Citrix XenServer is an enterprise-class and cloud-proven server which allows in a centralized way the multiple server management. Live migration of data in a secured and success manner is a key feature of this server. Xen server is maintained as free software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL2). In terms of computing technology, Xen is a virtual machine for x86, x86-64, Itanium and PowerPC 970 architectures.
I have some points on comparison of Xenserver with OpenVZ which is as follows.
Xen Server is based on a paravirtualization platform which basically works by establishing an intermediate between the operating system and the hardware which manages different hosts where as OpenVZ is a system-level virtualization platform. OpenVZ is based on a single Linux kernel and needs both host and guest OS to be Linux. But, in XenServer, guest OS could be non Linux machine. The paravirtualization concept enables XenServer to alter their kernel modules and make best use of swapping technology in memory allocation.
These days, most of the enterprises run their hosting platform on Xen server as because of the performance and ability of moving guest host’s between the main virtual host’s with virtually no down time!
However, Xen utilizes more resources compared to OpenVZ. There is no VP swap feature present in OpenVZ. So, this server can not handle high memory requirement during running of applications. I mostly recommend Xen VPS hosting for the flexibility it can provide while running applications such as encoding video, compiling big projects etc. which generally require high memory overhead.
After doing lot of comparisons and investigations, I feel to suggest you guys to go for Xen Server virtualization platform for its following features.
• Xen delivers better data center flexibility and consolidation capability compared to OpenVZ.
• It provides a solid environment for testing and development.
• Xen increases average server utilization by appropriate use of memory and computing resources.
• It keeps applications up with no down time by its robust management quality and running applications much faster in the data center.
• The paravirtualization technology in Xen Server allows it to move quickly from one virtual server machine to another in an efficient manner.
• It ensures high performance and business continuity without any code or data leakage.
• It generally boosts both developer‘s as well as tester’s productivity level by its efficient performance.
• It reduces service deployment times as it uses memory swaps by which there is little chance that the system will get overloaded.
• As far as cost of server, SAN, network and infrastructure are considered Xen is always cheaper compared to Open VZ. So, here management overhead is definitely reduced.
• Xen servers have been found to be managed with lower power and deployment costs with good facilities.
• The ease of use of Xen server is so flexible that many IT firms like to go for this.
• It has better price and performance compared to Open VZ.
• It is more efficient than Open VZ technology.
• Citrix Xen server is completely OS independent where as Open VZ is dependent on OS i.e. Linux based.
• In couple of years Xen was able to establish a strong relationship with Microsoft due to its compability.
• It is totally followed and implemented on open standards.
• Xen server always supports the latest hardware virtualization, which enforces the administrators to prefer this.
• Xen server has been always one of the best ways to virtualize Presentation Server.