Citrix XenServer vs ZStack
Citrix XenServer
citrix.comZStack
zstack.ioSide by side
| Figure | Citrix XenServer | ZStack |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 2 |
| Spec score · Virtualization Management Software | 8.4 (#5) | 8.1 (#7) |
| Availability | XenServer supports high availability policies that restart virtual machines on another host if one host fails. | ZStack Cloud Enterprise includes high-availability policies for business continuity. |
| Founded | Citrix states it was founded in 1989. | 2015 |
| Headquarters | Citrix lists its corporate headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States. | Shanghai, China |
| Security | XenServer 9 reduces attack surface with a custom control-domain operating system and disables HTTP on the management interface for new installations, requiring TLS connections. | ZStack's security solution lists virus protection, access control, intrusion detection and prevention, virtual patching, integrity monitoring, and log auditing. |
| Virtualization | Its hypervisor pools compute, storage, and networking resources for dynamic allocation to virtual machines. | ZStack Cloud can manage KVM and VMware vCenter resources through the same interface. |
Plans
In their own words
Citrix XenServer
Citrix XenServer is an enterprise virtualization platform for workloads in on-premises and hybrid environments. Its hypervisor pools compute, storage, and networking resources and allocates them to virtual machines. Hosts require XenServer OS on dedicated 64-bit x86 bare-metal servers, and the listed guest architecture is x86_64. The platform supports snapshots, GPU acceleration, high-availability policies, and live migration between hosts. A pool can contain up to 32 hosts. XenCenter runs on supported Windows systems; a standalone remote CLI can be installed on RPM-based Linux distributions. XenServer 9 uses a custom control-domain operating system, and new installations disable HTTP on the management interface, requiring TLS. GPU pass-through supports NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel GPUs; NVIDIA vGPU support for XenServer 9 is preview-only and not fully supported. XenServer is paid, with pricing available on request and a 90-day trial that does not include official support. The listed trial edition supports a three-host pool.
ZStack
ZStack Cloud is self-hosted infrastructure software for managing compute, networking, and storage in data centers. The product range spans private cloud, virtualization, AI infrastructure, hyperconverged infrastructure, storage, networking, container cloud, and multi-cloud management. ZCF combines compute, storage, networking, containers, and security in a software-defined private-cloud platform with a unified portal, operations, and identity management. It manages hosts, disks, images, and snapshots, and supports scheduling and elastic scaling. ZStone provides block, file, and object storage; Zaku manages Kubernetes clusters and containers alongside virtual machines. ZStack Cloud Enterprise integrates with Alibaba Cloud and offers a RESTful API, backup and recovery options, high-availability policies, and a UI migration service for mainstream Windows and Linux cloud hosts. Listed free plans provide full features for three months for ZStack ZSphere or one year for ZStack Cloud. ZStack describes its products as enterprise infrastructure, including for private clouds in organizations' own data centers. ZLR enterprise disaster recovery is marked as coming soon.