Amazon WorkSpaces vs. VMware Workstation Player

With a substantial free tier, AWS is a solution for fast, reliable and secure access to tools and workflows for any project. AWS is still the most intimidating cloud solution to approach. While there is no shortage to power and solutions, it is not for the faint of heart. It is easy to get lost while using AWS though the solution is there. Amazon WorkSpaces (VDI) requires an IT manager with experience deploying applications and building databases. Comparably, Parallels is a much easier UI to navigate, along with many open source and free options.

Incentivized

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

• Quick, clean access to the VDI images.
• Easy provisioning of images to use based on multiple criteria.
• Integrating with our other products (AV/AM, productivity, etc.).

Incentivized

• 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

• Copy and paste does not work well
• The performance is degraded during the day being slow at the end of the journey
• Some user interface issues displaying the page
• Sometimes when I type a word a letter is pasted many [times]

Incentivized

• Would be nice to use more VMs at once, but this is basically trial software, so it's hard to fault them.

Incentivized

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

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

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

AWS support in general is pretty good, and WorkSpaces is no exception. We haven't had too much need for support but on the occasion we have, they've been quick to respond and helpful. Our issues have been resolved rapidly.

Incentivized

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

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

Cisco AnyConnect is a VPN client and using a VPN can reduce the internet speed. It is not quite reliable as workspaces. Cisco AnyConnect is not at all optimised for linux machines. They suffer a lot from crashing and loss of internet speed. Workspaces works quite well even on linux machines

Incentivized

Both free, VMware supports USB 3.0 while VirtualBox does not. VMware supports nested hardware-assisted virtualization while VirtualBox does not.

Incentivized

• Faster project deliverables
• Security of our database
• Have complete control over virtual networking
• Vds Lagging issues at times due to heavy usage

Incentivized

• 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.