Likelihood to Recommend Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops is best in class for offering a great user experience in VDI, server-based sessions, or published apps. Using additional GPU allows uses like rich video, 3D apps, and great modern uses (MS Teams, Office 365, Zoom, etc.). Citrix products are very well integrated (Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops used with Citrix ADC is the best way to secure access and monitor everything).
Read full review Eco4Cloud is well suited in VMware farms that have standard VM deployments, especially with small VMs, with nothing blocking vMotion and hardware fully compatible with IPMI 2.0 (minimum). It doesn't work well if many VMs are nodes in a Microsoft cluster because they would be unmovable and therefore their host would never be put in stand-by mode. If every host in the cluster has at least one guest VM that is a node of a Microsoft cluster, no host in the cluster will ever be put in stand-by mode.
Read full review Pros Enables remote access anywhere, to any device which eliminates managing the endpoints how traditional VPN would require. Integrates well with modern applications to offer optimized user experiences similar to native applications which increases user acceptance. Extremely flexible in how policies are applied to different use cases to ensure the appropriate security mitigations are in place with minimal effort. Easy to maintain and expand environments to fit business needs. Read full review It consolidates workloads in VMware clusters using an algorithm that seems to work better than VMware DRS. It keeps headroom for workload peaks and to withstand the number of host failures set for the cluster in vCenter. If the workload is very variable, Eco4Cloud will not continuously turn a host on and off but it will settle to keep the host running. It sort of "rightsizes" the cluster keeping only the right number of hosts running. This is another main difference when comparing Eco4Cloud with VMware DRS/DPM which strictly follows the workload and sometimes isn't fast enough in turning on the hosts when the workload is ramping-up. To do a good job Eco4Cloud needs to analyze the hosts and the VMs. Therefore, the troubleshooting component of Eco4Cloud can figure out if there are problems in the configuration of the hosts (e.g. vMotion settings). It can also determine if a VM is stuck and can't vMotion (e.g. using the physical CD-ROM) or if it's oversized or undersized. Something Eco4Cloud has and others don't is a technology named Smart Ballooning. With Smart Ballooning Eco4Cloud recovers unused RAM from the VMs and gives it back to the host way before the host goes over the 94% RAM threshold. This allows us to reach higher levels of overbooking. Read full review Cons A single console to manage the environment. The configuration is a bit complicated and we have hired Citrix administrators. But it's a good solution. User profiles need improvement. They could use more stability and more functionality as well as user profile redirection. Read full review It would be useful to have a version that works with OpenStack. It should be made compatible with VMware VSAN. It would be useful to have a version that works with hybrid clouds using the new "vMotion anywhere" or share nothing vMotion feature. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Because it has been a mainstay of our business for many years.
Read full review Usability Getting the environment setup took me three months of off and on work, with 3 complete rebuilds of the environment. Utilizing the WebUI to access the environment had presented so many random issues that we had to require end users to use the Citrix Reciever App. As it was the only stable solution. Aside from that, it hasn't required much admin intervention since the stand-up was completed.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Xendesktop did a great job with HA of all the components.
Read full review Performance The performance of XenDesktop is the best in the industry because of the fine-tuned protocol and years of updating. Overall, I don't think there is a better performer on the market. The question is if the added complexity of running XenDesktop is really worth the performance gain. While the latest version of XenDesktop is the easiest to deploy so far, it is still more challenging than the competitors.
Read full review Support Rating The support is great when you get an engineer that knows what they are doing but getting that individual sometimes takes a while. Overall, they are professional and polite and competent in their knowledge. Sometimes the cases are open for an extended period of time which becomes very frustrating when dealing with critical issues.
Read full review In-Person Training I was self trained
Read full review Online Training Easy to understand and learn at my own pace
Read full review Implementation Rating Take it slow and read the directions each step of the way. If you are not familiar with Citrix products, use a reseller or other experienced engineer to assist you in the setup of your environment
Read full review Alternatives Considered I never had the chance to test other products like these since whenever I read and searched online during the first phase it was only popping up Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops.... so we got in touch with the sales department and the rest is history. After the technical consultation, it was more obvious that the implementation would have been very easy and the security layers are very well for my company.
Read full review We compared the consolidation feature and we obtained exactly the same amount of servers in stand-by. The main difference was that Eco4Cloud turned off the unneeded hosts in 2 days while
VMTurbo Operations Manager required one day per host. This behavior is caused by the different algorithms implemented by these two products. Compared to Eco4Cloud, VMware DRS/DPM was very aggressive (we tried it in
vSphere 5.0). We haven't tested it with
vSphere 6 yet.
Read full review Scalability Easily scalable
Read full review Return on Investment XenApp has allowed us to continue support of legacy applications and all access of those applications to users across the globe with any device. XenApp can also manage software licenses by restricting number of users, number of concurrent sessions, or combination of both to required specification. While initial investment in XenApp can be costly, continuing support and upgrade are very cost effective and product stability is excellent. While there are competing products from Microsoft and VMware, when it comes to remote application access, XenApp is the best of breed. Read full review Eco4Cloud causes a reduction in power consumption both on old VMware clusters and especially on new ones. It also causes a delay in CapEx investments because you buy more hosts only when really needed. Read full review ScreenShots Eco4Cloud Workload Consolidation Screenshots