Earlier this week VMware updated its entire desktop virtualization line, releasing Workstation 7.0, Player 3.0, ACE 2.6 and Fusion 3.0
Beyond the support for Windows 7 and its Aero interface inside the virtual machine, Workstation 7.0 (build 203739) includes a number of remarkable features. For example:
- Autoprotect
The product automatically takes snapshots of any virtual machine every half hour, every hour or every day - Encryption
The product encrypts any virtual machine with the AES 256-bit algorithm - CPU release
The product frees CPU resources instantaneously without powering off or suspending if the virtual machine is paused. - Virtual disks manipulation
The product can expand and compact a virtual disk (Windows 7/Vista only) without the use of any 3rd party product - Virtual Hardware version 7
Support for up to 4 vCPUs, up to 32GB vRAM, up to 10 vNICs - Support for ESX 4.0
customers can run VMware ESX 4 inside Workstation 7 as long as their physical hardware features an Intel EM64T CPU with VT-x or an AMD64 10H CPU (and later) with AMD-V, and as long as the virtual machine has assigned two or more CPU cores - Support for IPv6
Player 3.0 (build 203739) shares with Workstation 7.0 the same engine, so many of the features above are also available here.
On top of that VMware introduce a fully featured virtual machine editor, which turns Player into a Workstation Light:
The last product of this wave is ACE 2.6 (build 203739).
There’s no much to say. Pretty much every feature is about the virtualization engine and not the policy engine, which fully integrated inside Workstation.
It’s not really clear what VMware is waiting for to kill the brand.
