VMWare Player vs VMWare Workstation [closed]

Question

Can anyone give me a simple comparison of those two? It is hard to get the idea from their web site.

Jarodjarosite

Unless you need snapshots, Player does what most need - create VMs, run VMs created via Workstation or ESX/etc. Just doesn't give you the tabbed layout, but you can run multiple VMs – Promotion

Answer 1

VM Player runs a virtual instance, but can't create the vm. [Edit: Now it can.] Workstation allows for the creation and administration of virtual machines. If you have a second machine, you can create the vm on one and run it with the player the other machine. I bought Workstation and I use it setup testing vms that the player runs. Hope this explains it for you.

Edit: According to the FAQ:

VMware Workstation is much more advanced and comes with powerful features including snapshots, cloning, remote connections to vSphere, sharing VMs, advanced Virtual Machines settings and much more. Workstation is designed to be used by technical professionals such as developers, quality assurance engineers, systems engineers, IT administrators, technical support representatives, trainers, etc.

Countersign

VMware Player can create VMs, as of version 3. – Orthogenic

I'm sure this was accurate when it was created, but it should no longer be the accepted answer. (Unfortunately it looks like OP is no longer active on SO.) – Montes

vmware.com/products/workstation-player.html – Compliancy

Answer 2

VMWare Player can be seen as a free, closed-source competitor to Virtualbox.

Initially VMWare Player (up to version 2.5) was intended to operate on fixed virtual operating systems (e.g. play back pre-created virtual disks).

Many advanced features such as vsphere are probably not required by most users, and VMWare Player will provide the same core technologies and 3D acceleration as the ESX Workstation solution.

From my experience VMWare Player 5 is faster than Virtualbox 4.2 RC3 and has better SMP performance. Both are great however, each with its own unique advantages. Both are somewhat lacking in 2D rendering performance.

See the official FAQ, and a feature comparison table.

Chelsea

The question isn't asking for comparisons with VirtualBox. It's Player vs Workstation; which are both VMWare products. – Unicycle

The feature comparison table link is broken. – Thomasson

Now feature comparison table link is working. – Hurff

Answer 3

from http://www.vmware.com/products/player/faqs.html:

How does VMware Player compare to VMware Workstation? VMware Player enables you to quickly and easily create and run virtual machines. However, VMware Player lacks many powerful features, remote connections to vSphere, drag and drop upload to vSphere, multiple Snapshots and Clones, and much more.

Not being able to revert snapshots it's a big no for me.

Entirely

Answer 4

One main reason we went with Workstation over Player at my job is because we need to run VMs that use a physical disk as their hard drive instead of a virtual disk. Workstation supports using physical disks while Player does not.

Montage

Answer 5

Workstation has some features that Player lacks, such as teams (groups of VMs connected by private LAN segments) and multi-level snapshot trees. It's aimed at power users and developers; they even have some hooks for using a debugger on the host to debug code in the VM (including kernel-level stuff). The core technology is the same, though.

Orthogenic

Answer 6

re: VMware Workstation support for physical disks vs virtual disks.

I run Player with the VM Disk files on their own dedicated fast hard drive, independent from the OS hard drive. This allows both the OS and Player to simultaneously independently read/write to their own drives, the performance difference is noticeable, and a second WD Black or Raptor or SSD is cheap. Placing the VM disk file on a second drive also works with Microsoft Virtual PC.

Amiraamis