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Horizon 8 vs Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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

Horizon 8
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
User Virtualization (1st)
Red Hat Enterprise Virtuali...
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
15th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Horizon 8 is 8.0%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Tim  Abboud - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly, reasonably priced, and simple to install
It can be challenging to assess the stability of Horizon because it relies heavily on the underlying infrastructure, including vCenter, network, and storage performance. It is important to pay attention to these factors when evaluating the stability of the system. We rely on vCenter, network, and storage performance, and any weakness in these areas will affect the performance of Horizon. When discussing this with customers, I always emphasize the importance of these factors. If the foundation is solid, Horizon should not experience any performance issues. If the fundamentals are weak, we will encounter issues with Horizon on a regular basis. However, the product itself, VMware Horizon, is highly stable. While the Horizon product itself is very stable, it is important to be well-informed about any potential side effects from using other related products.
RobertThompson 1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Free version available but hard to understand
Personally, I don't think it has any commendable features. The biggest thing about it is that, compared to what you can do with VMware and Horizon, it just seems like there's an awful lot of extra work involved with the Red Hat virtualization. It doesn't just work out of the box. You have to read through about six different documents, and everybody's experience is different. So it's kind of annoying. That would be the main thing. If you're not a Linux geek, it's very hard to understand. And it's probably because I came out of the Windows world. I learned this as part of my cross-training, but I just found the way that it happens with VMware and all that stuff to be easier to use.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's centralized management, and you have access gateway to enter the the VMs from outside."
"VMware has a lot of experience in virtualization — they are the pioneers in virtualization."
"The product helped us deploy complex applications."
"Users can log in from anywhere and from a variety of devices."
"The initial setup is very simple and straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the clone variant. We have been using the linked clone for the past five years, but I am willing to support and take on the function of the instant cloud."
"VMware offers a friendly environment, and it's easy to provide the user with the package. It is a bundled solution that is readily deployable. The advantage lies in its simplicity, it requires minimal expertise."
"It has a lot of features and they are similar to what we have seen in any environment management solution."
"The most valuable features are automated deployment and transparent movement for virtual machines over all our locations."
"The improvement to our organization is managing all our KVM-based virtual machines in a management environment."
"There's lots of good support out there in the community."
 

Cons

"What I would like to see improved is not so much about the product. It's more about how to get information about products. It's always too much sales pitching and fancy works and stuff."
"In the future, I would like to see better support for application virtualization."
"There are some licensing issues in VMware Horizon"
"There are some issues with RAM in the system."
"Areas for improvement in VMware Horizon 7 would be the logging and the troubleshooting, e.g. they could be made clearer."
"Horizon 7's performance could be improved."
"In the next release, I would like to have more support when optimizing the master templates for PDI. There are tools that are available to be used but they are not supported at the moment and are more, "use at your own risk.""
"I would love to see so they can actually allow the use of Linux, from a hosting environment as well as from a VDI client environment."
"The best improvement for oVirt 4.2 is to enable backup features for major backup products of virtual machines."
"The biggest thing about it is that, compared to what you can do with VMware and Horizon, it just seems like there's an awful lot of extra work involved with Red Hat virtualization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are happy with the price."
"The pricing depends on the use cases. It depends on the company's needs and budget. For us, it was okay, not too expensive."
"I don't know about the price. I know there are different tiers with the license, but I'm not sure exactly what it costs anymore."
"The license cost has increased significantly, so we’re helping some customers with Azure VMware desktop solutions to save on licensing."
"The pricing is quite reasonable."
"VMware Horizon can be considered to be slightly expensive"
"We pay for the solution annually at a cost of approximately 10,000 HKD."
"We have a three-year contract, for which we pay about ten euros per user per month."
"I use the free developer stuff right now."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
20%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does VMware Workspace One compare with VMware Horizon 7?
VMware Workspace One has a powerful set of helpful features. The solution offers very good documentation, the initial setup is easy, and the product is very stable and reliable. I think the fact th...
What do you like most about VMware Horizon 7?
VMware offers a friendly environment, and it's easy to provide the user with the package. It is a bundled solution that is readily deployable. The advantage lies in its simplicity, it requires mini...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Horizon 7?
We paid a lot of money for software that is not really fully operational out of the box. We had to have patches from VMware to get it into production. Hence, we lost a lot of time implementing the ...
What needs improvement with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops?
Personally, I don't think it has any commendable features. The biggest thing about it is that, compared to what you can do with VMware and Horizon, it just seems like there's an awful lot of extra ...
What is your primary use case for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops?
I've used it more as a user than as an administrator setting it up. Just mainly getting access to legacy systems and programming that's not Windows 11 compatible.
 

Also Known As

VMware Horizon, VMware Horizon View, Mware Dynamic Environment Manager
Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LCMC Health
Casio, Telef‹nica, British Airways
Find out what your peers are saying about Horizon 8 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.