Why Choose VMware Horizon View Over Citrix XenDesktop?

Why Choose VMware® Horizon View™
Over Citrix XenDesktop?
Why Choose VMware® Horizon View™?
Best End-User Experience
Organizations choose VMware Horizon View over other desktop
virtualization solutions for its unique advantages:
Horizon View and PCoIP performed better than or as well as
Citrix and HDX for network bandwidth consumption and
end-user experience for test cases performed by Principled
Technologies and documented in their report Desktop
Virtualization with VMware View Compared to Citrix
XenDesktop.
•Tight integration with VMware vSphere®
•Management simplicity
•Better value
•Best end-user experience
Tight Integration with vSphere
VMware Horizon View is built on and tightly integrated with VMware
vSphere—the only platform specifically designed to host virtual
desktops. vSphere delivers industry-leading high availability, business
continuity, and fault tolerance imperative to hosting business-critical
systems.
Citrix XenDesktop does not offer the same level of integration with
vSphere and consequently cannot offer the same storage and IOPS
savings as Horizon View.
Management Simplicity
Horizon View is easier to deploy and manage than competitive
offerings, as reported by the Tolly Group. Unlike Citrix’s point products that feature multiple non-integrated components, only
Horizon View offers an integrated solution built for desktop
virtualization. Administrators of vSphere appreciate the
consistent and simplistic management approach used in Horizon
View that has become the hallmark of VMware solutions.
Better Value
In a report done by Enterprise Management Associates that
calculated the total cost of deploying a VDI solution for Horizon
View, they found that Horizon View costs substantially less than
Citrix XenDesktop. View requires 19 percent fewer servers, uses 42
percent less storage, and has software licensing costs up to 67
percent less than XenDesktop. Even accounting for the Citrix
XenDesktop Trade-up program, Horizon View costs less. A
detailed analysis reveals that the hidden costs of trading up
include Subscription Advantage reinstatement fees, increased
support from doubling the number of licenses, and the additional
cost of vSphere licensing that comes standard with Horizon View.
Horizon View is by far the best value on the market.
Horizon View offers bandwidth optimizations and full virtual 3D
graphics—a software-only solution that provides large CapEx
savings. New in Horizon View 5.2 is Virtual Shared Graphics
Acceleration (vSGA) that enables shared access to physical GPU
hardware for 3D and high-performance graphical workloads. End
users now have even better performing 3D-graphics capabilities.
Citrix XenDesktop lacks a software-only solution for 3D graphics
and only provides vSGA using Microsoft Hyper-V with RemoteFX
or VGX using XenServer limited to NVIDIA GPUs.
More Organizations Use Horizon View
Organizations in industries as diverse as Healthcare, Education,
Federal Government, Financial, and Retail have chosen Horizon
View because it delivers the enterprise capabilities needed to
efficiently and securely run their organization while
simultaneously reducing complexity. Horizon View offers a
comprehensive set of enterprise-ready features at an affordable
price. Horizon View provides more value over Citrix XenDesktop,
as rated by the key differentiators outlined below.
V iew
5. 2
Xen Deskto p
5 .6
Full Virtual 3D Graphics over
WAN and LAN
3
7
Storage Acceleration with
vSphere Content-Based
Read Cache
3
7
Space-Efficient Sparse Disk
Utilization Integration with
vSphere
3
7
Full Flash-based Application
Support
3
Limited
Application Virtualization
3
7
View Composer Array
Integration with vSphere
3
7
Streamlined Installation and
Ease of Management
3
7
Table 1: Horizon View Key Differentiators
D ATA S H E E T / 1
Why Choose VMware Horizon View
Over Citrix XenDesktop?
In addition to being the top enterprise-class virtual desktop
solution on the market, Horizon View 5.2 offers numerous
advantages over Citrix XenDesktop. Market-Leading 3D Graphics Capabilities
Horizon View offers full virtual 3D graphics for 3D-based
applications and Windows Aero experience over LAN and WAN.
The Horizon View approach to graphics includes support for
Direct-X and OpenGL. It does not require a physical Graphics
Processing Unit (GPU) on the client or in the datacenter like other
solutions on the market. Horizon View is the only solution that can
support any client device such as Windows, Linux, Android, iPad,
and zero clients without upgrades or special client requirements.
Citrix requires a physical GPU at the endpoint or in the datacenter.
Virtual Shared Graphics Acceleration (vSGA)—new in Horizon View
5.2—enables shared access to the physical GPU hardware for 3D
and high-performance graphical workloads. Citrix XenDesktop only
provides vSGA using Hyper-V with RemoteFX or VGX on
XenServer.
Built-In Storage Cost Savings
Horizon View Composer Array Integration (VCAI) and SpaceEfficient (SE) sparse disk utilization combine to provide better
storage performance and cost savings for persistent desktops
than ever before. VCAI allows generic storage devices to leverage
Horizon View linked clone technology. SE sparse disk utilization
reduces the grain size and more efficiently utilizes every allocated
block by filling it with real data. Unused space is easily reclaimed
and Horizon View Composer desktops stay small. This results in
reduced storage capacity requirements for persistent desktops.
Citrix XenDesktop does not provide a generic solution for
optimizing VDI storage and it lacks storage efficiencies for
persistent desktops.
Reduction in Peak IOPS
Horizon View Storage Acceleration uniquely leverages vSphere
Content-Based Read Cache to provide up to 65 percent reduction
in peak IOPS. This dramatically reduces peak storage costs. Citrix
XenServer’s Intellicache is limited and only works with Machine
Creation Services (not enterprise-ready Provisioning Services).
Horizon View Storage Acceleration works with both linked and
full clones for the large enterprise and for small-to-medium
businesses alike.
Antivirus Scanning Offloading
VMware Horizon View, vSphere, and VMware vShield™ work
together to efficiently secure your virtual machines by offloading
antivirus and anti-malware scanning—without the need for
agents. The result is a simplified antivirus administration, higher
consolidation ratios, prevention of antivirus storms, and improved
performance. This powerhouse security and performance
combination allows organizations to limit internal network access
by VDI users and protect sensitive data on VDI desktops. Citrix
XenDesktop does not include vSphere and therefore lacks the
antivirus scanning offload capabilities of vShield.
Full Flash-Based Application Support
Flash-based applications such as interactive websites and user
authentication run seamlessly on Horizon View desktops because
the Horizon View protocol, PCoIP, uses server-side rendering—all
the time. Citrix XenDesktop is not able to run Flash-based
applications when client-side rendering is being used because
the virtual desktop is not aware of user input. XenDesktop
requires administrators to use website blacklists as a workaround
or to switch to host-side rendering, resulting in management
complexity. View’s Flash-based application support works
seamlessly and flawlessly without IT intervention.
Pre-Validated Horizon View Business Solutions
To address real-world business issues, VMware offers four prevalidated, pre-tested, end-to-end technology solutions. Each
solution includes easy step-by-step instructions to help users
quickly deploy and manage their virtual desktop environment.
VMware View-based solutions include partnerships with best-ofbreed providers such as Riverbed and Cisco for WAN optimization
and F5 for network load balancing among others. While Citrix is
focused on providing point tools, VMware is leading the way in
providing a holistic approach to the four most common business
use cases: Mobile Secure Workplace, Branch Office Desktop,
Business Process Desktop, and AlwaysOn Desktop.
World-Class Support and Service
Products and features are only part of the story. Support and
Professional Services complete the whole product and often
determine how successful an organization will be in adopting a
technology. With VMware, users know they will get the support
they need when they need it. VMware is renowned for high-quality
and responsive Support, Education and Professional Services. Horizon View Is the Best Choice
These innovations combined with streamlined installation and an
easy-to-use interface set Horizon View apart from the
competition. Conversely, Citrix is difficult to install and expensive
to manage. Millions of users can’t be wrong. Set your company
apart from the competition by choosing VMware Horizon View
and receive the most value for your virtualization dollar.
VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.com
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