware. In other words, Microsoft is squeezing these vendors from one side with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and from the other side with the help of Citrix XenServer.

Novell

As a company that already has good relationships with both Citrix and Microsoft, Novell has an opportunity to provide virtualization management capabilities across these two platforms. It already does this with the PlateSpin family of products. Novell may also do a port of Citrix XenServer to Novell SUSE but this is probably not a trivial effort and would take quite a bit of time.

Oracle

Oracle VM is already based on the Xen hypervisor. Whether Oracle decides to adopt Citrix XenServer depends on whether Oracle wants to give away its intellectual property to the open source community or to build dominance in the server virtualization space on its own. However, given its active participation in the Xen community, support for open source development model and antagonism towards Red Hat, Oracle may just throw its weight behind an open source Citrix XenServer.

In a nutshell Citrix, Microsoft, Novell and Oracle have a lot to gain from an open source Citrix XenServer, while Red Hat and VMware have a lot to lose from such a move. Perhaps Citrix will also rename Citrix XenServer back to XenSource Server?!

Update (November 2, 2009)

According to an interview with Simon Crosby, CTO at Citrix, XenServer will be open-sourced but the following components will not be:

• Citrix XenCenter
• Citrix XenConvert
• Drivers for Microsoft Windows

Today VMware announced VMware vCenter CapacityIQ 1.0, a capacity management product for virtual infrastructure. The new product is rough around the edges. For example it still does not support VMware vSphere (VMware should have a policy for not launching new products that do not support its latest platform) nor does it provide enough emphasis on storage capacity planning.

In a nutshell, VMware CapacityIQ allows customers to reduce costs by right-sizing resources allocated to virtual machines. It also helps customers model the effect of capacity changes and forecast future capacity needs.

One particular company that will be severely impacted by VMware vCenter CapacityIQ is VKernel. At present, all VKernel products only work with VMware ESX and VMware vSphere, putting the company in a bit of a vice until support for other platforms is added. Each major VMware vCenter CapacityIQ feature competes with a product offered by VKernel:

• Capacity Awareness competes with VKernel Capacity Analyzer
• Capacity Optimization competes with VKernel Optimization Pack
• Capacity Prediction competes with VKernel Modeler

While VMware vCenter CapacityIQ is a fairly new product, it does have a critical mass of capabilities to spell trouble for VKernel and any other vendor offering capacity management software to the enterprise on top of the VMware platform. VKernel does seem to have a superset of capabilities available in VMware CapacityIQ such as support for vSphere, but it's just a matter of time before VMware closes the necessary product gaps.

VKernel announced its plans to support other platforms such as Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V later this year. Now the pressure is on VKernel to deliver.

Update (October 21, 2009)

David Marshall wrote the VMware tries its hand at capacity planning article on InfoWorld, quoting Alex Bakman, CEO of VKernel, saying "CapacityIQ may be good enough for some but our Capacity Analyzer and Optimization Pack provides many more features and functionality and delivers our users the answers and actionable information to make them successful in managing and optimizing their environments."

Indeed, VKernel does have more capacity management capabilities - after all, this is all VKernel has been focused on as a company for the last two years. As much as Alex would like to "thank VMware for validating the market need for capacity planning, management, and optimization," VMware is going to sell CapacityIQ as part of a complete vCenter stack and injecting a third-party (VKernel) appliance will not be an easy sell. Even if VKernel manages to get into the sales cycle and go up against CapacityIQ, the sales cycles will become longer and more expensive - not particularly favorable for a startup.

Update (November 9, 2009)

David Marshall followed up with another article on VKernel, detailing how VKernel is making Capacity Modeler free until December 31, 2009 in response to VMware CapacityIQ. VKernel Capacity Modeler 1.0 was released on March 31, 2009 with pricing starting at $199 per CPU socket.

The move only validates the frustration VKernel must be experiencing as it starts to see VMware in its sales cycles. And no matter how much VKernel and other vendors discount VMware CapacityIQ, the product is obviously "good enough" to force VKernel to go on the defensive. It's ironic that VKernel initially discounted VMware's offering and then actually had to discount its own.

During its announcement of vSphere on April 21, 2009, VMware highlighted the tremendous performance enhancements in VMware vSphere. To illustrate this, VMware compared performance of an Oracle database workload running on

• Physical server with Intel Xeon 5100 Series dual-core processor
• VMware vSphere virtual machine hosted on a physical server with Intel Xeon 5500 Series quad-core processor with hyper-threading

The issue with this experiment is that it is impossible to evaluate the performance improvements of vSphere because not only was the original workload running on a physical machine, but it was also running on a machine with a different processor. Furthermore, the workload selected heavily leverages multi-core and hyper-threading technologies. So is performance improving because of enhancements to hardware or software?

To answer this question, the following experiments with different types of workloads should have been setup to measure

• Hardware Improvements: Physical machine with Intel Xeon 5100 Series processor versus a physical machine with Intel Xeon 5500 Series processor
• Hardware Improvements for Virtualization: VMware vSphere virtual machine on a host with Intel Xeon 5100 versus the same virtual machine on a host with Intel Xeon 5500 Series processor
• Software Improvements: VMware vSphere virtual machine versus a VMware Infrastructure virtual machine on identical underlying virtual machine hosts with Intel Xeon 5500 Series processor for each platform

Based on internal comparison of the two processors at Lanamark, the Intel Xeon 5500 Series is an order of magnitude superior compared to the Intel Xeon 5100 Series. It has four cores and up to eight threads versus only two cores without hyper-threading in Intel Xeon 5100 Series. Intel Xeon 5500 Series offers 6X-8X higher raw performance improvements in terms of operations per second. It also makes a huge leap forward in I/O processing thanks to

• Intel QuickPath Technology which provides speeds of up to 3.5X higher (25.6 GB/s) among processors and the I/O hub
• Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (VT-c) which provides up to 2X throughput compared to non-hardware-assisted devices
• Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) which eliminates a significant amount of virtualization overhead by giving virtual machines their own dedicated I/O devices

By taking a close look at the "substantial leaps in virtualization performance" announced by VMware, it is clear that these performance leaps are overwhelmingly driven by the hardware improvements highlighted above. Obviously VMware worked closely with Intel and vSphere takes advantage of the above hardware features. But if these hardware features enable the majority of virtualization performance improvements then Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V and other virtualization platforms will reap similar benefits.

Intel Xeon 5500 Series is now supported in Lanamark Suite and support for VMware vSphere will be offered within two weeks of the general availability announcement from VMware.

On March 30, 2009 Citrix opened the floodgates and started offering Citrix XenServer Enterprise for free. However to get some of the enterprise features such as High Availability it is necessary to purchase Citrix Essentials for XenServer. Here is a comparison of enterprise virtualization offerings from Citrix and VMware:

• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2,750 per server with one year Subscription Advantage.
• VMware Infrastructure Enterprise: $6,958 per 2 CPUs + VMware vCenter Server: $6,044 with one year Gold Support for both products.

Price Comparison

• N two-way servers (N > 3): $6,044 + N x $4,208
• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2,750 x N
• Citrix XenCenter: $0
• VMware Infrastructure Enterprise: $6,958 x N
• VMware vCenter Server: $6,044 

• N four-way servers (N > 3): $6,044 + N x $11,166
• Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition: $2750 x N
• Citrix XenCenter: $0
• VMware Infrastructure Enterprise: $6,958 x 2N
• VMware vCenter Server: $6,044 

Examples

• 5 two-way servers: $6,044 + 5 x $4,208 = $27,084 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 5 four-way servers: $6,044 + 5 x $11,166 = $61,874 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 10 two-way servers: $6,044 + 10 x $4,208 = $48,124 savings with Citrix XenServer
• 10 four-way servers: $6,044 + 10 x $11,166 = $117,704 savings with Citrix XenServer

Of course software licensing costs are only a component of the total cost of ownership and a number of other factors such as performance and management applications available must be considered when choosing a virtualization platform. This is exactly what solution providers using Lanamark Suite try to accomplish when presenting enterprise customers with side-by-side comparisons across end-to-end virtualization solutions that encompass hardware, software and service components.

As soon as VMware releases its new pricing, a new before-and-after comparison will be published.

As companies look at desktop and server virtualization to cut costs and improve operational efficiencies, "free" virtualization products may sound very attractive. The reality is that enterprises do not buy virtualization products - they buy virtualization solutions composed of

• Virtualization platforms
• Management applications
• Hardware: servers, storage, networking
• Services: consulting, system integration, hosting

There is no such thing as "free virtualization" - every vendor in the virtualization space is looking to build a business, not a philanthropy. So when evaluating the cost of a virtualization solution, it is valuable to consider all components in that solution. Service providers using Lanamark Suite do just that - they present virtualization solution options to enterprises across virtualization platforms with hardware, software and service components. This ensures that the comparison is accurate and valid.

So how are vendors supposed to make money when virtualization products such as Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi are free? Here is how:

1. Shift value up the stack towards management applications

Citrix offers Citrix Essentials for XenServer, Microsoft has a System Center family of products and VMware has too many management applications to list here. The picture is very similar with other vendors.

2. Sell additional products and services

Ultimately having a relationship with a customer is very important to each vendor. So giving away a free product is simply an investment in building and growing this relationship.

Microsoft built a phenomenal business by getting Windows (without giving it away) onto almost every PC and then building applications on top of Windows to grow the business relationship it has with each customer. VMware is attempting to deploy VMware Infrastructure (essentially an operating system) into every data center and then use it as a foundation to offer customers a broad array of management applications on a single platform. Sounds familiar?

How to choose?

So before deciding which virtualization platform to go with, it is essential to consider:

1. Total cost of the virtualization solution with management applications, hardware and services, as well as ongoing administration.

2. Where the vendor is moving long-term and what additional products and services from this vendor's portfolio are attractive.

3. Vitality of the vendor's ecosystem of software, hardware and services partners who offer other key parts of the solution.

Nothing is more expensive than trying to switch platforms. This is why choosing a virtualization vendor should not be a tactical decision based on "free" products and bells and whistiles alone. It needs to be a strategic decision and consider the total cost of the virtualization solution.

Starting in 2007, Symantec has been quietly building a virtualization solutions portfolio through a string of acquisitions:

• January 2007: Altiris - application virtualization
• April 2008: AppStream - application virtualization
• August 2008: nSuite - connection broker

In Spring 2009, Symantec plans to release an integrated and enhanced suite of products from its acquisitions in the Symantec Endpoint Virtualization Suite which will compete with:

• Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp
• Microsoft MED-V and Microsoft App-V
• VMware View and VMware Thinstall

Despite its efforts, Symantec is missing a key component in its offering to take on Citrix, Microsoft and VMware: a virtualization platform with comprehensive management and automation capabilities. Citrix knew the importance of not solely relying on third-party virtualization platforms, acquiring XenSource in 2007. And although $500 million seems like a big investment (it is) strategically Citrix is well-positioned to offer a complete, integrated virtualization stack to enterprise customers with Citrix XenServer, Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp, accompanied by management applications offered in Citrix Essentials and from Citrix partners such as Marathon Technologies.

So what can Symantec do to bolster its virtualization offering? Will there be a window of opportunity for the software giant to offer customers an end-to-end solution from the desktop to the data center or will it continue to simply partner with Citrix, Microsoft and VMware?

Enter Parallels. While Parallels has taken its time to build a bare-metal hypervisor, the company knew that it could not bring a second rate product to market given the fierce competition. So instead of launching Parallels Server prematurely, Parallels continued to build and refine a virtualization offering that is technologically superior to anything currently available on the market:

• Hybrid OS and hypervisor virtualization solution with integrated management and automation
• Memory over-commit (currently available only in VMware ESX) for higher consolidation ratios
• Live migration for OS containers (no downtime) and virtual machines (short downtime) without shared storage requirement (comparable to VMotion and Storage VMotion from VMware)
• Data protection with live backups and snapshots

There is more...

• Comprehensive storage support for SAN, iSCSI and NAS
• Built on top of high-performance, scalable and proven Parallels Virtuozzo Containers kernel that is deployed on more than 50,000 servers world-wide
• P2V and V2V migration tools with support for converting OS containers to virtual machines
• It also looks like there may be a hardware abstraction layer (similar to VMware ESX) that would allow migrations across heterogeneous servers (not possible with Xen or Hyper-V)

To top this off, Parallels already has market-leading virtualization products for desktops: Parallels Workstation and Parallels Desktop for MAC (with over one million copies sold world-wide).

So why should Symantec (and other vendors such as Oracle) take notice? Because with a single acquisition, it would be possible to obtain superior virtualization technology for desktops and servers with integrated automation and management. Furthermore, while other virtualization vendors are talking about cloud computing, Parallels is probably best positioned to be a leader in this space because it already owns dominant mind and market share in the hosting market. In other words Parallels has leapfrogged all the other vendors.

Parallels may be late to the party with its bare-metal hypervisor but it is going to crash the party once it arrives, and certainly turn some heads. And with Parallels channel partners already using Lanamark Suite for delivering virtualization services to drive Parallels virtualization products to enterprise customers, Parallels will be unstoppable.

Response to Simon Crosby's blog post is here

As most of you know, the VMware ESX EULA explicitly prohibits publishing of performance test results without its approval:

"You may use the Software to conduct internal performance testing and benchmarking studies, the results of which you (and not unauthorized third parties) may publish or publicly disseminate; provided that VMware has reviewed and approved of the methodology, assumptions and other parameters of the study."

However, the brave Virtualization Review team published a performance comparison of the three hypervisors and came to the following conclusions:

• VMware ESX is optimized for a large number of less-intensive workload virtual machines.
• For intensive workloads Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer should be considered-even if this means adding another hypervisor into the data center.

The reality is that all three hypervisors are enterprise-grade and the performance differences of choosing one versus another are negligible. The following factors are more critical in selecting a hypervisor than performance factors alone:

• Cost-performance Ratio: all other things being equal, the cost is a key factor in selecting a virtualization platform. For example, in a recent Citrix XenServer vs. VMware Infrastructure price comparison, it is evident that Citrix is a much more cost effective alternative (as long as HA and DRS are not must-have).
• Management Applications: without management applications, the value of a hypervisor is marginal, regardless of its performance. VMware offers the richest set of management applications by a significant margin. Citrix offers a number of management applications such as LabManager and StageManager through partners such as VMLogix.
• Enterprise Features: VMware currently leads the way in offering enterprise features such as VMotion, Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) and High Availability (HA). Citrix also offers HA for Citrix XenServer through Marathon Technologies and XenMotion. Microsoft is planning to release live migration in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Regardless of which virtualization platform is chosen, proper capacity planning and virtual infrastructure design are vital for avoiding under- and over-provisioning of target systems. Products such as Lanamark Suite make it possible to efficiently analyze existing physical infrastructure and design virtual infrastructure that optimizes performance and maximizes return on investment regardless of virtualization platform selected.

Last week Citrix announced that it will make Citrix XenServer Enterprise available at no charge to customers. How does its offering compare to that of VMware? To answer this question, it is essential to compare Citrix XenServer Enterprise to a VMware bundle that closely matches Citrix XenServer Enterprise features.

Which VMware bundle should Citrix XenServer Enterprise be compared to?

Since Citrix XenServer Enterprise does not have High Availability (HA) and Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS), the most accurate comparison would be versus

• VMware Infrastructure Foundation ($995) with VMotion add-on ($3,495) per 2 CPUs or
• VMware Infrastructure Foundation Acceleration Kit, which includes licenses for VMware Infrastructure Foundation and VMware vCenter Foundation ($2,995) for 6 CPUs, with VMotion add-on ($3,495) per 2 CPUs

Note: VMware Infrastructure Standard Edition includes HA and hence it would not be valid to compare it to Citrix XenServer Enterprise.

Multi-server Management

• Citrix is giving away XenCenter for free to allow enterprises to manage multiple hosts.
• The equivalent VMware vCenter Server offering is priced at $4,995 for an unlimited number servers or $1,495 for VMware vCenter Foundation limited to 3 servers
• Delta: $4,995 or $1,495 for 3 servers

Live Migration

• XenMotion is included with Citrix XenServer Enterprise
• VMware sells VMotion and Storage VMotion as an add-on starting at $3,495
• Delta: $3,495 per two-way server

Price Comparison

• 1 two-way server: $2,490
• VMware Infrastructure Foundation: $995
• VMware vCenter Foundation: $1,495
• No need for VMotion
• 2 two-way servers: $9,985
• VMware Infrastructure Foundation Acceleration Kit: $2,995
• VMware vCenter Foundation: included
• VMotion: $3,495 x 2 = $6,990  

• 3 two-way servers: $13,480
• VMware Infrastructure Foundation Acceleration Kit: $2,995
• VMware vCenter Foundation: included
• VMotion: $3,495 x 3 = $10,485 

• N two-way servers (N > 3): $4,995 + N x $4,490
• VMware Infrastructure Foundation: $995 x N
• VMware vCenter Server: $4,995 
• VMotion: $3,495 x N

When 4 or more servers are required, a simple rule of thumb is to multiply $5,000 by N +1 servers. For example if 10 servers are required then the price difference would be $5,000 x (10 + 1) = $55,000.

Citrix XenServer Enterprise with Citrix Essentials for XenServer Enterprise Edition vs. VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition comparison can be found here.

Notes:

• Support and Subscription (SnS) entitlements for VMware MUST be purchased separately
• XenMotion does not include storage migration available in the VMware VMotion + Storage VMotion bundle.

According to a recent session at VMworld Europe 2009 on how VMware uses VMware ESX internally, VMware Capacity Planner remains one of a handful of services not yet virtualized by VMware. However, VMware is planning to run VMware Capacity Planner in a virtual machine by mid-2009.

This is interesting because a number of VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC) partners are already frustrated with the performance of the VMware Capacity Planner Dashboard. Unless the target virtual machine is going to provide more resources to VMware Capacity Planner than it has on the physical machine, the performance is not likely to improve.

There are several other challenges in performing analysis and reporting with VMware Capacity Planner online:

• If there is no Internet connection, then there is no way to access VMware Capacity Planner. And since most consultants spend quite a bit of time on the road, offline access to customer data is extremely valuable.
• Some customers are not thrilled about sensitive data about their data centers being accessed online.

Products such as Lanamark Suite address the above issues by

• Allowing analysis, reporting and design to be performed offline.
• Never allowing access to data center metrics online (data must be downloaded and the consultant must be authenticated).
• Giving customers the option to send data directly to solution providers.

Learn about other capacity planning tools for VMware ESX