In this blog post we will take a look at two of the most popular makers of virtualization software - Xen and VMware. Naturally, the products of either company have many advantages as well as drawbacks. With the following information we hope to bring you closer to choosing the best option for you.

Xen

One of the most important things that Xen software offers is extra memory. The feature granting extra memory is VP swap. It is useful for clients that require large memory overhead. However, when swaps are overused, there is a small chance that a server will overload, but a much greater one that essential applications will slow down. Also, Xen does offer a lot of memory, more than many other popular platforms, and this is important because certain applications, like apache, require quite a bit of memory. Still, when used on Xen they may slow everything down.Why is the extra memory that Xen offers important? Generally speaking, the more memory or Ram that is available, the less frequently a server will have to access data from the much slower hard disk.The swap space feature makes Xen a top platform among those who need a lot of memory. It works so that once the memory starts getting short, inactive processes are pushed aside to free up hard disk storage space.

VMware

VMware is currently the number one provider of virtualization software. Their software is compatible with Mac, Linux and Microsoft Windows. VMware utilize the CPU to run code whenever possible, and when it cannot, the software can actually re-write code to make it compatible. This process is known as binary translation. The translated code can be then stored as extra memory. For this reason, and many more, VMware runs much faster than its competitors/emulators, sometimes more than 80 percent faster than of other virtualization software. As you might expect, when it comes to price, VMware is a bit more expensive than competing software. The prices of their products range from $ 1,000 to nearly $ 6,000, you can see why cheap vps hosting providers don’t usually use vmware. Despite that VMware opens the list of the world’s most popular virtualization software creators. One of the reasons is the simple fact that they have been around for longer than anyone else and their products are well tested and respected. They also do not require any operating system modification to improve performance like many of their top competitors.

What will be the choice?

VMware is a better option for several reasons. To begin with, Xen relies on Paravirtualization, which requires operating system modification by a vendor to optimize performance. On the other hand, relying on emulation and binary transition in case of VMware causes any adjustments made by a vendor to be unnecessary. Another thing is that VMware boasts several features that help reduce downtime, while Xen has none such. Finally, Xen is simply to new to the market to be as reliable as thoroughly tested VMware.