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Sneak peak at the VMware Workstation 6 beta!

All kinds of folks approach you when you're mad about virtualization. I got to hear this from some guy and he was proud to tell me about it. I was obviously interested! So we took a look at the cool features of this cool product!

What does the VMware Workstation 6 Beta has to offer?

This is the list I got...

OS Support
  • 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista (RC) as host and guest operating systems
  • 32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 (Beta, formerly called 4.0 Update 5) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 (Beta) as host and guest operating systems
  • 32-bit and 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4 (Beta) and SUSE Linux 10.2 (Alpha) as host and guest operating systems
  • 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 6.10 as host and guest operating systems
  • 32-bit and 64-bit Mandriva Linux 2007 as host operating system
  • 32-bit and 64-bit Solaris 10 Update 3 (Beta) as guest operating system
Features!!!!

  1. Integrated Virtual Debuggers — With the new Workstation IDE (integrated development environment) plug-ins, software developers are provided with menu items and toolbar buttons in Visual Studio (Windows only) or Eclipse (Windows or Linux) to easily develop and debug programs in virtual machines.
  2. Appliance View for Virtual Appliances — Rather than having users see a console view for an appliance, you can now configure the new appliance view. It gives you a brief description of the type of server or appliance and provides a link that opens the browser on the guest system and connects to the correct port for the server console.
  3. Run Virtual Machines in the Background — You can now leave virtual machines and teams running in the background when you exit Workstation. On the host, a system tray icon indicates how many virtual machines are running in the background. Click the icon to open a virtual machine.
  4. Enhanced File Sharing and Copy and Paste Functionality — You can now use shared folders on a Solaris guest. You can copy and paste text and files between Linux and Windows hosts and guests.
  5. Cross-Platform Drag-and-Drop Functionality — You can now drag and drop files and directories from a Linux or Windows host to a Linux or Windows guest, and vice versa.
  6. Virtual Machines Can Act as VNC Servers — You can set a virtual machine to act as a VNC server without having to install any specialized VNC software in the guest.
  7. Battery Information Is Now Reported in the Guest — If you use a laptop to run a guest in full screen mode, you will now be able to see status information about the host's battery.
  8. Increased RAM Support — The previous limit of 4GB total RAM that could be used for all virtual machines combined has been removed. The amount of memory used by all virtual machines combined is now limited only by the amount of the host computer’s RAM and page file size. The maximum amount of memory that can be allocated per virtual machine has been raised from 3.6GB to 8GB.
  9. Support for Paravirtualized Linux Kernels — If you have a VMware VMI (Virtual Machine Interface) 3.0 enabled kernel in a Linux guest operating system, you can now enable paravirtual support in the virtual machine.
  10. User Interface for Mapping a Virtual Disk to a Drive Letter on the Windows Host
  11. Support for High-Speed USB 2.0 Devices
  12. Improved 64-bit Guest Support — Intel EM64T VT-capable processors are now fully supported.
  13. New 64-bit Sound Driver
  14. VMware Player 2.0 — The new Player Welcome page gives you the option of browsing to a virtual machine file or downloading a virtual appliance from the VMTN (VMware Technology Network) web site. You can then use Player’s new appliance view when running a virtual appliance.
all I can say is that this is sooooooo cool.

I like personally the:
  • Battery features
  • VNC thing, very simple but neat!
  • RAM BAM thank you 8G, this might be a server!
  • Drag/Drop is neat too. Reminds me of the partitionmagic
  • Debuggers for both Java and MS developers
Zero Cool stuff!
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