How Virtualization Software Compares

Virtual management software extends the depth and breadth of an enterprise software application across a global enterprise more cost effectively than purchasing individual application licenses does. Virtualization continues to gain momentum in the market as the economics of enterprise software increasingly favor the return on investment (ROI) of the technologies that comprise this area of enterprise application management (Mansell, 2005). The intent of this analysis is to compare the two virtual management software applications Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition and VMware vSphere Essentials.

Analysis of Virtual Management Software Solutions As is the case with many virtual management software solutions today, both the Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition and VMware vSphere Essentials can run on bare metal servers, or servers that have a Hypervisor optimized for hardware performance. This is the fastest growing area of virtual management software configuration and represents the future of virtual management software configuration. Both companies have presented their respective virtual management software solutions clearly from the context of the Hypervisor and Virtualization Types supported.

Citrix is a leader in virtualization technologies and presents the data and technical information for its products in a clear, easily understood structure. The Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition website http://www.citrix.com/products/xenserver/tech-info.html relies heavily on an icon-driven approach to defining navigation and overall appearance of the site. Due to this approach to managing the technical data of the Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition, it's clear what the specific attributes of the underlying architecture are.

These include support for x86, x64 and Power-based virtualization platforms, and support for the NFS, SAS, SATA and SCSI file system and storage system standards. The VMWare vSphere Essentials website is designed to provide technical data and navigate visitors to compare their various applications and platform products. Their website http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/compare provides an easily-used comparison table to provide quick comparisons of their products at the feature level.

The VMWare vSphere Essentials suite supports full virtualization, operating system virtualization, hardware assisted virtualization, x86 and x64 virtualization types. The Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition can be deployed only on a SaaS-based platform, which presents specific security risks relative to on premise options where the virtualization software would stay behind the firewall. This has implications for social network auditability and security over the specific configuration deployed (Burrus, 2010).

The VMware vSphere Essentials can be deployed only on premise, ensuring a higher level of security while reducing the overall need for external auditability and outside the firewall activity that could compromise the overall network (Burrus, 2010). Conclusion Both products, the Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition and the VMWare vSphere Essentials,.