Citrix XenServer: Product Editions and Licencing
The features included in XenServer vary by product edition. Even the free version is enterprise-ready. From XenServer 6.5 onwards, many features which were previously in the high-end editions (such as Site Recovery and Distributed Virtual Switching) are now included even in the free version The free version can be upgraded to one of the premium editions just by purchasing a licence and pointing your XenServers at a licence server with this licence on. No reinstallation is required.
Licencing is simply done on a per-socket basis. There is no need to purchase licences to gain central management of all your XenServers.
- Free Edition - Proven virtualization platform that delivers uncompromised performance, scale, and flexibility at no cost
- Standard Edition - As free edition, but including software maintenance and support from Citrix.
- Enterprise Edition - As Standard, but with vGPU and in-memory read caching to accelerate performance even more.
- XenServer for XenDesktop - Entitlement included in XenDesktop and covers virtualisation of XenDesktop services only (i.e. not print servers, Domain Controllers, etc.)
- XenServer for XenDesktop Platinum - As above but with all Enterprise features
Comparison of editions
 = Optional = Included | Free | Standard | Enterprise | XenDesktop | XenDesktop Platinum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 64-bit Hypervisor | | | | | |
| 64-bit control domain | | | | | |
| Includes technical support from Citrix | | | | | |
| Multi-server management | | | | | |
| XenCenter Management Console | | | | | |
| Active Directory Integration | | | | | |
| Role-based administration | | | | | |
| Virtual appliances (vApps) | | | | | |
| Memory Optimization | | | | | |
| Performance alerting and reporting | | | | | |
| VM disk snapshot and revert | | | | | |
| Live memory snapshot and revert | | | | | |
| XenMotion Live Migration | | | | | |
| Live migration with Storage XenMotion | | | | | |
| Heterogeneous Pools | | | | | |
| Automated hotfix deployment | | | | | |
| VMware conversion tools | | | | ||
| High Availability | | | | | |
| Site Recovery | | | | | |
| Open virtual switch (OVS) | | | | | |
| Distributed virtual switch controller (DVSC) | | | | | |
| Cross-host private networks | | | | | |
| Dynamic workload balancing | | | | ||
| GPU pass-thru | | | | | |
| Graphics processor virtualisation (vGPU) | | | | ||
| Host power management | | | | | |
| IntelliCache | | | | | |
| In-memory read caching | | |