New
Features and Improvements in VMware Workstation 10.0.1
VMware Workstation 10 delivers best-in-class Windows 8
support, and innovative
new features that transform the way technical professionals
work with virtual
machines, whether they reside on their PCs or on private
enterprise clouds.
*New Operating System
Support
Support has been
added for:
-Windows 8.1
-Windows 8.1 Enterprise
-Windows Server 2012 R2
-Ubuntu 13.10
As well as for the latest Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat and
OpenSUSE releases.
*VMware Hardware
Version 10
This version of VMware Workstation includes VMware hardware
Version 10 and is
compatible with vSphere 5.5. Hardware versions introduce new
virtual hardware
functionality and new features while enabling VMware to run
legacy operating
systems in our virtual machines. New features included in
this hardware
version:
*16 vCPUs
Virtual machines can now run with up to 16 virtual CPUs.
This enables very
processor intensive applications to be run in a virtual
machine.
Note: Running virtual machines with 16 vCPUs requires that
both your host
and guest operating system support 16 logical processors.
Your physical
machine must have at least 8 cores with hyper-threading
enabled to power
on a virtual machine with this configuration.
*8 Terabyte Disks
Virtual machines can now include virtual disks greater than
2 Terabytes.
Given the limitations of most operating systems to boot from
disks greater
than 2 Terabytes, These large disks are most useful as
secondary drives for
file storage.
*Virtual SATA Disk
Controller
A SATA I/O controller can now be selected during the
creation of a custom
virtual machine in addition to an IDE and SCSI controller.
This enables use
of in-box SATA drivers that are shipped with operation
systems.
*USB Improvements
USB 3 Streams have been implemented to enable high speed
transfer of files
from USB 3 external storage devices that support this
technology. For
customers running Workstation 10 on laptops with small hard
disks, large
data files, video files etc., can be stored on an external
USB 3 storage
device and accessed quickly from within the virtual machine.
*More VMnets
Due to demand, VMware has doubled the number of VMnets in
Workstation 10
to twenty! This provides you with more virtual networks to
dedicate to
specific uses, and it enables more complex networked virtual
environments
to be built.
*SSD Pass-through
Windows 8 is capable of detecting when it is being run from
a solid state
drive (SSD) and optimizes itself for this hardware. In
Workstation 10, the
guest operating system will be able to detect when the
virtual machine Disk
file is being stored on an SSD drive and the operating
system can make the
same optimizations when it is running in a virtual machine.
*Expiring Virtual
Machines
VMware has enhanced the capabilities of Restricted Virtual
Machines to
include the ability to expire a virtual machine on a
specified date and
time. This feature enables our customers to create virtual
machines to be
shared with employees, students, customers, contractors,
etc. The
restricted virtual machine will run until their contract
terminates,
demo runs out, or course ends.
*Virtual Tablet
Sensors
Workstation runs very well on the new tablet and convertible
PCs. Last year
VMware enabled touch screen input to be passed through to
the virtual
machine. Workstation 10 introduces a virtual Accelerometer,
Gyroscope,
Compass and Ambient Light sensor.
*User Interface
Enhancements
There are many user interface improvements that we have
included in the
Workstation 10 release. The highlights include:
*Windows 8 Unity Mode
Support
We are continuing to improve how the Workstation Unity
user-interface works
with Microsoft's "Modern UI" or the
"Microsoft Design Language"
(The new tile interface in Windows 8 formerly known as
Metro).
Microsoft Store applications are now available in the Unity
menu and can be
launched directly from it.
*Multiple Monitor
Navigation
When running with 2, 3, 4 or more monitors it has been
frustrating to use
the full screen mode in Workstation and toggle through each
combination of
monitors to get to the one you want. The full screen toolbar
now has an
option to choose your configuration from a menu and jump to
it immediately.
*Power Off Suspended
Virtual Machines
Workstation 10 lets you simply power off a suspended Virtual
Machine in
order to make changes to the configuration without powering
it on and then
off first. Powering off a suspended virtual machine will
lose any
information stored in memory, but will not lose anything
saved to the
virtual disk.
*Remote Hardware
Upgrade
When working with virtual machines running remotely on
vSphere or on
another instance of Workstation, you can now remotely
upgrade the virtual
hardware version.
*Localized into
Simplified Chinese
The Workstation user interface and online help has been
translated into
Simplified Chinese.
*New Converter
This release includes the latest version of the VMware
Standalone Converter.
The Converter enables users to turn a physical machine into
a virtual
machine. This version of the Converter includes the ability
to convert
machines running Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and RHEL 6
operating
systems. It supports virtual and physical machines with
Unified Extensible
Firmware Interfaces (UEFI) and EXT4 file systems as well as
GUID Partition
Table (GPT) disks.
*OVFTool
The Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) is a virtual machine
distribution
format that supports sharing virtual machines between
products and
organizations. The VMware OVF Tool is a command-line utility
that
enables a user to import and export OVF packages to and from
a wide
variety of VMware products. The latest release of the
OVFTool is included
with VMware Workstation 10 and is used to upload and
download virtual
machines to and from vSphere. The OVFTool is also used to
import an .OVF
file which may come in handy when importing virtual machines
created using
desktop virtualization software developed by Oracle.
*VMRun Enhancements
The VMRun command line utility has been enhanced with two
new options
getGuestIPAddress and checkToolsState to retrieve the IP
address of the
guest operating system and determine the state of VMware
Tools in a guest.
*Cloud Management
Tools
The VMware Workstation team has been making enhancements and
working with
partners to enable cloud management tools to be used with
virtual machines
running in VMware Workstation 10.
*Embedded 30-day
Trial
Workstation 10 can now be evaluated for 30-days by simply
entering your
email address the first time you run the application. This
change is
intended to make it much easier for our customers to learn
about the
latest release of VMware Workstation without their license
keys being
trapped by spam filters.
*VMware KVM
Many of our customers have asked for a way to run a virtual
machine so that
their users do not realize they are running in a virtual
machine. VMware
Workstation 10 includes a new executable (on Windows only
for now) called
VMware KVM. Run vmware-kvm.exe vmx-file.vmx from the command
line and your
virtual machine will launch in full screen with no toolbar
or any other
indicator that you are running a VM. You can use Ctrl-Alt to
ungrab from the
virtual machine and the Pause/Break key to toggle between
multiple virtual
machines running under VMware KVM, or between a virtual
machine and the host
system. The user experience should be just like that of
using a KVM switch -
hence the name.
