We performed a comparison between Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS), VMware Horizon, and VMware Player based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, VMware, Citrix and others in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)."The solution is powerful, and it has good speed and performance."
"It is a stable solution."
"Allows us to publish applications accessible by current-generation HTML5 browser or OS-specific client (Windows, Android, iOS), and it supports popular single sign-on and multi-factor authentication protocols."
"We use Cloudpaging to package and deploy the vast majority of our applications to our standard Windows 10 desktops. With the use of Parallels integration into Software2 AppsAnywhere hub, this means we can use the same packages to deliver Windows applications to almost any device - Windows, mac OS, iOS, Android, Linux, Xbox One, PS4 - just by ticking a box."
"Setup was straightforward. Our particular use case involved an Active Directory forest involving two data centers and three domains. User authentication against Active Directory was the easiest to set up and validate of any application installed in the last three years."
"Simplicity of the interface is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the ease with which you can publish applications to different groups of users, by integrating with Windows Active Directory."
"It provides flexible access to Windows applications from many types of devices."
"I appreciate the ability to have a more centralized environment."
"It offers great flexibility, allowing us to access it as a complete virtual machine or even just as individual applications."
"Horizon 7 is scalable - we can add more machines or servers easily."
"It is a stable solution. It is wonderful for multi-user environments, and it supports different virtual machines and operating systems. You can go for any kind of virtual machine. It has many features, especially for a call center. You don't have the issue of computers going down from time to time. You just need to copy the virtual machine to deploy it. You also don't need many people to maintain computers. With Horizon 7, you just need one or two people."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is secure remote access to resources."
"The thin image offers efficiency and stability for the system, which is not always available in other alternatives."
"VMware is a hyper-converged infrastructure model. Therefore, for scaling it you just add more servers to it in the inputs. It's rather straightforward."
"The most valuable features are the ability to manage a great number of desktops at once and the remote access for users who are working from outside of the office or from a different office in the country."
"VMware Player helps you to virtualize and install Ubuntu or any other operating system, even on a Windows laptop."
"It's really easy to build testing environments with VMware Player."
"VMware Player's best feature is the ability to run different OS's simultaneously."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Player is the ability to snapshot with or without memory."
"The solution's technical support team is excellent."
"Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."
"We use several gateways because access to our secret zone requires two-factor user authentication. It is a lot of hassle differentiating among users with or without two-factor. Of course, we could use two farms, but that would mean more management too."
"HALB is not stable in our environment. When running two HALBs we have stability problems, so we use an active one and a passive for backup. Also, it would be nice to implement an upgrade of the environment without having to stop the servers. As it is, this must be done during off-hours."
"Generally, it is a very good solution. The main thing that I would improve is their presence here in Mexico. They don't have strong local support here in Mexico. They should have a worldwide presence so that we don't have to do everything through the people in the US. The initial setup was a little bit complex because we were migrating from Citrix. For customers who are migrating from another platform like VMware or Citrix, it would be great if they can provide an automated migration solution."
"A web-based management interface for administration and reporting would be nice, instead of needing to log into a remote server."
"The customization of the web interface could possibly use some improvement. Little things, like being able to place a background image instead of just choosing from a palette of colors, would be nice."
"Improvement is needed in performance monitoring of the client's endpoint, and automatic re-connection of the client in the event of circuit disruptions (this works well generally but can present challenges)."
"The main issue we have with all of our users is printing. Randomly, a printer will disconnect or someone won't connect to it and I will have to reset the print service and then nobody can print. That's the big headache we've had over the course of the five years."
"They could incorporate an application library for application learning and licensing."
"There is room for a more cost-effective pricing structure, as it could be more affordable."
"Areas for improvement in VMware Horizon 7 would be the logging and the troubleshooting, e.g. they could be made clearer."
"I would like to see seamless integration with the cloud because right now, the dependency is on the cloud providers."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"The remote connection, bandwidth usage, and error connection can be improved. Working with the load balancer sites should also be improved. For example, with Horizon, we can use two clients with a one megabit connection, but with Citrix, we can use four or five clients with the same bandwidth through ICA protocol. VMware must improve remote connection, connection stability, and load balancing."
"VMware Horizon 7 could improve by supporting the active-active data center. At this time we are only deploying it in the production environment. Our customer is considered to deploy the VMware Horizon 7 to a secondary data center, but we found out that it cannot fully support the user in the deployment in the active-active data center. Any improvement on this would be beneficial."
"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."
"Its networking features need improvement."
"When you go to work on a server, it opens up the whole window, and that causes an error inside VMware Player."
"VMware Player isn't downgradable, so if you have a later set of VMs, you need to upgrade it or figure out a workaround."
"The tool has limited scalability."
"VMware Player should provide a cloud version with no limitations to hardware resources."
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