Friday, July 30, 2010

VMware Workstation 7.1 enhancements

I have decided to update my current VMware workstation 7.0.1 installation I have on my desktop to the latest available release 7.1. Further follows a quick comparison of the most interesting features and enhancements between these two releases:
  • WS7.1 officially support many latest versions of well-known Linux distros like RHEL/Debian/Ubuntu
  • WS7.1 supports OVF1.1 via ovftool which is part of the installer
  • WS7.1 has higher limits for guest's vCPUs - from 4 to 8 and guest's virtual disk - from 950GB to 2TB
  • WS7.1 is capable of automatic downloads and updates of WMware Tools
Eventually, I would like to remember what new features VMware Workstation 7.0 came with:
  • 32GB of guest's virtual RAM
  • cross-platform license serial numbers
  • pause running guest instead of suspending it or even powering it off
  • import of Windows XP mode virtual machine
  • GUI editor for virtual networks
  • support for Windows 7 as guests
  • support ESX hypervisor running as guest
That's not everything at all. The official release notes for VMware Workstation 7.1 and 7.0 are more comprehensive.