The VMware Workstation team is proud to announce the VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2017 release! This release includes many great new features that we’ve been working on and we would love to hear your feedback through our Tech Preview Discussion Community.
What’s New
New OS Support and Platform Features
- Windows 10 Creator Updates Support. This latest member of Windows 10 family is now supported by VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017, as both host and guest.
- Other New OS Support. Workstation Tech Preview 2017 adds support of a variety of new operating systems including Ubuntu 17.04 and Fedora 26. If you are running these latest operating systems, we would like to hear your feedback on how they perform with this Tech Preview release. If you are using other OSes in Workstation Tech Preview 2017, we would also like to learn your feedback.
- Guest VBS Support – Security is one of the most critical aspects for information technology and there is no difference in virtualization. With the new platform, we are excited to invite you to try VBS (Virtualization Based Security) within Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 running as guest operating systems in VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017. Guest VBS Support is still under actively development and we would like to hear your feedback such as user experience and performance.
- UEFI Secure Boot – One of the more interesting features of vSphere 6.5 is the adoption of Secure Boot for ESXi. We are happy to announce this great security feature is also adopted by VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017!
- Virtual NVMe support – NVMe is becoming increasingly important in the storage market. With the new virtual hardware platform, VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017 is able to take advantage of the NVMe (NVM Express) controller which is also supported in ESXi 6.5.
Networking Features:
- Rename Virtual Networks – Many users would like to customize the name of virtual network adapters, especially for powered users who may have several of them in building a virtualization lab. With VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017, you can rename networks in the Virtual Network Editor. This feature currently is only available for Windows host operating systems. Try it and let us know how it works.
- Network Latency Simulation – Testing software and applications with Workstation Pro is very popular because of its convenience and cost-efficiency. Now with the new Network Latency Simulation feature, along with the existing network speed and packet loss simulator, you can easily simulate a specific network environment using VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017. Simply enable this feature by checking the new options in Network Adapter Advanced Settings.
- IP Address Display on VM Console – You don’t have to log into your VM to check the IP and MAC addresses. With VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017, these information is directly displayed on your VM console. The latest VMware Tools is needed to enable this feature.
Improved vSphere Integration
- vSphere/ESXi Host Power Operation – Many users connect to vSphere ESXi and vCenter with VMware Workstation to remotely manage virtual machines. Now you can also perform power operations to ESXi hosts, including Enter/Exit maintenance mode, restart and shutdown, and directly from VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017.
- Import VCSA – VMware Workstation is the best solution to run and learn VMware datacenter products on a local machine. With improved OVF/OVA support, you can import VCSA (VMware vCenter Server Appliance) to VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2017 much easier than before.
There are some known issues so be sure to check out the ‘What’s New’ document in the Tech Preview community. The download is available for free to VMTN Community users, and we implore that this build is only for testing and evaluation purposes. While we make every effort to ensure every build we release is stable and solid, this is a pre-release build that is still in development and as such we do NOT recommend using this build on production systems.
We of course don’t guarantee that any features will make it to a generally available and fully supported release, but we’re eager to hear your feedback on our progress.
So go on, grab the build from our community, give it a test drive on your lab machine and tell us what you think!
