VMTN Blog

I saw this demoed a while back and didn't realize it was in the newest Workstation, as I have become a Mactard who uses my VMware Fusion to run Windows on the Mac. But here it is in all its released glory -- the very very cool feature Virtual Machine Streaming joins Record/Replay, Unity, Better 3D, Easier VM Creation, and more. If you've ever had to download (or even move from a fileserver) 5 or 10 gigs of heavy virtual machine down to your desktop, you'll appreciate this feature.

Link: ChipLog » Blog Archive » VMware Workstation 6.5 released!.

Virtual Machine Streaming

Ever want to preview a downloadable virtual machine without having to grab the entire zip file or tarball? VMs can be quite big and it’s a pain to download one only to find out that it doesn’t meet your needs.

The new VM Streaming feature gives users the ability to point Player or Workstation to a remote VM (if provided in the proper format). It will then download the bits as needed, and allow users to pause or restart the stream. It’s important to note that this will be slow at first until it has enough data to smoothly run files off the disk. When finished with the VM, the user can choose to keep what they have, or delete the cached VM from disk.