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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Hyper-V

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AN/A

    $24.95

    per month

    VMware Workstation Player

    Score9.9 out of 10
    N/AVMware Workstation 17 Player is a platform for running a single virtual machine on a Windows or Linux PC to deliver managed corporate desktops. Organizations can use Workstation Player to deliver managed corporate desktops, while students and educators use it for learning and training.N/A
    Pricing
    Hyper-VVMware Workstation Player
    Editions & Modules
    Developer
    $24.95
    per month
    Bronze
    $49.00
    per month
    Silver
    $89.00
    per month
    Gold
    $135.00
    per month
    Platinum
    $199.00
    per month
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Hyper-VVMware Workstation Player
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Hyper-VVMware Workstation Player
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    Chose Hyper-V
    VMware Workstation Player and Pro are now free for Small Businesses, but Pro used to be paid and quite expensive. There are compatibility issues between those products and Windows hosts, giving that Microsoft has their own hypervisor platform already. Also, if you use Linux, …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Hyper-V comes with Windows Server. It works well, is easy to use and administer, and does everything we need. I see no reason to purchase additional products to do what Hyper-V already does. Plus, the option to eventually use Azure without much fuss makes it a simple choice for …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Hyper-V is all around well-suited tool for almost any scenario when if you compare it with their respective competitors. It can be used for a single machine for testing purposes only, it can be applied for large-scale networks, either virtual or existing ones. Great set of …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Hyper-V being 'free' was the main reason we went for it here. We gave VMware Workstation/Server a try when initially evaluating virtualisation options, but Hyper-V won out for ease of integration into our existing environment. VirtualBox was more of a 'plug in' solution which …
    Incentivized
    VMware by Broadcom
    Chose VMware Workstation Player
    VMware Player is easier to use for administrators and end-users when compared to anything else on the market.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    31 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    32 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    25 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    30 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Hyper-VVMware Workstation Player
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Hyper-V and VMware Workstation Player
    Feature
    Hyper-V
    8.6
    71 Ratings
    5% above category average
    VMware Workstation Player
    -
    Ratings
    Virtual machine automated provisioning9.059 Ratings00 Ratings
    Management console7.071 Ratings00 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup9.063 Ratings00 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration8.565 Ratings00 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security9.465 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Hyper-VVMware Workstation Player
    Small Businesses
    Proxmox VE
    Score9 out of 10
    VMware Fusion
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    VMware Fusion
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    VMware Workstation Pro
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Amazon WorkSpaces
    Score7.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Hyper-VVMware Workstation Player
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (72 ratings)
    6.9
    (9 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.0
    (6 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (8 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.5
    (16 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.0
    (3 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Hyper-VVMware Workstation Player
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    If budgets are stretched, Hyper-V is a very cost effective solution. Any veteran MS Windows administrators will have little issue in getting to grips with this. If you are familiar with VMware solutions, then you may find Hyper-V a little frustrating as it does lack some of the functionality of those products, however nothing that will prevent you from managing your virtual workloads and estate. Since rolling out Hyper-V 2019 we have had no real issues with it; ESXi seemed to have more issues and was less forgiving with hardware compatibility.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    VMware will work great for the following test scenarios:
    • Testing windows updates on a system
    • Testing a new software or a new software version
    • Creating a sandbox to test options/features of an OS
    • Creating different VM to test a software on different OS without the need to have physical machines for all of them
    You can also use it as a "player" only where you have that static VM that you run from time to time as with my use for SAS University. Whenever you need to use the software, you simply start that VM.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Easy to use GUI - very easy for someone with sufficient Windows experience - not necessarily a system administrator.
    • Provisioning VMs with different OSes - we mostly rely on different flavors of Windows Server, but having a few *nix distributions was not that difficult.
    • Managing virtual networks - we usually have 1 or 2 VLANs for our business purposes, but we are happy with the outcomes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • VMware Player is easy to use.
    • VMware Player supports a wide variety operating systems.
    • Unity mode makes it easy for the end user to utilize needed legacy applications while maintaining their familiar Host OS desktop. It's seamless to the point where the end user doesn't know they're running applications from a VM.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • The only issue I have with Hyper-V is I am unable to use Veeam on my Windows 2016 Server to backup my FreeBSD HAProxy VM.
    • There is some sort of checkpoint issue that I have been unable to figure out, but it works just fine on my Windows 2012 Servers. I do believe this is a Microsoft issue and not a Veeam issue though.
    • Another thing that could be useful that Hyper-V does not have would be some sort of GUI that shows the status of all the VM's on a given server to help us manage them easier and know what is going on. However, I do have Zabbix for this and that does a good job at monitoring all my servers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • Would be nice to use more VMs at once, but this is basically trial software, so it's hard to fault them.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    Cheap and easy is the name of the game. It has great support, it doesn't require additional licenses, it works the same if it is a cluster or stand-alone, and all the servers can be centrally managed from a system center virtual machine manager server, even when located at remote sites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    I give a rating of 8 because VMware Player has its use cases, for example it requires the host OS to be logged in, and the VMware Player application to be opened and the Guest VM started. Only one VM can run at a time. I'd give a 9/10 to VMware Workstation because you can run shared VMs at startup without logging in or starting the workstation application. and i'd give ESX a 10/10 because ESX is the leader in enterprise visualization.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Microsoft
    It is very easy to configure new virtual machines and manage them. But you have to use different interfaces to perform various tasks. Especially as soon as it comes to clustering you have to use at least two different interfaces (Hyper-V Manager and Failover-Cluster Manager) to perform all necessary tasks. The newly released Windows Admin Center is a way into the right direction to get all management tasks into one single interface.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    Great product. Its user-friendly GUI and overall performance are really the biggest strength of this tool. The reason why I don't give a higher note is because of the price. Although it's decent (starting at around $200 for a license), there is a good free alternative in VirtualBox. Not everyone values friendly GUI as something worth paying for. For people that are more tech-savvy, I would recommend looking into VirtualBox as they might actually like the model better (with downloadable add-ons and packages).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Microsoft
    In the past 2 years our Hyper-V servers have only had a handful of instances where the VM's on them were unreachable and the physical Hyper-V server had to be restarted. One time this was due to a RAM issue with the physical box and was resolved when we stopped using dynamic memory in Hyper-V. The other times were after updates were installed and the physical box was not restarted after the updates were installed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Microsoft
    Hyper-V itself works quickly and rarely gave performance issues but this can be more attributed to the physical server specifications that the actual Hyper-V software in my opinion as Hyper-V technically just utilizes config files such as xml, and a data drive file (VHD, VHDX, etc) to perform its' duties.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    Integration isn't really relevant here but I see this question more as an OS compatibility for the VM. They state that they support over 200 different OS versions. I honestly have never tried anything else other than Ubuntu and Windows myself but nonetheless, this is impressive. I have not hit any limitation in my use of this software in terms of limitation or conflicts with other software.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    Hyper-V is greatly supported by techs around the world. There are tons of forums, help websites and individuals ready to answer questions. I've never needed to contact Microsoft for help...because help is so easy to find out there. Do a search online for anything related to Hyper-V and you will certainly find an article with spelled out steps on how to do what you are looking to do.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    VMware support is very knowledgeable on their products, eveything from AirWatch to ESX clusters. VMware is easy to contact, they stay in touch and see the issue through to the end and a final resolution. They keep you up to date on your issue status and don't leave you waiting for answers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Microsoft
    We had in person training from a third party and while it was very in depth it was at a beginner's level and by the time we received the training we had advanced past this level so it was monotonous and redundant at that point. It was good training though and would have provided a solid foundation for learning the rest of Hyper-V had I had it from the beginning.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Microsoft
    The training was easy to read and find. There were good examples in the training and it is plentiful if you use third party resources also. It is not perfect as sometimes you may have a specific question and have to spend time learning or in the rare case you get an error you might have to research that error code which could have multiple causes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Microsoft
    initial configuration of hyper-v is intuitive to anyone familiar with windows and roles for basic items like single server deployments, storage and basic networking. the majority of the problems were with implementing advanced features like high availability and more complex networking. There is a lot of documentation on how to do it but it is not seamless, even to experienced virtualization professionals.
    Incentivized
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    VMware by Broadcom
    Installing the application was easily completed on the twenty computers that needed VMware Player. Once those 20 users were configured we copied our virtual machine template to the 20 users and turned on their newly provisioned virtual machines. We then configured unity mode so the user could easily work from within the virtual machine from their host desktop.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    VMware is the pioneer of virtualization but when you compare it with Hyper-V, VMware lacks the flexibility of hardware customization and configuration options Hyper-V has also GPU virtualization still not adequate for both platforms. VMware has better graphical interface and control options for virtual machines. Another advantage VMware has is it does not need a dedicated os GUI base installation only needs small resources and can easily install on any host.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    Both free, VMware supports USB 3.0 while VirtualBox does not. VMware supports nested hardware-assisted virtualization while VirtualBox does not.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Microsoft
    Nothing is perfect but Hyper-V does a great job of showing the necessary data to users to ensure that there is enough resources to perform essential functions. You can also select what fields show on the management console which is helpful for a quick glance. There are notifications that can be set up and if things go unnoticed and a Hyper-V server runs out of a resource it will safely and quickly shut down the VM's it needs to in order to ensure no Hardware failure or unnecessary data loss.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • Hyper-V has provided for an extremely cost-effective virtual environment with disaster recovery. For the size of our business, it's all we need to ensure our desired level of continuity of services and protection against hardware failures.
    • Since we are a Windows shop, deploying Hyper-V means we don't have the added cost of a hypervisor, since it's included in the cost of the Windows Server license. It's all we needed to achieve our goal of running all our virtual machines on a single server with another, less expensive server on tap for replication and failover.
    • We wanted easy deployment and management with disaster recovery while having the ability to leverage our years of Windows SysAdmin experience. Hyper-V fit the bill.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • A positive impact is that it require little to no funding to use.
    • Negative impact is that because it is free it can be hard to get support.
    Read full review
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