Pricing for VMWARE and XEN for cloud?

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Posted by jacksony, 06-27-2011, 03:25 AM
Hey, At first we had thought VMWARE licensing (for minimum of 3 servers and onwards) is going to be much more expensive than using Xen. But we are advise XEN cost could shoot up reasonably more than vmware if we add-on more optional components and support in the future. Is that true?
Posted by bqinternet, 06-27-2011, 03:37 AM
I assume that you're talking about Citrix XenServer. Xen itself is open-source and free.
Posted by jacksony, 06-27-2011, 03:54 AM
Which XEN is better for virtualization? I am actually looking at the opensource one though.
Posted by Stratogen, 06-27-2011, 05:23 AM
VMware is focused on the enterprise client and as such is always going to cost more than a XEN equivalent. However, the benefit of VMware hosting is that the product is incredibly stable and the high availability features are second to none.
Posted by tulix, 06-28-2011, 01:43 AM
VMWARE is a great product and with SPLA licensing you an get it for a great price, but Citrix Xen looks very good too, especially for a one time $1,000 deal you can get a lot of features, especially if you'll get two licenses and two servers in HA mode. Opensource XEN I think will make you to write your own scripts to make it HA and to get other features of cloud hosting, but I am not sure 100% about that.
Posted by cartika-andrew, 06-28-2011, 09:59 AM
we have used and use both citrix xenserver (free version), vmware and citrix xenserver enterprise there is no functional difference between vmware and citrix xen server enterprise. they do each have their specific advantages - but, the key high availability components on both work the exact same and they are both very stable and effective. The issue with VMWare is the licensing model. Citrix was absolutely genious releasing their non HA version as free. You can sell local storage or SAN storage, non HA VPS solutions without licensing fees for citrix. With VMWare you cannot do this.. you can then sell cloud solutions with VMWare or Citrix Enterprise - and they are both very similar in reliablity and capabilities..
Posted by HostColor, 06-28-2011, 11:05 AM
I wouldn't say that VMware isn't good enough. It would be ridiculous. As far as for Xen server, it is not cheap at all. The Enterprise level sells at $2,500/year. I do not know about the price of a similar VMware product.
Posted by cartika-andrew, 06-28-2011, 11:18 AM
VMWare is a wonderful product - I just dont think its any better then Citrix Enterprise its $2500 for the FIRST year, and then $300-$400 per year after that for maintenance and updates in actuality - citrix enterprise is not much differently priced then VMWare - the difference however is that with Citrix you can use the entry level product for free - with VMware you cannot (or their free version does not offer enough to be overly useful - at least to us), and honestly, this is very useful as VPS solutions are not the same as Cloud solutions and as a provider it is nice to be able to have the lower costs associated with VPS solutions that Citrix offers. Once you get into a cloud type of setup - the obviously either citrix enterprise or vmware is fine (whichever you prefer I guess)... I would also throw KVM into the mix as well... Last edited by cartika-andrew; 06-28-2011 at 11:24 AM.
Posted by sailor, 06-28-2011, 02:09 PM
you can get vmware fully functional from a partner for around 7$ per gig per month of memory allocated. its very affordable.
Posted by KyleLC23, 06-28-2011, 02:54 PM
Which partners offer these type of solutions?
Posted by KyleLC23, 06-28-2011, 02:58 PM
Can you explain to me the feature differences between the free version on VMware and XenServer? I can seem to find a comparison between the free versions? What goes the High Availability (HA) feature on XenServer give you? I find their website is lacking descriptions of their products!
Posted by cartika-andrew, 06-29-2011, 12:53 AM
I "think" you mean $75/GB RAM per year correct? even at that rate, it is super expensive. Citrix charges $2400 per server (2 socket) for the first year and $400/month for support each year after. the cost is the same whatever your RAM density is. It is almost like VMWare is penalizing you for being more dense - seems backwards to me at least.. You receive no practical differences between citrix enterprise/platinum and VMWare - except for support. VMWare includes support in their price, whereas Citrix charges extra for support. So, if you need support - the pricing works out to be very much the same. For us, our techs handle all of this - we havent ever submitted a ticket to citrix, so, I see no reason to pay for it. For users that need the support, VMWare is nice in that it is all bundled in - which is why it is more expensive. It is nice Citrix made this ala carte so that the people that do not need support are not paying the huge fees for those that do need the support... Last edited by cartika-andrew; 06-29-2011 at 01:01 AM.
Posted by cartika-andrew, 06-29-2011, 01:00 AM
If I remember correctly, VMWare states their free version cannot be used for commercial purposes - so, I am not sure it matters which features are in there, providers like us cannot use their free version to sell non HA VPS solutions. Citrix is a no brainer here.. The HA feature will allow for live migrations between nodes (ie if one node fails, the VMs will be auto started on different hardware with available resources - and it is seamless). The HA feature also allows for seamless migrations of VMs to different nodes if they need more resources then are available on the current node it is hosted on. There are some other things as well, but, these are the key concepts of the HA portion
Posted by tulix, 06-29-2011, 01:06 AM
$7 per GB is a list price for hosting partners, so with the volume you get a discount and then make money on "partners" who will use your licenses for $7 per GB I am not sure where you're getting $2,400 for Citrix from. They have a free, $1,000, $2,500 and $5,000 versions and I would think as long as you are getting HA in $1,000 version it is more than enough to have that version (multiple by two). Are you referring to 2 licenses and $400 for the annual support? I think a smart approach would be to have several technologies, as long as you can support all of them, some vendors are charging for CPUs, some for the RAM, and some are free (but lacking some features like HA). If you can support all of them (and for experts that should not be a problem) then you'll be able to find a solution for each customers for the right price.
Posted by cartika-andrew, 06-29-2011, 01:10 AM
sorry - I misread this... $75/GB/month seemed awlful high - thought it was a typo.. the enterprise version actually costs $2000 or less for year one through a partner and then $300-$400/year from citrix for ongoing maintenance/upgrades.. You are right though, you could use the $1000 version for HA - but, there are functions/features in the Enterprise we make use of, so, that is just where we have standardized.. I agree, you should have both (and even add KVM into the mix to be honest) - on the "public" cloud side - it is much more difficult - on the private cloud side, it is much easier. having said this, there is a ways to go for the software/automation side. Difficult to get a proper and fully automated portal up for one platform - doing it for multiple platforms will come with time I would imagine. Thanks
Posted by boskone, 06-29-2011, 06:46 AM
I know a provider who used to pay $30 a VM for VMware (spla license) as a host
Posted by sailor, 06-29-2011, 10:44 AM
I cant not tell you due to rules against self promotion.
Posted by sailor, 06-29-2011, 10:47 AM
VMWare VCD also uses what they call DRS to do active load managment which is nothing short of amazing for administration. It also allows you do IP address assignment automatically through the system and allow users to custom allocate their own vms based on a global resource pool they buy - so they can spin up as many custom vms as they want until they have fully allocated their bulk resources. the management tools are also great.
Posted by MikeTrike, 06-29-2011, 11:01 AM
Citrix XenServer licenses can be about 15% cheaper through a good reseller. So for XenServer Advanced (the brings out HA) is about $850 per hypervisor. Another thing I like about XenServer is the per hypervisor licensing. They don't care about the number of sockets, amount of RAM, etc.

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