Guest post by InfoWorld’s Keith Schultz provides an in-depth comparison of enterprise-grade virtual desktop infrastructures from Citrix and VMware. ‘As in my comparison of entry-level VDI solutions, my goal was to see what it would take to deploy a complete VDI solution based on Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 and VMware View 5 for up to 50 users,’ Schultz writes. ‘When compared to the Kaviza, NComputing, and Pano Logic solutions, XenDesktop and View take much more effort, knowledge, and time to get up and running. But for companies that need to be able to grow and manage a large number of virtual desktop users, XenDesktop and View are the only way to go.’
I don’t know.
From my experience if your business uses XenApp (a lot do) then they always choose XenDesktop, mainly because the configuration looks just like the XenApp config tools, making the admin staff feel more comfortable using it. XenApp however will work fine in a vSphere/View environment.
While XenDesktop being able to run on Citrix XenServer, VMware vSphere, or Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor seems like a bonus, I have rarely seen anyone NOT using VMware vSphere, VMware’s product seems more mature. VMware started this industry, and as a result has more experience which makes CIO’s lean toward them. I personally think any 3 is good, but I too would recommend vSphere
If your company is small, and doesn’t need to make granular settings to your VDI then I would recommend View. It’s ridiculously easy to setup and maintain.
If your large business is planning to roll out a large VDI infrastructure, to fit many needs, then XenDesktop will give you the granular settings you’ll want, and since your IT staff is probably large already you’ll have the man power to test, test, test, and then deploy.
Edited 2011-12-18 21:44 UTC