We performed a comparison between VMware vSphere and VMware Workstation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: VMware Workstation has a slight edge in this comparison due to it being the less expensive solution.
"I definitely like the stability, performance and ease-of-use."
"The solution saves cost."
"It's extremely simple. Installing the ESXi is a piece of cake and then putting servers on there is really simple and having HA and building a cluster for our VM servers. It's very easy."
"The virtualization this solution offer is very complete for the infrastructure."
"VMware vSphere is the best private-cloud solution."
"The tool comes with scale-out capabilities. Deploying new infrastructure became much quicker, saving significant time previously spent sourcing hardware for each installation. It also has the ability to downscale on rack spaces, reducing the number of rack units needed to accommodate our servers."
"It is easy to use."
"The redundancy, the failover, the ability to stay up and running 24/7, all the various tools that are in there, high-availability, DRS, are very critical to us."
"It's stable."
"VMware Workstation’s most valuable features are backup and data transfer from one server to another."
"The initial setup is simple and takes only five minutes to complete."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"VMware Workstation allows multiple operating systems in the same physical machine."
"VMware Workstation is great for migrating and patching operating systems."
"It will not harm any of the computer settings to run a specific program. For example, if a program needs a specific security policy, we don't have to use the shared configuration. We have an individual copy of Windows installed on the virtual machine, so anybody can access that. It helps us a lot."
"The product works well."
"The solution is stable. However, it could improve by being more secure."
"It's an expensive solution."
"I'd like to see a little bit more integration for VDI. I think that Composer servers, security servers, broker servers with connections, I'm not sure they are necessary at this point. Perhaps they could have a lot of those functions baked directly into the hypervisor. It seems to me that if the hypervisor is scalable and flexible enough, that the processor and compute can handle all of that. Maybe we eliminate those other components for VDIs and have more mixed workloads: server workloads and desktop workloads all in the same hypervisor."
"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."
"The quality of support could be better."
"I would like to see support for endpoint virtualization."
"VMware vSphere could be more secure and well-known to everyone."
"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."
"My experience with Workstation is limited, so I don't know all the functionalities of this tool. Maybe Workstation could add some more compatibility with other vendors."
"Performance could be improved, it's somewhat clunky."
"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."
"It would be better if software updates occur automatically."
"Lacks the ability to clone onto another system rather than starting from scratch."
"The interface is a little wonky and needs to be improved."
"VMware Workstation’s scalability could be improved."
"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 vSphere is ranked 2nd in Server Virtualization Software with 446 reviews while VMware Workstation is ranked 2nd in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with 41 reviews. VMware vSphere is rated 8.8, while VMware Workstation is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of VMware vSphere writes "Offers good performance and is useful for banking systems". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware Workstation writes "An easy-to-manage solution that has really good customer support compared to other market players". VMware vSphere is most compared with Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM, KVM and Nutanix AHV Virtualization, whereas VMware Workstation is most compared with Hyper-V, KVM, Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox and VMware Fusion.
We monitor all Server Virtualization Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
This question is like what do you prefer?
Wordpad or Word?
Both are useful, just for different things. So one would probably end up using both.
Would you it-central-stationeers stop with this nonsense already?
if it is for business or enterprise-class virtualization, vSphere solution is the way to go.
Workstation is used for lab.
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 work before we put it into production. VM Workstation can also give us an idea of the issues we can anticipate and how best to address them. This solution is also great at creating labs for our team when working on certifications.
VM Workstation can be a bit clunky, though. There is a lot of resource consumption and the overall performance could be a bit more effective. Visio stencil for technical documentation would be a nice improvement. This solution is relatively expensive..
VMware vSphere is very good from a recoverability point of view; everything can be stored much easier on a virtual server than a physical one. VMware vSphere is very good with memory sharing between VMs and CPU scheduling between VMs. The command-line tools integrate well with Microsoft products, so it’s easy to manipulate them. VMware vSphere is very stable and very scalable.
The initial setup with VMware vSphere can be a bit complex. You need to have a good understanding of VMware. This solution does not permit hard partitioning. We found there were occasional bugs and errors and that the HTML5 is not up to par. The pricing and licensing options can get expensive.
Conclusion:
The two solutions are both VMware and perform amazingly. They are dependable and very reliable.
VM vSphere is a hypervisor and is created for large-scale production. VM Workstation is best as a test environment, although many choose to use VM Workstation in front of VM vSphere and migrate test projects, results, and data documentation to VM vSphere.
Both are VMWare products.
simply v-sphere is a hypervisor Tier-1 technology stack
VMWare workstation is a desktop release installed on windows or Linux OS
if your requirement is limited need few VMs for testing purpose you can go for Workstation.
but if you need production VMs you need a separate independent hardware server for v-sphere esxi hypervisor.