VMware Workstation Reviews

I mainly use VMware Player to test things in my home lab.

VMware Player's best feature is the ability to run different OS's simultaneously.

VMware Player isn't downgradable, so if you have a later set of VMs, you need to upgrade it or figure out a workaround. It would be an improvement if there were some kind of mixture between the licenses to avoid this situation. I would also like VMware Player to include built-in interactive help.

I've been using VMware Player for a year.

VMware Player is mostly stable, but occasionally we get freezing and unexpected behavior when doing bigger upgrades.

I previously used Oracle VM, but VMware Player is more user-friendly.

The initial setup was easy, and deployment took around an hour and a half.

I used an in-house team.

If you have a big environment with thousands of servers, VMware Player can have problems, and migrations can be extremely slow. But if you have a small-to-middle-sized environment, VMware Player is a good choice. I would rate VMware Player as seven out of ten.

VMware allows us to build solutions for the people.

VMware is incredible and is designed for simple use. They help with efficiency. 

The tool can improve network storage technology.

We are the VMware provider.

The product is stable.

The tool is easy to scale depending on their infrastructure design.

Support should respond quickly.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. 

I rate the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

The tool costs around 5000 per month.

I recommend it only for small things or environmental tests. For Big companies, the solution is designed as a virtual DC with a VMware clusters network.

VMware Workstation is currently being used as a test model, it is not in production.

It is used for testing, and we have a mixed solution for reduction.  We are also considering moving part of our servers to virtualization.

It made various enhancements to the system once the deployment was completed.

I would like to see the stability improve. We have experienced some crashes on our devices.

The configuration could be simplified.

I would want to see features included that make deployment easier.

I have been using VMware Workstation for five or six years.

There are some concerns regarding the stability of this solution. We have a device that seems to be under some pressure and two others that are working very well.

We have no issues with the scalability of the VMware Workstation.

At this time our organization has 15 to 20 users.

This solution is being used daily, and we have plans to increase our usage.

Our plan is to move part of the server to this solution.

Technical support is very good.

I have been using several virtualization tools over the last five or six years.

Approximately six or seven years ago I used a Remote Desktop Solution but it was not a good experience.

The initial setup is straightforward. it took thirty minutes to complete the deployment.

We only require two days a month for one person to maintain this solution.

Using a lot of documentation, I was able to complete the installation myself.

With VMware Workstation, we have seen a return on investment, but the actual ROI will be shown in two or three years.

Licensing costs are paid on a yearly basis.

The documentation should be thoroughly read.

I would rate VMware Workstation a nine out of ten.

This product is solid and useful for quick test/dev environments. 

Found replicating client application upgrades and compatibility tests within a virtual environment makes upgrades very successful. 

We also use it for custom application testing to ensure compatibility and smooth transitions.  

Since I work with so many different customers, I deal with many operating systems and workstation configurations. When performing upgrades to servers, applications, windows, etc., I need to know the ramifications before we go live with production.  

Creating labs has been useful for my employees when working on certifications.

I am also not a big fan of adding and removing software over and over on my laptop, so I use my VM's when I need a temporary application installed. It also keeps the clutter down, keeping my main tools fast and efficient.  

They also come in handy when cleaning infected thumb drives.

I have found this product excellent for test/dev environments. This is 90% of what I use this product for. 

I have had issues with the virtual network adapters in the past that has taken some time to troubleshoot. 

I have encountered stability issues with the virtual networks and have had run into issue with copying or moving VMs. Usually these all work great 9 out of 10 times, but when it doesn't work right it become very time consuming to fix and troubleshoot.

None thus far.

8 out of 10. Good SR system to communicate through emails and phone support.

No

Setup is very easy.

Using workstation saves money on big hardware using vSphere just for test/dev.

The pricing is a bit steep in my opinion for testing and there are other options.  None however that are so powerful and easy to use.

No

I have worked in education and production in one of my previous companies with VMware Workstation. In my current company, I use VMware Workstation for personal use. I have used the solution since my company has a personal server, which is not an extra production server.

VMware Workstation is something that I have used on my laptop, while at times I have used the solution for testing process purposes, with Linux, Windows, and servers. I have used VMware Workstation for testing purposes in the production environment.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is an easy-to-use product. VMware Workstation is useful for safety purposes. With VMware Workstation, you can easily select CPU hardware or hard disk and install them to the solution. In general, the product allows easy installation with any hardware specifications. If you select a 3 GB or 15 GB hard disk, you can select it.

VMware Workstation uses more resources like CPU and disk space, especially the CPU, which is a shortcoming that needs improvement.

I have been using VMware Workstation for six months.

The stability of the solution depends on the solution's license. If you opt for a license purchased from VMware Workstation, then it remains very stable. The unlicensed version of the solution is not very suitable or stable.

Based on what I have seen, I rate the solution's scalability a seven out of ten.

I didn't use the licensed software version of VMware Workstation, because of which I can't comment on its efficiency.

Though I am unsure, I feel that six to seven users use the solution for their personal use in my company.

Currently, I don't plan to use the version offered by VMware Workstation.

I did not directly contact VMware Workstation's support person since I could get all the answers to my questions through VMware's blogs.

I have moved from VMware Workstation to Oracle VM VirtualBox since I got to use it for free, while VMware Workstation wasn't a free option.

I rate the initial setup a six and a half out of ten. The initial setup of the solution is not complicated, but it may not be stable or as good as it should be if you use the tool without VMware Workstation's license or licensed software.

The solution is deployed by enabling virtualization on my laptop.

The time taken for the deployment depends on the size of your operations. The installation of VMware Workstation only takes around 20 to 30 minutes.

For deployment steps, download the free version of VMware Workstation for all the licenses, and then by clicking the next options available after clicking the EXE file, we can install the solution. You get around 60 days to use the free version of the solution, after which you need to pay for VMware Workstation.

I use the free version of VMware Workstation.

I have stopped the use of ESXi in VMware Workstation.

It is important to note that VMware Workstation may not be a good solution for my company since it is not a perfect solution.

I don't personally recommend VMware Workstation to those planning to use it since it is a type 2 hypervisor. It is always better to use a type 1 hypervisor, but if someone prefers to use a type 2 hypervisor, then it is always best to choose the paid or licensed version of the solution.

I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

VMware Workstation is used by almost everyone who is trying to test something on their laptop.

I'm using it for my personal use, for testing. If I want to know how things are working, then I will test it using Workstation.

The features are good. 

There's not much to deploying a VM, or virtual machine. It's all pretty easy.

They could bring in many different features from VMware vSphere to Workstation. This is a free version they are providing. However, it could be more robust. Therefore, if they could bring in things from the enterprise versions to the Workstation, that would be very helpful.

I've been using the solution for at least five or six years now. 

We are using a free version of the solution. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution I'm on at the moment. It's likely the latest. I'm at around version 14.

I'd rate the product seven out of ten. I've been pretty happy with its capabilities overall. That said, it could be more robust and offer more features. 

I'm an IT salesperson. I have experience selling this solution.

It is much more mature compared to Nutanix or SimpliVity when it's cross-platform based. It's much more well known compared to the other newly formed solutions.

The GUI interface could be improved. My customer says that you have to be trained to use it. 

For someone who isn't a VMware expert, a simpler user interface would help.

I sold my first VMware solution in 2003.

The stability is good.

It's scalable.

It's good. I have used technical support once or twice for my customer. They have helped inform some technical discussions. I would rate them 5 out of 5.

Solutions like Nutanix are more user-friendly.

We have seen ROI. VMware is way cheaper if I take it as an application or a software compared to any hardware. It is cheaper compared to other products.

The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

There are pros and cons to this solution, so understand your infrastructure. Utilize the technical people to understand what is required, then go for it. There are many customers who have taken what they don't need, and many customers don't have what they do need.

Our primary use case of VMware Workstation is to test environments, different Windows operating systems and the like, and basically to figure out how the solution would work before we put it into production. I'm an engineering applications analyst. 

The solution benefits us because it allows us to identify whether we need to spend money on a solution that would involve having to buy a bunch of licenses for software, and running an application or a system for whatever our requirements might be. It allows us to test out that scenario to see if it would be more beneficial for our environment as opposed to buying everything, setting it up and determining whether it is going to work or not. It gives us insight into some of the issues we might run into, and how to better facilitate fixing them.

Because the setup is so easy, this is a solution that can be used at a moment's notice. It's simple to set up for a test environment and that's a huge benefit.

For our needs, the issue is that there is no way to take an existing system out of the testing environment, clone it with everything that it's currently set up on, and put it into production without having to create a whole new one. It lacks the ability to clone the environment so you have your test environment set up in the way it's going to be used in production. Rather than create a whole other environment, the idea would be to clone that capability onto another system and not have to start over from scratch. You have everything working the way you want it to and you just want to move it over to the production side of things.

I've been using this solution for about a year. 

The solution handles pretty well. It did seem to function a little bit better than I had expected.

There are no issues with scalability. When we need to make any tweaks by adding more resources, it's pretty straightforward. I'm the only user. In terms of the back end, Microsoft patching needs to be done on a monthly basis based on our processes. The software itself will look to see how often it needs updates. It's pretty straightforward.

I've also used Azure. We made the switch because we had a license for Workstation and I needed to test a particular system. I could plug and play using the VMware Player to take an existing VTK, whatever the file extension is, and plug it in there to look at this VM. Workstation allowed us to test scenarios. We have a lot of older applications that run on older operating systems. Sometimes we have to test the old systems and see how they'll run in a virtual environment as well. 

As long as you have all the information you need in terms of how many processors are require and how much memory, it's not complicated. Implementation was an in-house job. Rather than loading a specific software package on our network, we can use a testing environment to see what to expect from it. We test out of the box in a virtual environment and see where we get with it. The deployment took about a day. 

We use VMware for virtual cluster of servers, but I believe we bought Workstation outright once. It's pretty low in cost, so if we need multiple copies, we usually buy a handful. I've actually insisted that we go that route for some of the software groups that we have so they can test various environments without having to use another system.

This product is pretty straightforward and easy to use. I would definitely recommend it for testing different scenarios, Windows, Linux, that sort of thing. It works well in all environments, in my opinion, and the ease of setup is great and allows you to have a lot of test cases strictly run from your system rather than having to set up another whole desktop or another computer as a testing environment. Obviously, it's based on the number of hardware resources available in your system but to get a quick testbed or environment set up, it's pretty easy and straightforward. You can set it up and go about your daily routine and then come back to it, test some more scenarios, get it to where it's accessible through the networks, and determine whether we need it or not. It's better to have that rather than having to set up a whole other computer for testing.

I rate this solution 10 out of 10.