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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops vs VMware Workstation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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

Red Hat Enterprise Virtuali...
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
16th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Workstation
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
3rd
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 August 2026, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops is 1.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Workstation is 9.5%, down from 15.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Workstation9.5%
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops1.9%
Other88.6%
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

RobertThompson 1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Free version available but hard to understand
Personally, I don't think it has any commendable features. The biggest thing about it is that, compared to what you can do with VMware and Horizon, it just seems like there's an awful lot of extra work involved with the Red Hat virtualization. It doesn't just work out of the box. You have to read through about six different documents, and everybody's experience is different. So it's kind of annoying. That would be the main thing. If you're not a Linux geek, it's very hard to understand. And it's probably because I came out of the Windows world. I learned this as part of my cross-training, but I just found the way that it happens with VMware and all that stuff to be easier to use.
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

"There's lots of good support out there in the community."
"The improvement to our organization is managing all our KVM-based virtual machines in a management environment."
"The most valuable features are automated deployment and transparent movement for virtual machines over all our locations."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Player is the ability to snapshot with or without memory."
"VMware Workstation keeps working and it makes my day every time I have to use it because it starts, it runs, and it makes my life easier."
"Great at solving connection problems."
"Having ten people working off a single piece of hardware reduces costs."
"The initial setup is simple and takes only five minutes to complete."
"The tool’s GUI is very user-friendly."
"The performance is good."
"Overall, this is a good product and I recommend it."
 

Cons

"The best improvement for oVirt 4.2 is to enable backup features for major backup products of virtual machines."
"The biggest thing about it is that, compared to what you can do with VMware and Horizon, it just seems like there's an awful lot of extra work involved with Red Hat virtualization."
"It takes too much time to load all the plug-ins and software."
"If you have a big environment with thousands of servers, VMware Player can have problems, and migrations can be extremely slow."
"They could add more integration between them, and compatibility with the standard virtualization format."
"The problem we are facing with stability is that the network adapter causes crashes of the VM when we're using it for developing purposes."
"Eventually, we had to get some licenses with Broadcom, and all the costs went up dramatically to the point where if I had it to do over again, I might have made a different decision."
"I would like to see more detailed reporting capabilities, particularly around snapshot activity. It would be helpful to have a summary of changes made prior to deploying an application, allowing us to provide comprehensive reports to our management on a regular basis."
"VMware Workstation has a high price than competitors in the market."
"The solution freezes sometimes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the free developer stuff right now."
"I use the free version of VMware Workstation."
"You need to pay for a license, but I don't think it costs that much. I think it's a one-time payment."
"The product is expensive."
"VMware Workstation has a high price than competitors in the market."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"VMware is expensive. Licensing can be tricky. For example, I recently had a client running VMware vSphere Essentials and wanted to migrate to a more scalable solution. However, they had no choice but to purchase a completely new license and deploy a completely new instance of VMware."
"With all its support and ease of use, VMware Player's pricing is fair."
"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."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Comms Service Provider
12%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

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

What needs improvement with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops?
Personally, I don't think it has any commendable features. The biggest thing about it is that, compared to what you can do with VMware and Horizon, it just seems like there's an awful lot of extra ...
What is your primary use case for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops?
I've used it more as a user than as an administrator setting it up. Just mainly getting access to legacy systems and programming that's not Windows 11 compatible.
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

Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Casio, Telef‹nica, British Airways
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops vs. VMware Workstation and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.