By Duncan Epping, Principal Architect.

I just noted on twitter that VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2 was released. I know this blog is not about Workstation but about vSphere, despite that I feel it is important enough to mention. One of the reasons for it is the fact that with VMware Workstation TP2 you can:

1. Upload virtual machines to vSphere.
2. Download virtual machines from vSphere by dragging them from the remote host to the My Computer section of the Virtual Machine Library

Is that useful or what? Just imagine you want to have a "local" copy of that server to do some testing. You just drag and drop it from your server on to your desktop and you are done. Another reason to look at TP2 is the fact that the virtualization of "Intel VT/EPT and AMD-V/RVI" has been enhanced. I personally use this functionality at home to run a fully virtualized lab! Because of this feature I can even run 64bit guests on my virtualized ESXi host. Just to give you an idea of the capabilities with VMware Workstation this is what my virtualized lab looks like:

• vCenter Server
• 2 x ESXi with 4GB each
• vCloud Director
• vShield Manager

I even used this virtual lab to test the DR of the Cloud solution. All it takes is one desktop with SSD and enough memory (24GB at this point). Nice right?! 

Of course there are more great enhancements and I want to point you to the "what's new" document for all the cool details. One of the new features that I personally think is very cool is called WSX and is a pet project of Christian Hammond. Many of you have used the "VMRC" plugin which comes for instance with vCloud Director, and as you know it doesn't support all OS platforms right now… Wouldn't it be great if WSX could evolve in to something that could be more widely used. It could be used for anything in my opinion and I guess right now things are still open, hence the reason I want to ask all of you to try it out! 

If you downloaded the tech preview of VMware Workstation make sure to update it to the latest version. If you have used WSX and want to provide feedback either use the Tech Preview community forums or drop a note on Christian's blog. Even if you have ideas around future usage of WSX don't hesitate to drop a note on Christian's blog, it might be a use case that no one has come up with before.