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Cisco VXI vs VMware Workstation comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cisco VXI
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
23rd
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Workstation
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Cisco VXI is 1.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Workstation is 9.1%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Workstation9.1%
Cisco VXI1.5%
Other89.4%
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Sina Ghozati - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Specialist at Arrow Electronics
Straightforward implementation, scalable, but performance could improve
When using Cisco VXI in virtual environments there tends to be a lot of bugs with files you have to deploy across the virtual environment. You configure for hours, and then there is a bug that stops you, and you notice that you wasted hours. There's always room for improvement with these virtual environments because you're not dealing with the actual equipment, you're dealing with a virtual version of it that you have to install in a virtual environment. The performance of Cisco VXI could improve. It requires a lot of hardware and even if you install it on a server it is heavy on resources.
GC
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Creating and destroying test machines has simplified our operations and reduced manual recovery time
The Snapshot feature has helped with workflows by allowing us to more easily reconstruct something if we lose it or need it. We've been making Snapshots on a consistent basis, mainly of servers. The VX Rail has worked effectively because we can create machines as we need them. It's helpful for resetting and has helped with our operations because I had set up failover servers on Vertex, but we don't have to do that anymore since VMware will just create a new machine immediately if we have a problem. We're doing our domain servers on there, and we've been very happy with that. We appreciate that we can create machines simply to test things out and then destroy them. I use it for a test machine for checking emails, so if the email has a virus in it, we can just destroy the machine and create a new one. We're slowly moving into the VMware environment, although the pricing with Broadcom has been a disaster.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has been doing a good job for us."
"The initial setup of Cisco VXI is straightforward."
"The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the speed of access and quality of upgrade."
"The performance is good."
"VMware Workstation allows you to run a virtual machine."
"Having ten people working off a single piece of hardware reduces costs."
"It is much more mature compared to Nutanix or SimpliVity when it's cross-platform based."
"We can undo some changes using the snapshot feature."
"This product is pretty straightforward and easy to use, and I would definitely recommend it for testing different scenarios, Windows, Linux, that sort of thing."
"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."
 

Cons

"When using Cisco VXI in virtual environments there tends to be a lot of bugs with files you have to deploy across the virtual environment. You configure for hours, and then there is a bug that stops you, and you notice that you wasted hours."
"VMware Workstations is for desktop use only and is pricey."
"The price should be reduced."
"I have encountered stability issues with the virtual networks and have had run into issue with copying or moving VMs."
"It would be great if VMware Workstation had more networking options and compatibility, that would be great. I would like to deploy virtual switches and play around with networking a bit more. Otherwise, I have to deploy ESXi Virtual Edition and emulate it, which is painful and clunky."
"Installing VMware Workstation isn't so easy. It's highly complex compared to Windows. I rate it four out of 10 for ease of installation. Setting up a remote desktop only takes a minute or so, but the Workstation itself takes some time."
"When you go to work on a server, it opens up the whole window, and that causes an error inside VMware Player."
"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."
"Lacks the ability to clone onto another system rather than starting from scratch."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution when there are bugs. I'm always ready to give money for a complete solution where there are no bugs in it, but you will never find it."
"With all its support and ease of use, VMware Player's pricing is fair."
"The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement."
"The tool is not the cheapest."
"The product is expensive."
"Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis."
"The price of the solution per workstation is approximately 200 Francs annually. We pay a total of 800 francs. Everything is included in the price such as the support."
"VMware Workstation has a high price than competitors in the market."
"The product has a moderate price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

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Which VMware solution would you go with - Workstation or vSphere?
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...
What needs improvement with VMware Player?
Here's what happened with us regarding the prices for VMware Workstation: we purchased everything through Dell, and as is common, we got busy and didn't get everything activated. By the time we tri...
What is your primary use case for VMware Player?
I have a bunch of VMware servers set up, including our domain servers, our data servers, and some test machines on VMware. We're not really using VMware Workstation as workstations. We've got a cou...
 

Also Known As

VXI
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Advanced Medical Transport, Artoni Transporti, Calligaris, CIPCO, Citrix, Comcast, Desktone, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), LightEdge, Management Science Associates, Molina Healthcare, North West Redwater, Outscale
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about Citrix, Microsoft, Broadcom and others in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Updated: October 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.