VMware Workstation Reviews

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.

The ability to drag a VM to an additional monitor and utilize VMs on separate windows, drag and drop. I like the newer network editor. Using a wireless guest network to keep my network separate from activities like downloading software and the like, this keeps the bandwidth for my users at an optimum level while allowing me to download an ISO image from MS or some other large file. I used to have to wait until after hours to perform bandwidth hogging work. But now, I can leverage our wireless guest network to accomplish these tasks and minimize late hours.

The ability to run Virtual machines in different networks and with different security levels. I can sandbox my windows machine when I need to use a non domain admin account for daily tasks but have another sandboxed machine to handle system admin tasks. I also have a wireless sand boxed Ubuntu machine that is in no way connected to our internal network for testing our websites, outside email etc. This has saved me a great deal of time and effort.

Performance is a needed improvement. I would like to see a faster response on my VMs. Linux support is so-so - many of the VM Tools you need are different packages downloadable from the distro you are using. Ubuntu 15.x seems to have improved the ability that plagued the product - getting the host share folder to be accessible from a Linux VM.

Pricing. When you purchase VMware workstation you get a great product but there is a cost. It is more expensive than Fusion or Player.

I have used VMware workstation 10 and now 12 - I skipped 11. It is an expensive upgrade too. With the versions listed above, I have been running this for several years.

Deploying using a LINUX OS - (especially CENTOS 7) seems to strip some functionality and is fraught with difficulties. Save yourself some headaches - deploy it in a Windows environment and then use Linux as a VM.

I have had a few issues prior to update1 - but I am unsure if this is due to my platform or if it is a VMware related issue. I also noticed that it uses a lot of RAM when running multiple instances of Windows VMs. Update - I have 32GB RAM now and it works flawlessly. I have been working in this newer environment for several months and I couldn't be more pleased.

On Windows 7 - I can run 2 VMs (I have a beefy Workstation with 2 quad core Xeon procs and two NVIDIA Quadro Cards as well as 16 GB RAM) It does not play well when there are more than 2 windows VMs running on top of a Windows host environment. Update - I have a new machine with an i7 6700 processor - it is more than adequate to run the base Windows 8.1 OS, another Windows 8.1 OS a Windows 7 OS, and an Ubuntu 16.04 OS simultaneously. I do this on a daily basis at work and the performance is great. I use a SSD for the base Windows OS and the other OS's live on a larger 3 TB drive that I use for virtual machine/server work.

I think support is an issue for VMware - they only offer support for this product once you purchase more than 10 licenses. This is a show-stopper for smaller organizations like us. We would like to pay for support the same way we do for the Vsphere licenses and have the ability to upgrade the product under support without an additional charge. This is really a big deal for us.

Not much there for technical support.

I have used Virtual box and Hyper-V. VMware workstation is more powerful than either of these. You can create virtual networks to test things on, you can emulate an entire network with outside, inside, DMZ, servers, clients, (use GNS3 to create a virtual firewall) then test things prior to rollouts. You can also connect to Vcenter or to esxi hosts. You can upload servers and change settings, you can even add HDD's from your SAN to a VM from VMworkstation when that VM is powered off

Pretty simple - the network editor is the one you have to pay attention to if you are trying to setup multiple networks. The defaults really do not unleash the power of the platform.

In house

It paid for itself multiple times. Especially when we had to pull in older Windows 2003 servers for disk manipulation. I also use this when vCenter is unavailable to manipulate machine settings.

Spendy - be prepared to buy multiple Windows OS's and to spend a couple hundred or more on the Workstation software. Look for a VMware sale if possible. I also use this at home to run my Ubuntu within Windows.

Yes, virtual box and Hyper-v (comes with Windows 8 and 10 professional for free so you really don't need to buy Hyper-V) VMware is far more powerful than either of the free ones. No Network editor, the ability to copy and paste on the fly etc. is limited on the freebies. See my comments below about network editor.

Use this to secure your Domain admin accounts - don't setup email, surf the web, or do anything outside of your internal network using your DA account. This product can help you immensely. Using the virtual network editor can also be a benefit to you in this regard you can setup a virtual machine using wireless on a totally different network, use the vm (I use Ubuntu) to perform web tasks like testing your web site externally or to download and scan for malware prior to letting it on your production network.

We use the solution for virtualization.

The product is really easy to use. It is user-friendly. It satisfies our needs.

The product could provide the features available in Microsoft Hyper-V.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The product is stable.

The solution is not scalable. The solution is not in production. We are not trying to scale it. Not more than 50 people are using the product.

We are using both VMware Workstation and Microsoft Hyper-V. Microsoft products are more scalable.

The initial setup was not that difficult.

We need four to five administrators for the solution.

The pricing is reasonable.

We are planning to invest in Microsoft products. My recommendation would depend on the product that people are using. While researching, I could find the solution in the product’s documentation. Overall, I rate the solution a seven or eight out of ten.

We use the product for testing environments and technologies before implementing business solutions.

VMware Workstation’s most valuable feature is virtualization technology. It has all the essential features and capabilities to use one computer for implementing solutions in many environments.

The product’s virtual machine data backup feature needs upgrading.

We have been using VMware Workstation for many years.

The product is very stable. I rate its stability an eight out of ten.

We used Oracle VirtualBox before. We switched to VMware Workstation for better stability.

The initial setup is very easy for creating virtual machines. It does not require any prior experience. The deployment time depends on the number of machines and services to be implemented. It takes approximately ten minutes to deploy one machine.

The product generates a return on investment for us. It allows us to test the solutions in test environments before publishing them in production. 

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

I use the solution as a virtual desktop infrastructure.

The solution has the best licensing modules.

The solution's networking features need enhancement.

I have been using the solution for one year.

The solution's technical support is good.

Positive

I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Create multiple Virtual machines for various needs by different team members and also for other teams. Some of them are for crash and burn and some for extended validation.

The most valuable features of the VMware solutions (ESXi and vCenter) are snapshots, backup, restore, virtual networks, over provisioning of storage (in thin provisioning) etc.

The price of VMware solutions could improve.

I have been using VMware Workstation for approximately seven years.

VMware Workstation is a stable solution when compared to all the other hypervisors in the market. Snapshots, rollback and forth etc works smoothly. However, I do not have extended experience with the other solutions

The scalability of the VMware Workstation is good. We are able to add multiple ESXi servers into the vCenter and scale the requirements according to the client's needs. It can scale very well.

I have not had direct interaction with the support. However, I have heard it is good.

I have used hypervisors from various vendors and I prefer vmware over other productss. 

The initial setup of the VMware Workstation is easy.

VMware Workstation has a high price than competitors in the market.

My advice to others is they should be clear on the requirement for the hypervisor. Why are they going for VMware or any other hypervisor solutions and what are the benefits that they can bring to the table for them. They should choose the best vendor in the market, not only in terms of the vendor but in terms of cost. VMware is slightly on the higher side when it comes to price, but for all the interface customers, it's a one-stop solution for all the virtualization needs.

I rate VMware Workstation an eight out of ten.

I have not found a solution that is above an eight out of ten in my experience. There is room for improvement. VMware Workstation is now into microservices, containers, Kubernetes, and others containerization technology which I have not had a lot of experience with.

It's a VDI.

We have some virtual machines for testing purposes. The machines are our VMware. I don't remember the version. We use VMware Player to create a tester environment.

It's really easy to build testing environments with VMware Player. The solution is very user-friendly.

The package is similar to when you build other virtual machines. With this, you have to have everything in the package.

It’s the type of solution that is pretty simple to set up.

It’s not really lacking any features. It has everything a company would need.

For maybe the web component that you need to deploy, you do requires a web server or something like that.

The tool has limited scalability.

I’ve used the solution for one year, more or less.

The stability has been very good. We have no real complaints in that regard. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn’t crash or freeze. It’s very reliable. The performance is good.

The tool is really small. The scalability is therefore limited.

We only have two or three people using the solution right now. They are administrators and software developers.

We have local support from our providers. We do not directly deal with VMware if issues arise. Therefore, I can’t speak to their customer service capabilities.

It’s not difficult to set up. It’s very, very straightforward.

We’re just customers and end-users.

It's a great product that we would advise others to implement it.

I’d rate the solution nine out of ten.