VMware Workstation Pro is virtualization software which allows running multiple x86-based operating systems on one PC. Users can run Windows, Linux and BSD virtual machines on a Windows or Linux desktop.
N/A
Pricing
Hyper-V
VMware Workstation Pro
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-V
VMware Workstation Pro
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Hyper-V
VMware Workstation Pro
Considered Both Products
Microsoft
Verified User
Chose Hyper-V
I switched to VMware Workstation Pro, after using Hyper-V for several years. The thing I missed in Hyper-V was the network management which has too less configuration options compared to VMware Workstation Pro. Also managing the snapshots was more user-friendly in VMware …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
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, …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IT Admin in Information Technology at Mepal (Building Materials, 51-200 employees)
Chose Hyper-V
I used VMware vSphere at another company. However, for infrastructure with only two virtual machines, the VMware license cost is not worth it, because with the Windows Server Standard license you have the possibility to install two virtual servers at no extra cost.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Hyper-V
Hyper-V is powerful and virtualizes Windows exceptionally well, with less tweaking. It is also cheaper, and allows our clients to budget more for more frequent expansion. Its only real competitor in my opinion is VMware, and that is because vCenter is much more intuitive than …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Network Administrator in Information Technology at Crossroads RMC (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees)
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 …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Owner in Information Technology at Colorado Computer Care (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees)
Chose Hyper-V
On a Mac I have used both Parallels and VMware Fusion - both of which I like a lot, but they are Mac specific (and Hyper-V won't work on a Mac either). I have briefly used VMware Workstation on a PC, and found it very easy to use, but I do not believe it is nearly as feature …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
CCC Team Lead in Information Technology at NCR Corporation (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees)
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 …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Hyper-V
We're a Microsoft Gold Partner and build solutions based on Windows Server. So it was for us internally not a real option to use another virtualization technology as Hyper-V to host our internal infrastructure. As most of our internal infrastructure servers are based on …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
System Administrator/Test Manager in Information Technology at Keysoft Solutions (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)
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 …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
VMware by Broadcom
Verified User
Chose VMware Workstation Pro
They are practically identical. It's only better if you already have virtual machines deployed in Workstation Pro and you do not want to move or have not need to move them quick to Microsoft Hyper-V.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose VMware Workstation Pro
VMware Workstation Player, although free, doesn't meet our needs, and Hyper-V had too many problems when we tried it out. We need the ability to run multiple VM's at the same time, which VMware Workstation Player doesn't support. When testing out Hyper-V, we didn't get very …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose VMware Workstation Pro
VMware Workstation is ideal for small infrastructures and businesses, particularly for small-scale tasks, whereas VMware ESXi is well-suited for large production environments, multiple servers, and data centers.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose VMware Workstation Pro
They all have their strengths and weaknesses. If you're a vCenter shop then Workstation is for you.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
.NET Software Engineer in Information Technology at JFrog (Computer Software, 501-1000 employees)
Chose VMware Workstation Pro
The best and easy to adjust all the functions for easy production of the appropriate and quality services via the Cloud and the deployment of the product can easily be done with all users even those with little basic knowledge on VMware Workstation Pro similar platforms. With …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior System Engineer in Information Technology at NetDocuments (Computer Software, 201-500 employees)
Chose VMware Workstation Pro
This version of the HyperVisor is similar to other systems, but like most, it has its own twist on things and how it works. One of the essential functions is the tabbed approach to listing VM's which allows multiple servers to be running and allowing access to each using …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
CCC Team Lead in Information Technology at NCR Corporation (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees)
Chose VMware Workstation Pro
VMware Workstation is among the pioneers of virtual machines, every option and every feature is well thought out and implemented, there is no image that it cannot run. It doesn't require that much setup, unlike similar software.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Hyper-V and VMware Workstation Pro are both server virtualization tools used to run guest operating systems on a single host machine. Hyper-V is a type-1 hypervisor designed to allow multiple virtual machines and is popular with mid-sized businesses that make use of other Microsoft technologies. In contrast, VMware Workstation Pro is a hypervisor that supports a wide variety of operating systems and is most popular with mid-sized businesses that aren’t heavily based on Microsoft technology.
Features
Hyper-V and VMware Workstation Pro can both be used to create and manage virtualized machines, but they also have some standout features that set them apart from each other.
In addition to being offered as a standalone tool, Hyper-V is built into Windows Server, making it easy to use and implement for network administrators that are familiar with Windows server. Additionally, strong support features are provided for Hyper-V through Windows Active Directory, so businesses won’t have to worry as much about the security of their virtualized workloads. Hyper-V also offers good performance, with virtual servers being quick to create and maintenance not resulting in down time in most cases. For businesses working with a primarily Windows environment, Hyper-V isw a strong choice.
VMware Workstation Pro supports a wide variety of operating systems, including macOS, Windows, and many Linux distributions. Additionally, VMware Workstation Pro can function well on many host operating systems in addition to having flexibility in creating guest operating systems. For businesses looking to create a large amount of virtual machines on a single host, VMware workstation allows for up to 512 guests, which is higher than many competitors. VMware Workstation Pro is a strong choice for businesses that need many guests per host, or who need to host MacOS virtual machines.
Limitations
Hyper-V and VMware Workstation are both competent tools for enterprise virtualization, but they also have some limitations that are important to consider.
Hyper-V allows for quick server creation and high security, but it doesn’t offer support for as many guest operating systems as competitors. For businesses that need to support more obscure Linux distributions or MacOS, VMware Workstation may be preferred. Hyper-V also only supports up to 384 virtual machines on a single host, so for businesses that need more it may not be an ideal choice.
VMware Workstation Pro offers support for many operating systems, but it can be trickier to learn compared to Hyper-V, which will be easy to use for administrators familiar with Windows servers. Additionally, while VMware Workstation Pro’s security features are respectable, they aren’t as powerful as the security features Hyper-V provides through Windows Active Directory.
Pricing
Hyper-V offers a free pricing package with limited features. This package is ideal for smaller businesses with smaller virtualization needs. Pricing for Hyper-V is dependent on organizational requirements but can stretch as high as $4,000 or more. The cost of Hyper-V can also increase based on what support the business needs.
VMware Workstation Pro is available as a standalone product for $249.99, though this license only includes 30 days of support. Additionally, the vSphere enterprise packages include VMware Workstation Pro along with other VMware software, licensing, and support. Licensing for the vSphere package starts at $995.00 and can reach as high as $5395.00. Support and software subscriptions start at $270.00 per year and can reach as high as $2769.00 per year.
Features
Hyper-V
VMware Workstation Pro
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Hyper-V and VMware Workstation Pro
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I would not recommend using a VM as a complete replacement for your everyday driver, but I would recommend it for testing. One way that I use Workstation Pro is with testing GPO's. I can make a change to a user or computer GPO, take a snapshot, reboot the computer to pull the GPO, see if it worked. If it didn't, I revert to the last snapshot before the GPO was pulled, make some changes to the GPO again, and test on the test VM. The same style of testing can be used with creating and changing scripts for computer changes. We have a whole computer setup script that installs software and changes a ton of settings. On a VM you can test over and over to make sure the script runs how you want it to and revert if you didn't like the script outcome. Especially handy with software installs, so you don't have to wait for a program to uninstall and then edit the script and run the script again. Using snapshots save me so much time in testing!
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It provides a great remote access tool for accessing and managing servers in virtual environment. With the security risks surround remote desktop this provides a good alternative to do the same functions.
The app itself is very lightweight and easy to install/maintain.
Sandbox testing can be a time consuming thing to setup and do. Workstation makes this easy to create, use, and put away. This make you more willing to put new things in the sandbox and test them before production usage.
The cost of workstation is very affordable for the functionality that you get and you can try it for free before you buy it.
We use it to run apps that can be difficult to setup or conflict with other apps. We just spin this app VM up run it, and then shut it back down. The startup and shutdown is very quick.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It is well documented since it is a long actor in the virtualization scene. Easy to use for most user cases. Pretty much not maintenance on the software besides the occasional software updates and/or compatibility issues from time to time.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I haven't had to call VMware Workstation support. The majority of the time, whenever I have a problem, I can perform an online search and find the answers I need. Online forums and users with similar situations are generally sufficient to answer any questions I have had, though, from previous experience at another company, their support is outstanding and responsive to circumstances. However, that is generally for a paid support contract and should be expected when you are paying for that support.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
VMware ESXi is more enterprise based whereas VMware Workstation offers capabilities at a lower cost and smaller scale. VMware Workstation Pro is also user friendly and easy to install. It can be utilized on a regular desktop system as the name implies. It helps with also demonstrations when needed to clients without having bulky hardware every time.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
