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Oracle VM vs VMware Workstation vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Oracle VM7.0%
Proxmox VE16.7%
VMware vSphere16.5%
Other59.8%
Server Virtualization Software
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware vSphere16.5%
Proxmox VE16.7%
Hyper-V14.8%
Other52.0%
Server Virtualization Software
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Workstation14.5%
VMware Fusion Pro18.6%
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)13.0%
Other53.9%
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Nitin Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience enhanced performance and support with reliable server consolidation
We are working with Oracle VM and Oracle OLVM We have used both Oracle VM and Oracle OLVM. It has been four or five years since we started using these solutions. Both products are from Oracle. Oracle VM provides automation capabilities in the new version. We have been using this solution for…
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
Shambhu Narayan  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-manage solution that has really good customer support compared to other market players
VMware Workstation makes it easy to manage all the resources that we are handling. VMware Workstation has reduced our infrastructure cost. If someone wants machines, I can create them easily using the solution. VMware Workstation is easier to manage than other workstations like Oracle Workstation. VMware Workstation is an easy-to-manage solution, and its support is really good compared to other market players. Overall, I rate VMware Workstation an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a scalable solution."
"Ability to patch with no downtime."
"It's quite stable."
"Its ease of management and simplicity are most valuable. It is free, and you can provision an unlimited number of VMs at no cost for clients. They also provide perfect support."
"It is highly esteemed for its ability to efficiently optimize and enhance the operational speed and responsiveness of virtualized environments."
"Its technical support is quite good."
"It's easy to adjust the size up and down."
"The most valuable features of Oracle VM are live migration and snapshots."
"VMware vSphere is user-friendly and simple."
"It's easy to use."
"The most useful features are ESXi, DRS, Auto Deploy, and the Lifecycle Manager."
"Has many good features, and is stable and reliable."
"VMware vSphere has a lot of features that are valuable, such as multiple clusters, VM mobility, VDI, and virtual desktop."
"I like stability and the organization of the different functions into the I#M feature which is also quite useful, quite stable."
"Technical support is very good. They are very helpful."
"Very reliable with a great community."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is an easy-to-use product."
"We are able to simultaneously run multiple operating systems in a single machine and have virtually no performance hit."
"The product is really easy to use."
"We initially intended to work with Hyper-V because we are selling a virtual appliance and thought our customers would want to run that on Hyper-V."
"VMware Workstation allows multiple operating systems in the same physical machine."
"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."
"The product works well."
"The solution's customer service is good."
 

Cons

"Oracle VM should be promoted more as an open-source and stable software."
"I would say third-party plugins to other storage vendors. There are a lot of converged infrastructure setups; one that we have, multiple different hardware vendors. So that would be something we could definitely be looking for."
"Oracle VM could provide integration with backup solutions."
"The configuration can be more flexible. It is a necessity."
"Oracle VM needs to add a backup feature."
"Integrating with the internal system is not very easy."
"There are issues with the solution's stability since it crashes."
"The management can be improved more, and become more agile. It would be nice for it to become more rich in terms of UI. In addition, the replication to disaster recovery needs improvement."
"The biggest thing to improve is to have more self-service in the portals. I would like to receive more help through the web interface."
"When it comes to cross-regional (e.g., someone in the US managing the China vSphere implementations), it can be a somewhat slow. I would recommend increasing the speed. While there has already been improvement there, I would like to see more."
"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."
"VMware vSphere needs to increase the datastore volume."
"They can maybe review its price. They can also consider offering a free public version for development for a certain number of users."
"The Web Client is too slow."
"The integration with containers should be addressed."
"The technical support is good. However, it could be more seamless when it comes to chat support and lower response times."
"It takes too much time to load all the plug-ins and software."
"The network configuration was not as easy as it could be and could take less time."
"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."
"VMware Workstation’s scalability could be improved."
"The price of VMware Workstation could improve."
"The network configuration was not as easy as it could be and could take less time. We faced challenges with backup due to limitations in the free version, requiring us to switch to a paid version."
"Performance could be improved, it's somewhat clunky."
"VMware Player should provide a cloud version with no limitations to hardware resources."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price compares well with other solutions."
"The price of the license is expensive."
"Oracle VM pricing is expensive."
"I have heard from my colleague that it comes with a high price tag."
"Oracle is free of charge, although you have to have a subscription for the support."
"The solution as a standalone product can not be purchased."
"If you choose Oracle hardware, then this virtualization software is included along with support."
"All other vendors are selling their licenses to use the VM, but Oracle isn't doing that, which is its biggest advantage. It is free. All you have to do is get the hardware. You can create an unlimited number of VMs for free. With VMware, you have to purchase licenses for the number of VMs that you want to create. You only pay for their premium support, and even that is optional. I am now learning this product, and we can even do without the support."
"vSphere is expensive."
"The pricing is more expensive than Microsoft."
"VMware is consistently expensive and their pricing arrogance is what will drive us and other customers away."
"vSphere is an expensive solution."
"The solution comes with a yearly subscription license."
"The price is high. It would be nice if VMware made a price reduction."
"It saves us money because we don't have to buy as many physical servers."
"It is expensive in terms of cost, licensing, and professional services."
"The tool is not the cheapest."
"The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement."
"With all its support and ease of use, VMware Player's pricing is fair."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"VMware Workstation is an expensive solution in Asian countries."
"With a VDI solution, there is always extra cost running a VDI solution but it's not for cost purposes anymore. In the beginning, it was to save money on hardware but at the moment it's other aspects that are more important why you should use a VDI solution."
"The product is expensive."
"VMware Workstation is an expensive tool. I rate the product's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low or good price."
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise37
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business172
Midsize Enterprise138
Large Enterprise256
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Oracle VM or KVM?
I would prefer if KVM was easier to scale and not so limited. Overall the product has been helpful. It is easy to use...
Which is better - Oracle VM or VMware VSphere?
Oracle VM seems to me to be kind of outdated. Nevertheless, it is fairly straightforward to use and maintain. The sol...
What do you like most about Oracle VM?
If you want to access the VM from anywhere over the Internet, you put it in a public subnet. So, VMs are linked to th...
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platfor...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux...
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interfa...
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 ...
What do you like most about VMware Workstation?
The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up.
What needs improvement with VMware Workstation?
The product's integration capabilities are an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ambulance Victoria, Australian Finance Group (AFG), Avnet Technology Solutions, CERN, cloudKleyer, Danish Tax Authority (SKAT), Data Intensity, Dubai World, Engineers Australia, Enkitec, Groupe FLO, Guerra S.A. Implemento, s Rodovišrios, Interactive One, IT Convergence, Jesta Digital, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, KT, Kyoto Prefecture, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory / National Ignition Facility, Multinet Pakistan, National Australia Bank (NAB), Navis LLC, Overhead Door, Overstock.com, Paragon Data, Parks Victoria, Pella, Sunway Shared Services, St. Louis Metro, Terminales Ro de la Plata S.A., University of Massachusetts, Versace,
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Akademiska Hus
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