We performed a comparison between VMware vSphere and VMware Workstation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: VMware Workstation has a slight edge in this comparison due to it being the less expensive solution.
"The solution has many valuable features. Virtualization is flexible and it has simple clustering. However, the most important feature is the ability to move between VMs. The vMotion features are very good."
"It is very stable and scalable, and implementation is straightforward as well."
"vMotion is one of the most useful features, which helps to provide both flexibility and High Availability. With new versions of vSphere and vCenter, it is still improving (e.g., vMotion across vCenter Servers and virtual switches)."
"It has allowed us to be more resilient to infrastructure and hardware failure, reduced hardware costs, and decreased recovery time from failures."
"We are able to increase the density of the virtualized servers and, with the increased density we have a lot of page sharing as well as memory sharing."
"The most valuable features are the vMotion, the storage vMotion, the DRS, and the high availability function."
"Since it is riding inside of a multi-hardware environment, downtime is virtually nothing."
"VMware vSphere is a stable platform. We never had any issues with VMware vSphere. Once you deploy it with a stable version of the server or the hardware, there's no issue at all."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is an easy-to-use product."
"We can undo some changes using the snapshot feature."
"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."
"It is much more mature compared to Nutanix or SimpliVity when it's cross-platform based."
"Technical support is very good."
"The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the speed of access and quality of upgrade. Those are the more important and pertinent aspects as far as we were concerned. Functionality and features were relevant for the customers. What a customer chose, we had to make sure that it operated."
"The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up."
"It's stable."
"In terms of what could be improved, we do face some bugs when cloning the virtual machine - it fails sometimes."
"The one area where I would love to see an improvement is the HTML5 client. It's great, but it could get better."
"OS templates should be readily available, so there is no need to get an OS separately. Only the activation part should be different, which is not presently available due to the need to get the OS from a different location, then create VMs."
"There are some challenges around ESXi hosts — converting them into VMs."
"Technical support could be faster in terms of response times."
"A fully **automatic** and lightweight Virtual Center. Another time this has a huge improvement in last releases. However, a more automatic and simple deployment is required."
"Its price can be better. It is very expensive."
"The solution could be cheaper and less expensive."
"VMware Workstation has some network limitations which could improve, it is not as flexible as VMware NSX. Additionally, it could support operating systems better. I only run some Linux versions and Windows at the moment but it would be nice to be able to take whatever operating system you want and run it."
"The price should be reduced."
"The price of VMware Workstation is an area of concern where improvements are needed."
"The price of VMware Workstation could improve."
"The support can be improved."
"It takes too much time to load all the plug-ins and software."
"VMware Workstation could improve the export and import of virtual machines."
"Its price could be better."
VMware vSphere is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 446 reviews while VMware Workstation is ranked 2nd in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with 42 reviews. VMware vSphere is rated 8.8, while VMware Workstation is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of VMware vSphere writes "Offers good performance and is useful for banking systems". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware Workstation writes "An easy-to-manage solution that has really good customer support compared to other market players". VMware vSphere is most compared with Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM, KVM and Nutanix AHV Virtualization, whereas VMware Workstation is most compared with Hyper-V, KVM, VMware Fusion, Proxmox VE and Oracle VM VirtualBox.
We monitor all Server Virtualization Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
This question is like what do you prefer?
Wordpad or Word?
Both are useful, just for different things. So one would probably end up using both.
Would you it-central-stationeers stop with this nonsense already?
if it is for business or enterprise-class virtualization, vSphere solution is the way to go.
Workstation is used for lab.
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.
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.