We migrated from VMware to XenCenter to cut costs.
Works at State of Alabama, Office of Information Technology
Cost-effective, efficient, and has good support
Pros and Cons
- "The support for this solution is phenomenal."
- "The built-in networking features are a little limited."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
This solution is more cost-effective and hardware-efficient with Citrix VDI.
What is most valuable?
The support for this solution is phenomenal.
What needs improvement?
The built-in networking features are a little limited.
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Citrix XenServer
August 2025

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For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for six months.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to this solution, we used VMware.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
Easy-to-use for virtualization and enables us to make better use of existing resources
Pros and Cons
- "This is a good product for virtualization and it is easy to use."
- "The product could be faster and licensing options could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
We use the product primarily for server virtualization.
How has it helped my organization?
It has allowed us to grow over time because, initially, it was free. We were able to use what would have been budgeted for licensing costs in other ways.
What is most valuable?
Simply the ability to virtualize and make better use of existing resources is the most valuable aspect of this solution.
What needs improvement?
It is a very good product, so there really isn't much that needs to be added. Maybe the speed could be improved. It might be nice if the licensing cost could be improved because it is a big jump when you reach the threshold.
A good addition might be consol management in Linux. Right now I have to start in Windows to manage the system. It is not my preference.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the product for ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This solution is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The whole point of the product is to be scalable, so it has very good scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
I never had a reason to use technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I changed the implementation from XenServer. The product we use now is not really XenServer but XCP-ng which is built on the XenServer open source. Because of the structure of the licensing through Citrix, we changed the product, although it is built on the same source.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment of the product was easy. The entire deployment with testing took about one month before it was completed for production.
What about the implementation team?
I did the implementation myself.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. In the beginning, because we had a small network, it was free. We have expanded to five physical servers so now we have to pay for all the servers. It is good for others to be aware that the product is only free to a point.
What other advice do I have?
On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate XenServer as an eight for the product. For the pricing, I would rate it a five.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Citrix XenServer
August 2025

Learn what your peers think about Citrix XenServer. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.
CEO at IMART OFFICE CONSULTANTS
A stable, highly scalable solution that offers good integration capabilities
Pros and Cons
- "The solution integrates well with other solutions, which makes it really strong as a primary solution to deploy."
- "The solution is too expensive and people are kind of moving away from Citrix. It's starting to become a problem. It is a primary reason that while we are rebuilding we're going to seek out open-source solutions."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for virtualization and for building other things on top of it. Mostly we sell the solution to other customers and offer them support.
What is most valuable?
The solution integrates well with other solutions, which makes it really strong as a primary solution to deploy.
What needs improvement?
The solution is too expensive and people are kind of moving away from Citrix. It's starting to become a problem. It is a primary reason that while we are rebuilding we're going to seek out open-source solutions.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for a few years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is highly scalable and can be highly integrated with other solutions, which makes it very good.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is good. I would rate them eight out of ten.
Sometimes there are difficulties when you look at the reseller model because you need to go through the reseller to get help, and often they are just salespeople. For us, in Botswana, resellers are typically in South Africa and they are more interested in sales than assistance.
These resellers are only interested in sales. When you are an assistant or a developer like we are, they can't really support you. They can only offer licenses to you. That is actually where the problem is. They have their sales quarters. If you don't meet their quarter they'll cut you off the next time and you have to reapply and go through their checks again, which is not a Citrix problem, but a partner weakness that should be re-considered.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup has a moderate level of difficulty. Someone with a good understanding of the technology will be okay, but if someone who is new to the solution may experience challenges.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
When you try to show clients Citrix, the price kind of scares them away. It's quite expensive.
What other advice do I have?
We are rebuilding our whole news infrastructure. We stopped using the solution for some things, but we will use it once we are finished with what we are currently building.
We're using a hybrid deployment model. We're also a Citrix partner.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I really like the solution. It works well.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
IT Manager at a legal firm with 11-50 employees
A free solution that's stable and easy to deploy
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is easy to deploy. It's very easy to understand problems and read logs."
- "The solution would benefit from faster technical support."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for deploying. Usually we're deploying infrastructure based on XenServer desktop solutions.
What is most valuable?
The solution is easy to deploy. It's very easy to understand problems and read logs.
What needs improvement?
The solution would benefit from faster technical support.
The solution should add session sharing in future releases. It would be helpful if, for example, you could switch a user from one terminal server to another terminal server without loosing the session and without the need to log off and then log on again. This way we can put in place some services, without asking the user to log out. We can just move users from one server to another and the user would not notice any interruption.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for six or seven months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is extremely scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
We're not satisfied with technical support. It's very slow.
How was the initial setup?
The solution is easy to deploy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is free to use.
What other advice do I have?
We use the private cloud deployment model.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It depends on what an organization requires, but I would recommend the solution.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
System Administrator at UM LUBLIN
A good virtualization solution for small servers that's very fast
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is very fast. It also works very well for physically small servers."
- "The USB support for the virtual server needs improvement."
What is our primary use case?
I primarily use the solution for virtualization. I have about five virtual servers on it.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is very fast. It also works very well for physically small servers.
What needs improvement?
The USB support for the virtual server needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for half a yer.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable. It works very well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
My environment is very small, so I don't have much experience with scaling the solution.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
I handled the implementation myself.
What other advice do I have?
We use the free version, not the commercial version of the solution.
We use the on-premises deployment model.
I would recommend the solution. I was looking for a solution that works well on a small server, and this solution works very well for me.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Works at a marketing services firm with 201-500 employees
The performance is great and you don't need many other tools
Pros and Cons
- "The feature I find most valuable, is its performance"
- "I think the technical support could be better."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case of this solution is virtualization.
What is most valuable?
The feature I find most valuable is its performance. It's a no "frills" solution. There aren't many tools and some may find that a little arcane, but I come from another visualization background. I like the console because you can do everything on the console, so you don't need any tools.
What needs improvement?
This solution needs a block-level backup. We have backup solutions in place but they are pretty arcane. That is a niche, it is not filled with professional solutions. There are solutions that can do it - if you look at solutions for file system level backups, you will find many of them. But if you look for systems with block-level backup or block-level synchronization, you will see that the tools are pretty minor.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working on XenServer for about twelve years now, mainly on premise.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is extremely stable. It's much more stable than VMware or any other tool that we've tested. One might get away with freeware solutions, but if you need support, I recommend using the commercial solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is easy to scale with this solution. I can scale up and scale down when I need to. And for memory and the VCPU's, it's even simpler because you can simply select that interface, and it will follow. Since I started using the 7.6 version, I can move virtual hosts around, so that's all working extremely well without any hurdles or hiccups. Our company has 600 employees and about 60% of them are using XenServer.
How are customer service and technical support?
I think the technical support could be better because we have received support directly from the Dell server instead of from Citrix directly. It is difficult to get hold of support during office hours and sometimes will take a while to get the right person for the right answer. But apart from that, the quality of the answers and the support is very good.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was very easy. It starts very easy and if you have special niche cases that are not provided, they are standard to install. You would, however, need to get yourself comfortable with the console, but if you have a Linux background, you will find that it is very easy. I did 90% of the installation myself, but we used third parties for special niche cases. We also needed support from Dell because we had some issues during startup with some drivers that were provided by Dell since we are mainly using Dell hardware.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others would be that there is no one golden bullet when choosing a virtualization platform. It depends on the careful planning of what kind of service you plan to provide to your users. Ask questions like: What is running on those systems? What platforms? What are your minimum demands?
There's something else that's fairly important because the virtualization market is rapidly shifting towards a total overhaul. And efforts are being made on the Linux site to run armed and risk solutions in the data center. So I hope that XenServer will adapt to that too.
This solution has special niche cases where it doesn't work as you planned. But in general, I am very happy with the server. I will give it a rating of nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
A solution that offers poor manageability, poor shared storage implementation, and needs better support
Pros and Cons
- "The price is the solution's most valuable feature."
- "The manageability of the solution needs improvement. It's an extremely bad product to handle."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for Citrix worker resources.
What is most valuable?
The price is the solution's most valuable feature.
What needs improvement?
The manageability of the solution needs improvement. It's an extremely bad product to handle.
The solution needs to offer better implementation of shared storage.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is not stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
I don't like the cluster functionality, but it's scalable. You can put a new service inside, and it works. The only thing is the shared storage, which does not have a good implementation. With LVM, it's a bad idea to use real partitioning. It's advisable instead to use a container file like Hyper-V or VMware.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is too slow. It takes too long. Especially in comparison with VMware. Their the support is much better.
How was the initial setup?
In most cases the set up is straightforward. In special cases, especially for shared storage, it's not a great implementation experience.
What other advice do I have?
We're using the on-premises deployment model.
I would advise others to only to use it with functionality where the high availability is available through other mechanisms, like Citrix, and not to use the features from the product itself.
I'd rate the solution four out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Network Engineeer at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
A simple virtualization solution that is free to try and deploy in a feature-limited version
Pros and Cons
- "This is a dependable solution for virtualization with a good community for product support."
- "Assigning the order of virtual server startup is not very easy and this can be improved."
What is our primary use case?
My primary use of the product is for the purpose of server virtualization. It is used for virtualizing our web servers.
How has it helped my organization?
It provides a free, easy means of virtualization which would otherwise be costly to implement.
What is most valuable?
I'm currently using the free version, so I'm limited as to what I find the most valuable in the broader set of product features. For me, just the ability to virtualize servers is the most valuable.
What needs improvement?
To improve the product, I would like to be able to use the high availability of XenServer but the free version does not have that feature. I would really like to have a different trial option so I could try out the broader set of available options even if it is for a limited time.
It's pretty complicated to set up the server order and that can be simplified in the product. If a server shuts down the order in which the virtual servers will come up should be something that I can designate easily. The order can make a difference in a successful startup.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the product for more than a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
As far as stability, I haven't had a problem. I highly recommend the product and I think it deserves good feedback as to stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is good. I really like the cloning option as it makes scaling easy. I don't have a problem with enhancing my setup. I'm very satisfied with it.
How are customer service and technical support?
I never request any technical support for the product directly from the company so I can not speak to the product support directly. I found the community and the forum very helpful when I had questions. The people there are very helpful. It is easy to find a solution if I have any problems.
How was the initial setup?
The setup for the product is pretty straightforward. I use it straight out of the box in the limited free version on two servers that allows me to configure virtualization. It's a pretty easy solution to install and use.
What about the implementation team?
I installed the product myself. I did not require assistance.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is nice to be able to have a product that is free to use. Although it is simple, it does what I need it to do. The version you pay for has more features. I know that I would like to use some of the features in the paid version, but I can not justify the cost at this time.
What other advice do I have?
On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate XenServer as an eight. There are some problems, but it is also not the full release version.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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