VMware Workstation 8 review

A long-time favourite of application developers, system testers and other IT professionals, the eighth generation of VMware Workstation comes with over 50 improvements on top of the usual VM upgrades, including a revamped user interface, the ability to share virtual machines and drag-and-drop vSphere integration.

We checked it out on Windows 7, although Workstation 8 is available for both Windows and Linux platforms. Either way the package now requires a 64-bit processor (AMD or Intel) and is a lot more particular when it comes to processor specifics, which means that it may not work on older machines. Fortunately we had no such problems but, if in doubt, you can find the exact requirements, and a tool to check for compatibility, on the VMware web site.

As with previous releases, Workstation 8 is very resource hungry and we’d recommend a high-spec PC to get the best out of the product. Multi-core and/or multi-threaded processors are a must, and if you have more than one physical processor then all the better with enhanced SMP support just one of those 50-plus enhancements.

The official line on memory is that you can get away with just a couple of gigabytes, but here too it’s best to configure as much as you can afford. We had 4GB to play with on our test PCs, which seemed reasonable, but led to performance issues even with just two VMs running.

In terms of support for guest operating systems, not much changes. Unsurprising really, given that VMware Workstation can already host just about anything you care to throw at it, from old versions of Windows to the latest Linux distros and 64-bit Windows Server releases. There’s little change too when it comes to how VMs are created and deployed, with much the same wizards and tools to convert physical to virtual machines and vice versa; take snapshots; create clones and so on.

The resources each VM can be assigned, however, have been tweaked with support now for up to 64GB of memory per VM. This adds to the support for up to eight virtual processors/cores plus 2TB of virtual disk space.

The software is very easy to install and existing users don’t have to start over. Like us they can upgrade to the new release while retaining all their existing virtual machines and virtual network settings intact.

That said, it is a chargeable upgrade, costing £77.68 regardless of the version you’re switching from.

USB 3.0 capabilities have also been added, although only for Linux guests at present, while both can share host Bluetooth devices. You can even virtualise processor virtualisation capabilities to, for example, run 64-bit guest operating systems on a vSphere host, itself running inside Workstation. And if you’re wondering why that might be useful, it allows developers and others to experiment with vSphere on their desktops, without the overheads of a dedicated server.

There are lots of other changes, most behind the scenes plus a few more obvious enhancements, not least a completely redesigned management interface which gets a streamlined look and feel. Gone, for example, are the old VM “favourites” in favour of a much simpler virtual machine library, which we found a lot easier to use.

We particularly liked the ability to group our virtual machines together and manage grouped VMs via a new summary display showing live thumbnails - even if they weren’t always updated as often as we might have liked.

Expand the display to fill the screen and the taskbar at the top is also improved, giving access to a lot more tools rather than having to switch back to the minimised interface.

On the downside some of the menus have been reorganised and options moved around, which meant having to search out the tools to clone our virtual machines, delete them and so on. That said, we soon got used to where everything was and the new layout does make a lot more sense. In fact it resembles the latest vSphere interface in a lot of ways, which surely isn’t a coincidence.

The old “team” option has been dropped, which may alarm those looking to model network applications, but it’s not a big loss. Moreover, you can still set up teams by dragging VMs into folders and either power them on together or stagger start-up. Plus there’s a new advanced settings option for virtual network adapters to more easily throttle bandwidth and simulate packet loss when stress testing applications.

One other new feature we liked enormously was the ability to share virtual machines with other Workstation 8 users. All the more so given that when you open a shared VM, it’s hosted remotely on the workstation on which it resides on with minimal impact on the performance of the local PC.

Clearly designed to replace the old VMware Server product, there are other advantages to VM sharing in that the usual tools to create, manage and debug VM operations are still available. Plus you’re not just limited to sharing with other Workstation 8 hosts. Using the new software you can also connect to servers running the vSphere hypervisors (ESX/ESXi) to share VMs.

Talking of which, it’s possible to move VMs from Workstation to an ESXi or vSphere server simply by dragging and dropping, making it easy to move from development and testing to production. It’s just a shame that moving them back isn’t so easy.

We were really impressed by Workstation 8, which adds valuable extra functionality to this market-leading desktop virtualisation package while at the same time making it easier to use. It still makes huge demands on the supporting hardware, but it’s not expensive and developers, testers and support professionals are all bound to want it.

VMware Workstation requires:
Minimum of a 64-bit x86 Processor (1.3GHz or faster)
2GB RAM (4GB RAM and above recommended)
1GB available hard disk space for guest operating systems

Host operating systems (32-bit & 64-bit):
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2003 Standard
Windows XP with SP2
Ubuntu 8.04 -11.04
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5-6.1
CentOS 5.0-6.0
OpenSUSE 10.2-11.4
SUSE Linux 10-11 SP1
Mandriva Linux 2008–2011
Oracle Linux 5.0-6.1