VMWare Player vs Workstation

IceDigger

IceDigger

[H]F Junkie
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Feb 22, 2001
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Is it worth upgrading from VMWare Player to Workstation?

What are the advantages / disadvantages other then Workstation costs money?
 
The biggest pro about Workstation is it has snapshots which helps with testing; you can create a snapshot on a clean VM image, install whatever you want, and if it breaks the VM you just go back to the snapshot.

The workaround for this (with Player) is to make a VM and then backup the VM directory (or at least the .vmdk and .vmx files) somewhere. You can then just re-open the VM from there, but obviously that takes a lot more disk space since you're copying the entire VM itself.

VirtualBox (freeware) has most of the features of Workstation including snapshots, but in my experience, VB has horrible performance (especially hard disk access times) compared to Player/Workstation.
I have a bit of a gripe about this - I'm surprised that VMware has not added snapshots to Player since VB (a competing free product) has them, but I guess that would probably neuter Workstation sales somewhat. Microsoft VirtualPC (also free) has undo disks which essentially is the same thing.
 
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Not sure what OS you're running, but Win8 works great for virtual labs. It has Hyper-V built in, and it really works well. I've got a core i5-661 with 8GB of RAM running 5 VMs right now (A domain controller, a "workstation", a web server, a sql server, and an appv management server). All are performing well and I can take and revert back to snapshots at any point.

I know people hate Win8, and VMWare fans hate Hyper-V, but when it's built into the OS, it's hard not to use it, especially for a lab...
 
If just using at home, Player pretty much does all you need if you are just dabbing into VMs. If you are doing more, or using it at work then Workstation is the way to go (licensing in a commercial setting). Workstation I sometimes use snapshots, but I am always using the virtual network editor, as well as the "clean up" functions to keep my VMDK files in check. Plus I run 4-5 simultaneously and it's easier to move around with Workstation.
 
I second the use of Hyper-V on Windows 8. Works great and its simple to use
 
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