VMware Workstation Reviews

We use VMware Workstation for cybersecurity features while testing virtual machines in our environment.

The platform’s most valuable feature is snapshot.

They could include official support for macOS virtualization within VMware Workstation.

I rate the platform’s scalability a ten out of ten.

I have worked with multiple virtual machine technologies. In terms of performance, VMware Workstation can be resource-intensive, particularly when compared to alternatives like Hyper-V or VirtualBox.

The initial setup is easy. However, it could be a learning curve for new users and require training. I rate the process a ten out of ten.

The platform saves much time as it snapshots the testing process for reuse across different environments. It proves crucial in a development workflow by allowing the creation of a base image. It takes snapshots at different development stages or scenarios, and teams can effortlessly switch back to specific points for testing. The snapshot functionality can isolate and manipulate guests independently, impacting only the host system.

It has sped up the project management process. We don’t have to go back and reinstall it from the beginning.

The cloning feature in VMware Workstation benefits operations such as penetration testing and ethical hacking. We can clone a box and ship it to the customer for easy deployment.

I rate it a nine out of ten.

I mainly use this platform for labs. So, I work with several different clients that have several different apps. And if they use VMware, it's a really good place for me to go and spin up a quick sandbox where I can test certain things for them. So that's my main use case.

If customers are leveraging a certain vendor product, I can usually get a virtualized version of that product, and I spin it up in my lab. Then I can do some testing, I can run through run books on how to do certain backups, how certain configurations will affect workflows, and things like that. That's probably my highest use case.

VMware Workstation has tons of third-party support, the largest partner ecosystem. VMware works with a ton of different vendors. They have plugins for almost everything. Other hypervisors lack the flexibility that VMware Workstation offers. Hyper-V is extremely focused on the Microsoft ecosystem and has some plug-ins. Nutanix is even lower on that list, lacking compatibility or plug-ins with other third-party vendors. They don't have as large partner support and an ecosystem as VMware.

It would be great if VMware Workstation had more networking options and compatibility, that would be great. I would like to deploy virtual switches and play around with networking a bit more. Otherwise, I have to deploy ESXi Virtual Edition and emulate it, which is painful and clunky.

In future releases, if there could be a built-in tool in VMware Workstation that allows me to convert Hyper-VVMs directly to VMware VMs.

Another area of improvement is pricing. It could be a bit tricky to upgrade. So, there could be an improvement in the upgrade path from Standard to above.

I have been using VMware Workstation for ten years. We use Workstation 17. 

The stability of the solution is great. I have not had any customers with issues, apart from the day-zero incidents, which happened to everyone, whether you are Microsoft, VMware, or anyone else. Other than that, we have not experienced any major core stability issues.

My customers believe VMware is extremely scalable with 100s nodes and hosts.

I've never had to use VMware technical support, but overall, customers are very happy.

The initial setup is very easy.

It was worth it to pay the licensing fee to improve my job and be more efficient.

The solution is very expensive. VMware is expensive. Licensing can be tricky. For example, I recently had a client running VMware vSphere Essentials and wanted to migrate to a more scalable solution. However, they had no choice but to purchase a completely new license and deploy a completely new instance of VMware.

So, there could be an improvement in the upgrade path from Standard to above.

VMware Workstation is a great tool for learning. Go for it 100%. It's worth your time, and it's a perpetual license, so you can keep using it forever. It's a great learning experience and a great tool.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

My company uses VMware Workstation to create a test lab and to access our customers' VPN connections so that we can isolate working with customers from your own computer, making it more secure.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that VMware Workstation is a proven technology in the market. One experiences less hassle when handling VMware Workstation, especially when compared with tools like Hyper-V and Oracle VM. With VMware's extension, working with USB devices and other products is much easier.

The price of VMware Workstation is an area of concern where improvements are needed.

The utilization is an area of concern in VMware Workstation. The utilization is an area where improvements are needed so that the CPU runs at 100 percent from the host. In some cases, if you copy a virtual machine, the tool offers very little resource for the virtual machine. The resource management of the product needs to improve.

I have been using VMware Workstation for nine years. I use VMware Workstation Pro. I am a system integrator and user of the product.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The scalability of the solution is excellent. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

My company has around 50 users of the tool.

The product's initial setup phase was simple.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

VMware Workstation is an expensive tool. I rate the product's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low or good price.

Against VMware Workstation, my company evaluated options like Microsoft Hyper-V and VirtualBox. My company chose VMware Workstation because of its good USB connections and other peripheral device connections.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

We use VMware Player mostly to connect the server hosting the client. I use the solution more like a manager.

The most valuable feature of VMware Player is the ability to snapshot with or without memory.

When you go to work on a server, it opens up the whole window, and that causes an error inside VMware Player. You'll see it on your web front, and you'll be unable to change the resolution. You can't manage any of them without clicking on them.

I have worked with VMware Player for about three years.

VMware Player is a pretty stable solution. I haven't had any problems connecting the solution to a much older client appliance. It didn't have any issues with what it was supposed to do.

VMware Player's scalability works fine. You could potentially add as many users as you want on it, and I haven't had any issues adding multiple clients.

VMware Player's technical support is good. Overall, the technical support team gets back to you pretty quickly.

Positive

VMware Player's initial setup is straightforward. Once you install the solution, you can build your own local cluster or connect an external one.

VMware products are usually pricey. With all its support and ease of use, VMware Player's pricing is fair.

Overall, I rate VMware Player a nine out of ten.

I'm a teacher and I show it to students. I use the solution for virtualization for testing some systems and features in IT, for example, containers. 

The most valuable aspect is virtualization. It is very strong on workstations and PCs.

It is easy to implement the product.

There is a free version.

It's stable.

The solution is missing a snapshot feature.

The solution can be expensive.

It's not as easy to use as, for example, Oracle's Virtual Box.

I started using the solution 11 or 12 years ago. I've used it for a while at this point. 

I haven't had any stability issues. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

I have not noted any scalability at all with this product.

I also use Oracle Virtual Box. I use it more regularly. I now use Workstation very little. It's also less comfortable to use than Oracle. Both are easy to set up.

The implementation process of the solution is very straightforward and simple. It's not overly complex. 

I have it for personal use or just to teach and therefore I don't find it expensive. I use the free version. It's a bit expensive, the paid version. 

I'm an end-user.

Beyond the high cost, it is a very good product. I'd rate it eight out of ten.

I am a system integrator and have experience with many different IT products. I regularly work with a lot of different technologies. Recently, I have been working on configuring VMware and virtualization. For example, I am considering upgrading the ESXi.

We run VMware Workstation locally. You can run it on AWS but that's not necessary for what we're doing. There are use cases where it will be applicable but I'm dealing with a construction company, as opposed to a heavily vested IT company. The use cases are quite a bit more laid back.

We primarily use it for virtualization. We image older systems, so we have a backup copy that's immediately accessible. Those are the major use cases.

Virtualization is awesome when you're running particular applications and you need to cookie-cutter them, which is what I'm doing. I've got the mining rig pre-built, and I just clone it, set the number of CPUs, and let it run. It can't get easier than that.

I would prefer running off of virtualization for everybody's computer. I would just load the images in them if I could, but that would be asking too much of the consumers, so I don't do stuff like that.

Having a user-friendly interface is important for me. I'm not a coder, even though I do a little bit of programming. Also, I don't use the command-line interface when I can avoid it. When I do have to use it, I look up what I'm supposed to type and then type it.

Virtualization in and of itself is the use case feature. We are able to simultaneously run multiple operating systems in a single machine and have virtually no performance hit. I've got 16 cores and 32 threads, so nobody cares if I use 24 of them for mining and use the rest of them for my desktop. It's basically like having a free computer. With all of the resources already paid for and running, why wouldn't you virtualize when you have that many cores? It doesn't make sense not to.

If you've only got four cores, then I would understand if you don't want to virtualize for that purpose. But if you do, why wouldn't you virtualize and have an unRAID server and a video-optimized system, and another one for something else? It just depends on what suit you want to wear that day.

Technical support is an area that needs improvement.

The interface is a little wonky and needs to be improved. Honestly, the biggest problem with VMware is not with their interface, as much as their support for the interface.

In order for a virtual machine to run on your system, you have to set the hardware up correctly. If it's an AMD, you need to have virtualization enabled on the CPU. That means going into the BIOS and making sure that your VX is set if it's Intel, or an AMDV is enabled. But, you don't actually find that on an AMD. Rather, you have to go to the SPV and check the box that's there. It would behoove VMware as a company to have better documentation that shows people how to do all of this setup.

It wasn't too big of a deal for me to figure it out because I've been working with it, but I could imagine that someone who's not familiar with the BIOS and not familiar with SPV could get into a lot of trouble just to set it up for virtualization. That's unfortunate. I'm not saying they should make the interface overly simple to use. I'm just saying that they should make their documentation easy to access for the stuff that you need. Specifically, if you're in an area of the application, it should have an information link that goes into detail and sub-detail at that point. That would be good.

I understand the segmentation of different markets that they're trying to achieve in terms of sales, but it would be really nice if they just enabled you to scale. You're limited to a certain number of threads as it is now. It might be 32 threads or 32 CPUs max on VMware Workstation. ESXi can go to 128 or even 700-and-something if you scale it up to vSphere. However, it would be nice if someone purchased VMware and then was able to add those feature sets onto it. That's how their software's actually built. It's all VMware Workstation, yet depending on the configuration and how much you pay, some can allocate 738 CPUs and other ones can only do 32.

I have been working with VMware Workstation for 15 years.

They're very stable. VMware is remarkable in this regard. Given how well it works, I think that it's insane that people are doing it any other way.

I ran a miner in Windows directly, and it would occupy all of the cores and slow down the computer and cause a ton of problems. Interestingly, it wouldn't yield as much as this virtualized Linux system would in Windows, on the same machine.

I'm not sure how it makes sense that a virtualized machine inside Windows works better than something where you eliminate the middle man and you just run it in Windows, but that's exactly the case.

When you run these virtualized systems, they're running on bare iron, pretty much. They may be in Windows, and Windows might be using other stuff, but they're going to the CPU and saying, "This one, this one, this one, this one is mine," and it just runs.

This means that you get all of the performance advantages of Linux, and none of the overhead of Microsoft spying on you. This is why I think that building every computer out there as a baseline virtualized machine makes a lot more sense. You just press a button on your keyboard, and there's your Windows. Press another one, there's your Mac. Press another one, there's your Linux. Have them all be able to swap files back and forth, and everybody could be having the best of all possible worlds for whatever kind of system they want. Ultimately, Linux would grow and win out.

However, as it is, you give them a bunch of money and they tend to develop theirs a little faster. Linux may be the best system in terms of efficiencies because it's monetized to do so. All of those companies with all Linux servers know that by cutting away the fat, they make the thing work better and they earn more money with the hardware they've spent so much money on. That's the financial incentive.

The technical support is good, although it could be better.

I would rate them a three out of five.

I have experience with some similar products. For example, Cisco has one that you can use for free. VMware is what I've been primarily using for the past five years.

I choose to work with VMware because I like the interface and its support for development. I also keep up to date with the most recent versions. For example, there was an update that happened this morning.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The installation is really easy, aside from little issues that it doesn't necessarily tell you when you're cloning something. For example, it may not point out which thing to click on but you can reasonably guess because it's at the top of the list, and it works.

I'm still in the process of tweaking the miners, so optimizing the system is an ongoing process. With this particular software, things change depending on the situation with the mining because you're working on a large network.

It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to clone the system once you've got the image done. The image that I made yesterday, I probably spent an hour or so setting up, and then I can cookie cutter. However, I'm continuing to look into how to optimize it for the number of CPUs, whether two processors with six cores are better than one processor with 12 cores, etc.

The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year.

That said, I'm not doing anything major. If I had vSphere and multiple servers, and I was loading up 700 processes, then it would be a different story. However, I'm not at that level.

The reason that I chose and continue to like VMware is that it's a commercial product and it's funded and it develops and they're improving it. I love open-source, but I understand that some levels of development are more easily attained when there's a monetary incentive behind it.

Overall, this is a good product and I recommend it. My advice for anybody who is considering VMware Workstation is to go ahead and implement it. That said, there is always room for improvement.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We provide the solution to our customers. It is used mainly for testing purposes and installing different products on different operating systems.

The product is very easy to use. The tool’s GUI is very user-friendly.

The solution freezes sometimes. The performance must be improved. The tool should provide more dashboards.

I have been using the solution for more than 15 years.

I rate the tool’s stability a nine out of ten.

We have a few customers. We need only one administrator to deploy and maintain the tool.

The initial setup is very easy. If we’re experienced, most products are easy to install. We just have to download and install the product. The time taken for deployment depends on the resources. Generally, the deployment takes three or four minutes.

The tool is not the cheapest. It costs $200. We have to pay for support additionally. I rate the pricing a three out of ten. There are other solutions that are free. The solution’s price is good because it provides support, updates, and upgrades. Most of the free products are very slow with updating and fixing issues.

I would recommend the solution to others. My advice depends on people’s use cases. The product is suitable for testing applications with different operating systems and for learning different operating systems. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use VMware Workstation for basic server management.

The product offers a cost-effective solution.

VMware Workstation’s most valuable features are backup and data transfer from one server to another.

They could work on the pricing model for the end users. It could be more affordable. There could be more integration with different tools.

We have been using VMware Workstation for a year. At present, we are using the version 17.

I rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten.

We have four VMware Workstation users in our organization. We use it 24/7. I rate its scalability a three out of ten. There is room for improvement. It does impact the workflow in terms of backup and restore.

The technical support team takes time to respond.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. I rate the process an eight out of ten. The deployment involves setting up a server with the help of a system administrator.

We implement the product with our in-house team. It requires four executives for deployment and maintenance.

The product has a moderate price. There are no additional costs. I rate its pricing a six out of ten.

We evaluated Microsoft Hyper-V. It is an expensive product. So, we decided to go with VMware Workstation.

I recommend VMware Workstation and rate it an eight out of ten.