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VMware Workstation vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

VMware vSphere
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
454
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (2nd)
VMware Workstation
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Virtualization solutions, they serve different purposes. VMware vSphere is designed for Server Virtualization Software and holds a mindshare of 17.3%, down 19.8% compared to last year.
VMware Workstation, on the other hand, focuses on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), holds 17.0% mindshare, up 13.1% since last year.
Server Virtualization Software
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
Shambhu Narayan  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-manage solution that has really good customer support compared to other market players
VMware Workstation makes it easy to manage all the resources that we are handling. VMware Workstation has reduced our infrastructure cost. If someone wants machines, I can create them easily using the solution. VMware Workstation is easier to manage than other workstations like Oracle Workstation. VMware Workstation is an easy-to-manage solution, and its support is really good compared to other market players. Overall, I rate VMware Workstation an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is very straightforward to implement."
"The DRS feature of this solution is a very valuable feature."
"It is easy to maintain our data machines and take snapshots with the solution."
"The tool's most valuable features are CPU virtualization and RAM allocation, which are better than those of other hypervisors."
"Stability and scalability are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The feature that I find very valuable is the ability to move images of virtual machines from different workspaces to other workspaces between different installations."
"The technical support is good and they are available over the internet."
"We find the solution simple and efficient to manage."
"The product is really easy to use."
"VMware Workstation works correctly and has more features compared to Oracle VirtualBox."
"VMware Player helps you to virtualize and install Ubuntu or any other operating system, even on a Windows laptop."
"VMware Workstation works correctly and has more features compared to Oracle VirtualBox."
"VMware Workstation allows multiple operating systems in the same physical machine."
"VMware is incredible and is designed for simple use. They help with efficiency."
"The solution's customer service is good."
"The solution's technical support team is excellent."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in Google Cloud. The reason thing there was, like, when I type something in the terminal and then immediately, I need to go to edit the certain like file for Node.js, for the server, or for Kubernetes. So I have to do it from the terminal to the editor."
"Technical support is not that great. It is too slow."
"Sometimes you can't find items and you need to log onto different physical servers to do technical tasks. I don't fully understand why this is the case."
"When it comes to cross-regional (e.g., someone in the US managing the China vSphere implementations), it can be a somewhat slow. I would recommend increasing the speed. While there has already been improvement there, I would like to see more."
"The price could be better."
"The licensing costs are expensive and most of the important features require a license."
"There is definitely room for improvement and that improvement should be in the licensing and the simplicity of procuring additional licenses or additional VMware products. Right now, it's very complex."
"In the past, little changes have broken things in vSphere. Going from 6.0, which worked perfectly fine on the Mac Pro, there were certain changes in hardware drivers, when 6.5 came out. Some were no longer present or had been deprecated. As a result, it didn't work on the Mac Pro anymore, which was business critical."
"The solution should provide a guide on its installation."
"Its price could be better."
"My experience with Workstation is limited, so I don't know all the functionalities of this tool. Maybe Workstation could add some more compatibility with other vendors."
"For some virtual machine configurations, you have to go to the text editor and make the configuration changes, which could be improved."
"It would be helpful if VMware Workstation included an in-built monitoring tool for monitoring things."
"One improvement is mouse emulation. Some people in the office want to use a five—or seven-button mouse like they're used to at home, but they can't with the workstation setup."
"The price of VMware Workstation is an area of concern where improvements are needed."
"I have had issues with the virtual network adapters in the past that has taken some time to troubleshoot."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing can still be improved for this solution."
"The tool is a bit expensive."
"This is quite an expensive product, although everything is included in the standard licensing fee."
"This is not the cheapest solution, but when you consider the stability of VMware vSphere, it is a great solution."
"The price is not an issue for our mid-sized or large-sized customers, but it can be expensive for our smaller customers."
"There is an annual cost for the use of this solution. The price is a little high in developing countries. If they were able to reduce the price they would receive more customers now and even more in the future."
"The licensing cost is strictly based on the number of CPUs that your hosts have."
"You get what you pay for."
"The product has a moderate price."
"The solution is moderately priced. I rate the pricing a six out of ten."
"The product is expensive."
"You need to pay for a license, but I don't think it costs that much. I think it's a one-time payment."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"With all its support and ease of use, VMware Player's pricing is fair."
"The price of the solution per workstation is approximately 200 Francs annually. We pay a total of 800 francs. Everything is included in the price such as the support."
"It has the best licensing modules."
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Answers from the Community

NC
Dec 15, 2021
Dec 15, 2021
VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM Workstation primarily to test environments to determine how well a solution will work before we put it into production. VM Workstation can also give us an idea of the issues we can anticipate and how best to address them. This solution is also great at creating labs for our team ...
2 out of 4 answers
Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 23, 2021
Both are VMWare products. simply v-sphere is a hypervisor Tier-1 technology stack VMWare workstation is a desktop release installed on windows or Linux OS if your requirement is limited need few VMs for testing purpose you can go for Workstation. but if you need production VMs you need a separate independent hardware server for v-sphere esxi hypervisor. 
Nov 24, 2021
VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM Workstation primarily to test environments to determine how well a solution will work before we put it into production. VM Workstation can also give us an idea of the issues we can anticipate and how best to address them. This solution is also great at creating labs for our team when working on certifications. VM Workstation can be a bit clunky, though. There is a lot of resource consumption and the overall performance could be a bit more effective. Visio stencil for technical documentation would be a nice improvement. This solution is relatively expensive.. VMware vSphere is very good from a recoverability point of view; everything can be stored much easier on a virtual server than a physical one. VMware vSphere is very good with memory sharing between VMs and CPU scheduling between VMs. The command-line tools integrate well with Microsoft products, so it’s easy to manipulate them. VMware vSphere is very stable and very scalable. The initial setup with VMware vSphere can be a bit complex. You need to have a good understanding of VMware. This solution does not permit hard partitioning. We found there were occasional bugs and errors and that the HTML5 is not up to par. The pricing and licensing options can get expensive. Conclusion: The two solutions are both VMware and perform amazingly. They are dependable and very reliable. VM vSphere is a hypervisor and is created for large-scale production. VM Workstation is best as a test environment, although many choose to use VM Workstation in front of VM vSphere and migrate test projects, results, and data documentation to VM vSphere.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
Which VMware solution would you go with - Workstation or vSphere?
VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM Workstation primarily to test environments to determine how well a solution will...
What do you like most about VMware Workstation?
The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up.
What needs improvement with VMware Workstation?
The product's integration capabilities are an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
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