What is the difference between a cloud and server?

Virtualization vs Cloud

• Possible Duplicate: http://serverfault.com/questions/278532/what-is-the-difference-between-a-cloud-server-a-virtual-server-and-a-dedicated-se Can anyone explain the difference between virtualization and cloud (w.r.t. citrix and openstack) ??? I have a server installed with Citrix and another with openstack; local- in my office. In their own documentation, Citrix says it is virtualization where as openstack says it is a private cloud.... I have searched on many blogs. They are saying both are different. I am really confused. I could'n find any differences !!!!!

• Answer:

  Virtualization is a technology where many servers are run on a single piece of hardware. IBM has been doing it for decades called LPARs. Currently platforms like vSphere, and Hyper-V, are the virtualization platforms used by the most people. Private cloud is pretty marketing speak for running a group of virtualization hosts (the physical machines) so that you can quickly and easily deploy new servers into the "cloud". Citrix isn't really a virtualization platform like vSphere or Hyper-V (or Zen or any of the smaller packages). It gives you a physical system that applications are installed on. The end user then connects to the Cirtix server basically over RDP running the application on the server, but showing the application on the users desktop. Microsoft has a competing technology called App-V (Application Virtualization). I can't speak to openstack as I'm not familiar with it.