what is your preference and why for xen vs vmware - especially to attract more corporate clients. performance / ease of use / cost / corporate image and preference??

now that xen has been acquired I understand that they are owned by a large company and they are changing the pricing.

VMware is great for internal use but not suitable to hosting companies. Thats why you see Xen offered in so many places and VMware in almost none.

I think people use vmware on windows environment, easier than xen

Xen is open source and can be managed with a variery of 3rd party management tools. It is comparatively cheaper while providing the same basic functions.

You cant really compare these two as you are comparing a EMC Owned product to an Open Source product.

HOWEVER, you can compare Vmware ESX to "XEN" Enterprise.

Load balancing, clustering, iscsi, fc storage, etc.

To be honest, I would have to say neither! I'm an OpenVZ / Virtuozzo person

VMware is an enterprise solution and much more expensive than Xen, Xen is the best solution for web hosting and it is also used by Virtualiron as an enterprise solution.

Windows is making it's own virtual machine now, and it's pricing for licenses will be a fraction of VMware. I think that we will be saying bye bye to VMware pretty soon unfortunately-I never like when the big guys decide that they want an even bigger slice of the pie and push everyone else out of business.

Honestly, VMware has Microsoft cornered in thie market right now. While Microsoft might be offering a cheaper product in the future, VMware has them beat. The VMware ESX server is extremely powerful, and Microsoft offers nothing like it. I've used both Virtual Server and VMware server, and those are comparable products. I prefer VMware however. For a hosting environment though, I'd be enclined to agree that XEN is better for VPS hosting. The reason I say that, XEN is easier to integrate at the moment with a lot of the hosting software out today. Now for a virtual dedicated server that you might provision manually, I'd go for VMware in that case. It depends on integration and how automated you want things to be.

ok dude vmware is free. so Vmware FTW

Neither, I prefer Virtuozzo.

Go for Virtuozzo, it's more flexible and efficient and have some unique capabilities.

I have to agree. Personally I like HyperVM w/OpenVZ

Most of relieble companies like vpslink.com, vpsmedia.com or gazzin.com use Xen. Most have that as one option to chose from the list. I think that is obivious that Xen looks much more better.

Think Xen is used by the greater part of hosting companies.