View 4.6 vs XenDesktop 5
The competition in the VDI space is fierce and VMware is slowly closing the gap with the features their products are offering compared to the competition.
Although the gap is closing VMware is still very much in the lead when it comes to setting up and administrating the virtual environment.
On the YouTube channel vmwareview there are four video’s released showing some administrating tasks for both VMware view 4.6 and Citrix XenDesktop 5.
Each video aims at a different task:
- Video one is about creating a master image
- Video two shows how to create a desktop pool
- Video three shows how the add/remove a desktop
- Video four is showing how to remove a desktop pool
In each video you can see that VMware view 4.6 takes a lot less steps to take and is not complicated to manage. One thing to keep in mind is that both VMware view 4.6 and Citrix XenDesktop 5 are setup in a VMware vSphere infrastructure. Now I don’t have experience with Citrix XenDesktop but I can imaging that their can be less steps to take if it was installed in a Citrix XenServer infrastructure, though I don’t believe it will be much less then was showed in the video’s.
I think these video’s can give a good impression for people on the manageability differences between VMware View 4.6 and Citrix XenDesktop 5. The video’s alone should not be the soul reason for you to choose for either product, but in my opinion it sure does count in making a decision and for me VMware is showing why they are still the marked leader in virtualization.
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Having worked with both the products , must admit that complexity for the administrative tasks from setting up to managing the environment is quite complex in CITRIX when compared to VMware View but then complexity does comes with better end user experience. Application Virtualization with XenApp is still a strong plus for CITRIX when compared to VMware.
Manageability is important but how long it takes to install something is fairly low down on the priority list for how good the product is. I’ve worked with XenDesktop on both ESX and XenServer and have experience with View as well and do find with XenDesktop (on either hypervisor) that Citrix still hasn’t completely integrated their different purchases. Provisioning (PVS) still requires too many separate tasks to manage desktops.
However, this really isn’t what is important. Client experience is key with VDI and nothing can beat Citrix ICA/HDX. This is a key winner for XenDesktop over VMware View especially over a WAN. XenDesktop is also extremely easy to plug into an existing Citrix infrastructure which most medium/large enterprises already have. Same client for XenApp/XenDesktop. Same Web interface, same secure gateway. This means if you have an existing XenApp setup and your clients connect already remotely, adding XenDesktop is as simple as adding another farm to your web interface, don’t underestimate tha value of this plug-in approach.
Timing set up is not important. Client experience is No. 1 and No. 2 is ensuring your OS build is optimised perfectly for VDI and you need that regardless of the broker you use.