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 UI is very intuitive, you don't have to spend hours before you figure it out. All in all, compared to other environments, like Hyper-V, we find vSphere a lot more user-friendly and intuitive to use."
"We don't have any downtime because it was built right."
"The most valuable feature is the VDP Backup solution."
"It is a very dependable solution. Its performance is very good, and it is also easy to manage and implement."
"It is highly scalable. We can add new hardware and expand the infrastructure easily."
"It has allowed us to be more resilient to infrastructure and hardware failure, reduced hardware costs, and decreased recovery time from failures."
"The easy of use with reduced space provides a better use of infrastructure"
"The solution can scale well."
"Because the setup is so easy, this is a solution that can be used at a moment's notice."
"We are able to simultaneously run multiple operating systems in a single machine and have virtually no performance hit."
"I like that it's easy to use. It's easy to deploy virtual machines. You have to insert your ISO and the image of your OS and configure it. They provide a step-by-step guide, and you have to follow it. In the end, you have to start the machine, and that's all you have to do. I liked that they synchronized the mouse, keyboard, and everything. When you finish the installation, it directly links to your laptop. This makes copying and pasting things from my laptop inside the virtual machine easy."
"It will not harm any of the computer settings to run a specific program. For example, if a program needs a specific security policy, we don't have to use the shared configuration. We have an individual copy of Windows installed on the virtual machine, so anybody can access that. It helps us a lot."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"We can undo some changes using the snapshot feature."
"The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the DirectX support, you can run Microsoft Hyper-V in virtual environments which is good for me to test different installations. Additionally, you can set up different VLANs, and overall it is a complete solution."
"I have found this product excellent for test/dev environments. This is 90% of what I use this product for."
"The solution needs to improve its stability."
"I do not find it to be simple and efficient to manage. The tools, the interface to manage it, are a pain. In the latest version, they moved us to web-only, the Web Client and it's terrible. It's slow. It crashes. It's annoying. I used the Web Client in the older version and was happy. I would go back to the regular thick client but I don't have that option anymore, so I am always fighting it."
"Its performance is an issue in version 6.5, but with the inclusion of HTML files in vSphere version 6.7, the experience is seamless. In version 6.7, VMware has included the HTML file protocol for the web browser or web console, which has changed the console's response and improved the performance. We are using the trial version of vRealize Operations. It would be nice if some of those capabilities could be included in future versions of vSphere, not as a part of vRealize Operations, but in vSphere itself. It can provide some kind of forecast about your resource consumption based on the actual workload and modeling or testing scenarios. It can give you some advice or tips for the future growth of your infrastructure."
"The documentation could be improved. It does not help me to show the client the value of going with VMware vSphere rather than an open source or cheaper solution."
"I think the pricing could be lower, and the technical support could be improved."
"We've been using vSphere on Windows 7, and it had less fluff associated with ThinApp. Currently, with Windows 10 version that we have, it adds a lot of bulk to ThinApp. We have offices spanning across Canada from the east coast to the west coast. A ThinApp that is roughly around 400 MB in size would take minutes to open up. With Windows 7, the same ThinApp used to be close to 75 to 80 MB in size. So, I'm really not happy with the extra fluff that is bundled in Windows 10. It really messes things up for us at times."
"It would be highly beneficial for VMware to collaborate with local hosts and partners in countries like those in Africa to establish specific pricing that would align with the economic conditions of countries in Africa, ensuring suitability and compatibility with our consumption capabilities."
"The biggest problem in this solution is the incompatibility of some of the features with some of the drivers installed on servers. For example, if I want to install vSphere on an HPE server, the driver is really different from a Dell server or a Fujitsu server. I need to download different drivers and install them manually, which can be improved by VMware. They can offer a special image to match different servers. We face different problems when we install vSphere on an ESXi server and have different drivers on the storage. ESXi cannot detect different kinds of storage, and they should improve this. We updated our existing version to vSphere 7 in a private environment, but it seems that this version is not very stable. We are facing issues with restarting the host. In earlier versions, such as vSphere 6 or 6.5, we didn't have any such problems. It would be good if VMware can offer specific applications for mobiles to enable us to control the management of all servers by mobile. They should also improve the vCenter GUI because it is currently not compatible, and there are a lot of problems. Some of the options do not appear well in the browser. VMware should spend more time resolving the problems in the GUI."
"I need to buy a newer version of the tool to support Windows Server."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting capabilities, particularly around snapshot activity. It would be helpful to have a summary of changes made prior to deploying an application, allowing us to provide comprehensive reports to our management on a regular basis."
"Its price could be better."
"Lacks the ability to clone onto another system rather than starting from scratch."
"They could bring in many different features from VMware vSphere to Workstation."
"They could add more integration between them, and compatibility with the standard virtualization format."
"They could include official support for macOS virtualization within VMware Workstation."
"It takes too much time to load all the plug-ins and software."
VMware vSphere is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 446 reviews while VMware Workstation is ranked 2nd in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with 41 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, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox and VMware Fusion.
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.