This Collaborative Product Evaluation compares the functional capabilities of several leading virtual machine platforms for servers based on x86 and x86-64 processors, including:

Hyper-V, Microsoft's server virtualization technology that is integrated with the Windows Server 2008 operating system.

VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware's infrastructure virtualization software based on its ESX Server virtual machine platform.

XenServer 5.0, the server virtualization platform from Citrix, which is based on the Xen hypervisor.

The chart above shows summary ratings for the evaluated products, based on an average of their ratings for 60 technical details, which are categorized into the five major functional areas below.

To see how the products compare in each functional area, click on one of the links:

	Hypervisor (47 ratings)
	Storage & Network Integration (24 ratings)
	Virtual Infrastructure Support (16 ratings)
	Manageability (30 ratings)
	Deployment Factors (66 ratings)