In celebration of the 20th anniversary, VMware released the version 15 of their desktop hypervisor product Workstation available on Windows and Linux, which is one their biggest releases so far. VMware workstation is a type 2 hypervisor comparable to Oracle’s Virtual Box or Microsoft’s Virtual PC. It is a great tool for running multiple OSes on top of your OS for testing or increased compatibility purpose without resorting to dual boot.
As usual the product is available in two versions: Workstation Pro and Workstation Player. The latter one is a version somewhat limited of Workstation Pro as it is limited to run a single VM and some important feature are not available like snapshots and cloning, virtual network simulation and customization, connecting to vSphere/vCenter.
Among the new features and improvements of this version 15 are:
Brand New REST API
Just like it happened in Fusion 10, a REST API is now available to allow users to automate some management tasks like deploying or configuring VMs. The following operations are currently supported using standard JSON over HTTP or HTTPS:
- Virtual machine inventory management
- Virtual machine power management
- Virtual machine clone
- Networking management
This feature could prove very useful to people running lab that get destroyed and rebuilt regularly. Leveraging clones is of course a way of speeding up the process of spinning up a lab but scripting it will make it totally painless.
Updated Interface and stretch mode
The UI got a few changes although not massive. It now gets closer to the “flat” design VMware has been adopting for their products since the HTML5 web client with new icons, colours and stuff. Note though that it supports 4K resolutions for host and guest scaling so you might get better use of your display should you have a high end monitor.
The other new feature is the Stretch Mode where the guest can be resized without needing to adjust the resolution in the guest. It may seem trivial but it is actually really useful when you want visibility of multiple guests at the same time without destroying your eyes.
Host level high DPI support – The Workstation interface auto detects the host level DPI change and auto adjusts the layout to meet the new DPI.
Guest DPI synch with host – When there is a DPI change on the host side, the guest operating system adjusts its DPI to match the host DPI. (Windows 10 version 1703 or later and VMware Tools 10.3.2)
Another useful feature is that you can now easily access the virtual machine directory from a Windows host by right-clicking the virtual machine in the Workstation Pro library and selecting Open VM directory.
One-Click-SSH into Linux VM
This one is only available if you run workstation on Windows 10 version 1803 or greater. Like the name suggests you will be able to open an SSH session to the guest by right-clicking on the VM and selecting SSH. It is always more comfortable to work in an SSH session than in the virtual console.
vSphere 6.7 Support + Hosts and Clusters View
You can connect to a remote ESXi 6.7 host or vCenter Server 6.7 from Workstation 15 Pro to manage the remote the virtual machines running on vSphere. You can also upload a local virtual machine to vSphere 6.7 or download a remote virtual machine running on vSphere 6.7 to the local desktop.
If you use Workstation at work to consolidate your virtual consoles of your remote environments, you will be glad to know that it is now aware of datacenters, hosts and clusters. Only available for Windows hosts however.
Virtual hardware version 16
Like every new version of workstation it brings a new virtual hardware version: 16.
However keep in mind that VMs in version 16 will only be compatible with Workstation 15 and Fusion 11, not even vSphere 6.7.
The new features of this version include:
- Improved Virtual NVMe Device Performance
- Important Security Fixes (Spectre, Meltdown and L1TF)
- Virtual Trusted Platform Module
- UEFI Secure Boot
- IOMMU
- VBS (Device Guard, Credential Guard) Support (guest only)
- Graphics memory up to 3GB
- DirectX 10.1 support
Others
A bunch of other improvements and features have been added:
- Network Simulation: Workstation Pro can introduce Latency, as well as Packet Loss and Bandwidth Limits on Incoming and Outgoing traffic per Virtual NIC
- Network Rename: Workstation Pro allows users to rename networks for personalization and organization
- USB auto connect: USB devices can automatically connect to a powered on virtual machine when you configure Workstation 15 Pro to remember the connection rule
- Virtual Trusted Platform Module device type, as well as UEFI Secure Boot and IOMMU
The following new OSes are now supported:
- Windows 10 1803
- Ubuntu 18.04
- Fedora 28
- RHEL 7.5
- CentOS 7.5
- Debian 9.5
- OpenSuse Leap 15.0
- FreeBSD 11.2
- ESXi 6.7
And as usual, hundreds of bugs have been fixed for better stability.
Download
You can try the products for free for 15 days. Note that the latest version 15 will cost about half the price if you are upgrading from Workstation 12 or greater and will be about 60% cheaper if you upgrade from Workstation Player to Pro.
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