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VMware Workstation Pro

VMware Workstation Pro

Overview

What is VMware Workstation Pro?

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

VMware Workstation Pro provides a versatile solution for a range of use cases across different industries. For businesses, it offers a …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 5 features
  • Live virtual machine backup (20)
    9.6
    96%
  • Virtual machine automated provisioning (19)
    8.9
    89%
  • Management console (21)
    8.1
    81%
  • Live virtual machine migration (20)
    7.7
    77%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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VMware Workstation Pro

VMware Workstation Pro

N/A
Unavailable

What is VMware Workstation Pro?

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

Hyper-V

Hyper-V

$24.95
per month

Sorry, this product's description is unavailable

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Product Demos

VmWare WorkStation Pro 15 Demo installation Procedure in Tamil

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VMware Workstation pro 16 Download new install windows 10

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How to access BIOS screen on VMware Workstation Pro

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VMWare 15 5 Demo

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VMware Workstation Pro 14 Crack Tutorial - Latest Version for Windows - free install

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VMware Workstation Pro v14.0.0 FULL Installation

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Features

Server Virtualization

Server virtualization allows multiple operating systems to be run completely independently on a single server

8.5
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

What is VMware Workstation Pro?

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.

This enable users to build, test and demo software across an array of different devices, platforms and clouds. IT professionals, developers and businesses can use Workstation Pro every day to support their projects and customers. Workstation Pro makes it easy to run complex local virtual environments to simulate operating systems, platforms and clouds, all from the same desktop PC.

Workstation Pro Features

  • Virtual Machines - Uses the same hypervisor technology that powers vSphere to run virtual machines and guest operating systems.
  • High-Performance 3D Graphics - Provides a fluid and responsive experience for running 3D applications. Workstation Pro supports DirectX 11 and now OpenGL 4.3 in virtual machines.
  • Containers and Kubernetes Clusters - Developers on Windows have a new CLI tool, vctl, that can build and run containers and Kubernetes clusters with VM-level isolation and networking.
  • Virtual Networking - Supports complex IPv4 and IPv6 virtual networks for VMs, with added network latency and bandwidth simulations to help recreate real-world scenarios.

VMware Workstation Pro Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Live virtual machine backup highest, with a score of 9.6.

The most common users of VMware Workstation Pro are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(87)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

VMware Workstation Pro provides a versatile solution for a range of use cases across different industries. For businesses, it offers a secure environment to test software and ensure its safety by running it in a virtual setting with malware. This feature has been widely appreciated by users looking to safeguard their systems. Additionally, users leverage VMware Workstation Pro to deploy development web servers in Linux on Windows machines, enabling efficient software testing. The ability to easily simulate different networking conditions using the Network Editor feature is another valuable use case, as it allows users to test scenarios that would be difficult to replicate physically. IT operations teams rely on VMware Workstation Pro for running lab environments, conducting tests, and validating software solutions and updates. This capability has proven to be indispensable in minimizing risks and ensuring smooth transitions in production infrastructure changes. Furthermore, departments find value in VMware Workstation Pro for running Android applications by virtualizing the Android platform. The software's ability to virtualize old applications that require maintenance has provided an efficient solution compared to running them on outdated hardware. In addition, users appreciate being able to try new features, software, or system updates without encountering real problems through the use of VMware Workstation Pro. This feature has allowed for seamless experimentation and risk-free exploration of new technologies. Overall, from simulating and testing operating systems or production machines to managing virtual labs or supporting older software versions, VMware Workstation Pro serves as a reliable tool for diverse user needs. Its optimized performance, resource utilization capabilities, and flexibility have made it a popular choice among users across various sectors and fields.

Users recommend trying out Hyper-V first for minimal needs, but overall, they believe VMWare is the best hypervisor in its budget range. They find VMWare easier to use and more feature-rich than Oracle VM Virtual Box.

The most common recommendations from users include:

Using VMWare Workstation for testing new security features and bugs. Users find it slightly difficult to set up initially, but once configured appropriately, it becomes easy to use. Although VMWare Workstation Pro is expensive, it provides a rich virtual machine experience with customizable settings. Users suggest using it as a sandbox for testing applications or programs before installing them on the actual system.

Running multiple virtual machines on a single host machine and creating multiple environments. Users highly recommend VMWare Workstation for this purpose. It allows for easy rollbacks to previous instances of virtual machines and is beneficial for teams working on the same project globally. It is also valuable for IT professionals who need to test code or actions in a virtual environment before deploying to a live production environment.

Considering an upgrade to the new version of VMWare Workstation and utilizing features such as a user-friendly interface and RDP access point. Users suggest exploring the additional features available in the latest version of VMWare Workstation. They also recommend using one computer as an access point to remote desktop into multiple virtual machines. This allows for streamlined management of multiple VM containers in a business use case.

Overall, users highly recommend VMWare Workstation due to its ease of use, extensive features, and ability to create multiple environments efficiently.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 27)
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June 15, 2023

Fast, simple and reliable virtualization solution

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Education Management Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Let's exemplify;
  • Before installing major updates in operating systems, you can test them in a virtual machine.
  • If your projects need to run on a different operating system than the one you are using, you can quickly set up a new virtual machine.
  • It is suitable for long-term operation.
  • These features allow you to create device-independent portable operating systems. You can continue to run a machine you set up on another machine quickly without losing files.
Thus, it provides a flexible and reliable working environment.
June 14, 2023

VMware Workstation Pro is an IT Guy testing must have!

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Construction Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
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!
March 29, 2022

Powerful Virtualisation Tool

Umair Mehboob | TrustRadius Reviewer
Umair Mehboob
Senior Devops Engineer
iENGINEERING (Information Technology & Services, 51-200 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware Workstation Pro is well suited for temporary and low-cost environments specifically for testing environments. This is well suited for small companies and home-based users and for corporate and large scale businesses it is less suited as VMware Workstation Pro is not much reliable for production environments and load-based applications.
March 28, 2022

My view of VMware Workstation Pro

Verified User
General Manager in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 1-10 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Some scenarios where VMware Workstation pro is best suited are:
1. Utilization for testing software - can install a virtual machine to simulate software requirements and testing it on your network.
2. Testing operating systems upgrades and installation on specific hardware requirements.
3. Virtualizing a physical server
4. Being able to backup a whole server and restore from it in the event of any issue occurring.
March 27, 2022

Flexible Cloud Services Management Product which offers the Easy and Effective Options with Various IT Solutions.

Johnson Martins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Johnson Martins
.NET Software Engineer
JFrog (Computer Software, 501-1000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Reliable platform to keep multiple Cloud services active and provide effective data security for all the business data that are being processed through VMware Workstation Pro environment. The data collection ability from multiple platforms through its stable data integration functionalities is impressive. The processing of data and the data planning tools with software were very beneficial to our business.
March 27, 2022

VMware - Benefits for user implementation

Marius Covelli | TrustRadius Reviewer
Marius Covelli
Project Engineer
Rockwell Automation (Computer Software, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
I've been using VMware Workstation Pro for project development using different software through all VMs integrating all software’s using a virtualized environment for performance testing and software debugging. Also, software’s are implemented in customer servers in bigger server-client structure.
March 26, 2022

Easy to use and reliable tool

Verified User
Employee in Research & Development
Computer Software Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Easy to install and use Very powerful when it comes to running resource-intensive tasks as a well clean and convenient tool to run any number of different virtual machines I wouldn't recommend using this tool to run a virtual machine and make it your primary machine Gets the job done quickly with no hassle.
March 26, 2022

VMWare Workstation Pro is a must for Network Engineers.

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Banking Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMWare workstation allows a user to create an entire group of VMs on their local computer. This is something used in IT areas like networking and telephony for testing new ideas and scenarios in a controlled environment before trying in production. Giving users a local option means the user is isolated to their machine and not working on a production VMWare environment to run tests or simulations. It also allows the user to work off-network or offline since the app is local.
March 24, 2022

VMware Workstation Pro is the best buy and a must-have tool

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Hospitality Company, 201-500 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware Workstation Pro is ideal for training, development envoirements. Using snapshots makes possible to revert back the system in case something went wrong. That's why I prefer to use it without interfere the production environment. Also sometimes if you need to connect an ESXi or Vcenter server it is a best shortcut. You can do most of the management tasks incase of incident.
September 30, 2021

Perfect software for new features and deployments testing

OR
Oscar Ramirez
It Support
Mepal (Civil Engineering, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
If you need to install a new piece of software and don't want to compromise your production computer, VMware Workstation Pro is the perfect tool. You can virtualize a physical machine and then make all the changes you need to test without the need to deal with disasters.
September 23, 2021

Probably the best virtualizing solution

TL
Toni Lora
IT Admin
Mepal (Building Materials, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware Workstation Pro is the most complete virtualizing solution on the market, it's incredibly powerful when you need to make changes on some important points of your infrastructure. When you need to try test some changes on your servers or make some important changes that may affect the performance of your applications, the best way to be sure that nothing bad happens is to try with a virtualized environment
July 14, 2021

VMware Workstation Pro helps with management of VM's

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Hospital & Health Care Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It's great for anyone Systems Administrator responsible for multiple servers in a Vcenter environment, as well as anyone who utilizes multiple VM's on the pc for various tasks. If you simply have a VM or two you use to test or play around with, there are free alternatives that may be a better option.
May 27, 2021

VMware Workstation - Running many VM's on one server

Tyler Twitchell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Tyler Twitchell
Senior System Engineer
NetDocuments (Computer Software, 201-500 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
The ability to deploy a server to test a specific piece of software is of great benefit, and if you mess up with an install, as long as you have a copy of the machine you started with, you can quickly delete an OS and start over. The same works if you need to share a single image among many people.
May 01, 2021

Workstation integration and you!

Nick Darnell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Nick Darnell
Systems Administrator
Central Texas College (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Workstation Pro is well suited for both small and enterprise level applications. Home labs and small businesses can use it to manage a few VM's and massive scale corporations will have the ability to operate multiple clusters across multiple domains all in one setting. I find it most useful for offline application testing on VM's prior to migration into production.
March 19, 2021

Must have developer tool

Vlad VARNA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Vlad VARNA
Principal Software Architect
NortonLifeLock (Computer Software, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Out of the desktop VM solutions, it's better than its competitors in terms of speed, features, and reliability (though in the recent releases reliability seems to be going down; probably mainly because of issues with HyperVM). If you want to have a whole Linux environment that you can just move on a stick it's better than WSL. If you need different preconfigured OSes for automated testing it's also very good
January 14, 2020

Virtually head and shoulders above the rest

Graham Murison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Graham Murison
Network Analyst
Abbotsford Police Department (Government Administration, 201-500 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
We have used VMware Workstation to virtualize old servers/workstations operating systems that are running on really ancient hardware. By doing this we are have reduced our hardware maintenance cost, power consumption, and cooling costs. It also does well when you are testing the deployment of new software packages or operating systems. This allows IT computers to be free of the bloatware that comes with so many software suites, upgrades for us just requires moving files around.
October 24, 2019

VMware Workstation is a great compliment to your VMware environment.

Verified User
Director in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
When you use the vSphere client to open a remote console you have what appears to be a slimmed-down version of Workstation. The full version can be used in that same role, but instead of going to vSphere first you can directly get to your VM tree through Workstation. This makes it quick to move from VM to VM. Sandboxing is where Workstation is especially well suited. You can run test apps, difficult apps, and deprecated apps/OSs in a sideways fashion that is not dangerous to your production environment. If you're not a VMware shop, this product could be used but would be less appropriate.
February 05, 2019

Workstation: great for home use and development

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
If you're a remote user for an organization, specifically for development, VMWare workstation is hard to beat. It's great for home use or even inside organization BOYD type solutions. It is not a replacement for a private or public cloud. It is not intended for production level scenarios; it's more intended for small solutions like classrooms and home use.
January 22, 2019

There is no Image that VMware Workstation cannot handle.

Stefan Trbojevic | TrustRadius Reviewer
Stefan Trbojevic
CCC Team Lead
NCR Corporation (Information Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware Workstation is well suited for literally anyone, be it for a private project or for your work, It is usually being used for testing purposes or perhaps for virtual servers, whatever the task may be VMware Workstation can handle it with ease. As previously mentioned multi-monitor setup is something that needs to be worked on for the product to be fully implemented and usable in your environment.
April 16, 2018

Virtual machines made easy!

Michael Timms | TrustRadius Reviewer
Michael Timms
IT Specialist
iQor (Telecommunications, 10,001+ employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware is not just well suited, but it is a necessity in a thin client environment. Other virtualization software can be used of course, but none of the others that I have used come with the customer support that VMware does. It is also perfect for a PC environment that uses FOG for imaging, because building images is so much faster on VMware than on a live machine.
February 08, 2018

A Perfect VM Manager

Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Gambling & Casinos Company, 51-200 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Scenarios in which this product is useful are if:
  1. you are a developer or you are often interested in new products
  2. you want to carry out extensive tests on certain products or features particularly impacting products that are already used in the company
  3. you have the intention to make particularly risky changes
  4. you can create specular environments and test everything on the virtual. machines
April 18, 2017

VMware is where it's at!

Evan Miller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Evan Miller
Systems Support Engineer
College of William & Mary (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Windows Imaging - using this to build and test images prior to being rolled out to a production environment is a key point of this software and how I use it. With the multiple feature updates with Windows 10 OS it is ever more important to properly test everything (virtually).
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