VMWare Workstation has always been a pretty good desktop virtualization product. I first used VMware Workstation 3 back in 2004. Back then I used it for testing recovery scenarios.

The latest Workstation offering from VMWare shows why this product has managed to be so strong in the past. The key features in this version are:

• desktop integration with Unity
• Powerful record and replay technology
• new Support for Windows 2008
• Link state networking
• simplified ACE authoring
• support for both 32 and 64 bit guests/hosts
• 64bit sound driver
• easily clone machines
• Support for DirectX 9.0c
• USB 2.0 support

There are more features than this. Depending on how and why you use virtual machines will determine what is really important to you.

I personally think the reason VMWare Workstation is a superior product right now is its sound and DirectX. I do not know of any other product that also supports this. Why is this important? We are seeing a gradual movement to either bare metal or software workstation virtualization. With the software virtualization, the base system will be nothing more than a container for the host software and the user will run on the virtual guests. This type of scenario allows for more flexibility and a simple environment because of the ability to rapidly start a new virtual machine.

It also goes along with some other initiatives in the marketplace,  like employee owned computers and improving end user experience.

The VMWare product also allows for people to use a Linux base machine and Windows guest to provide the best of both worlds.

Creating a Virtual Machine

Creating a virtual guest is really quite easy in VMWare workstation. Go to file and select new -> Virtual Machine

Select where your installation media is. Your options are Disk, iso or install later.

As with VMWare Server and similar products select the Operating System you are going to install. This helps select the basic template settings it will use.

This is a new feature I haven’t seen before. You are prompted to enter your license key and admin password. This means you are not asked these questions during the software installation.

The next three steps are standard, so I won’t add in the images.

Select where you want to save the virtual machine. By default it will be saved in the user profile.

Select how much disk space you will need.

Now you’re ready to start the virtual machine. Note that if your license has expired or you have not entered one you will not be able to start the virtual machine.

After the installation you need to install the VMWare Tools. It tries to do this automatically. This caused an error on my guest. I simply used task manager to kill it and started again and it worked fine.

There you go, the virtual machine is built and ready for use.

Cloning

VMWare workstation makes it really easy to clone a guest operating system. It is simply a menu option under VM. You cannot clone a live machine.

To clone a virtual guest simply shutdown the virtual guest and then select clone from the VM menu. You can create linked clones or create a completely separate virtual machine.

Once the cloning process is complete you have a separate machine. Very easy to use and better than simply copying the VMWare files or using VMWare converter.

Unity

Unity is a feature similar to VMWare Fusion. It allows you to break windows out of the virtual guest to display on the host machine.

Open up Internet Explorer or some application and then click the unity button on the menu bar.

The application window looks normal except for the outline and a new icon on the menu bar.

Summary

VMWare Workstation is a good product, maybe the best of its class. It is not free however. A license will set you back approximately $160 USD. If you rely on virtual machines to do your work it might be worthwhile to use this product instead of the other free versions.

Make sure your base system has enough resources and you will have no problems.

Download the evaluation and judge for yourself.

If you have a question just ask.