Sunday, October 23, 2011

Upgrading to VMWare Workstation 8

I have tried to upgrade to VMWare Workstation 8 in the past, but it failed with standard installation, even after i removed the previous installation. I couldn't pass the installation phase where it asked for a HTTPS port that will be used to connect to the server. It threw me an error.

Today, i found a discussion at LQ and tried Darth Vader's post and i have successfully upgraded my VMWare Workstation to the latest version, 8 using the standard installation, except that i changed the HTTPS port to 444 in order to avoid conflicts with the other applications that might be using the standard HTTPS port in 443.

The parameter i missed was --ignore-errors, so if you have installed VMWare Workstation 7 and wanted to upgrade to VMWare Workstation 8, you no longer have to remove the previous installation and just go with the new version and install it with this command (remember to use root account):
./VMware-Workstation-Full-8.0.0-471780.i386.bundle --ignore-errors

The new UI is now slicker and more fancy than the previous version, but without doubt, it's the new features that i'm interested about. It's a worthed upgrade if you use all of it's features mentioned below:
  • Remote Connections – VMware Workstation 8 provides a seamless way to establish remote connections to hosts running in Workstation, VMware vSphere, and VMware vCenter™.
  • "Share" VMs – New in Workstation 8, users can share VMs so they can be accessed by teammates providing a quick way to test applications in a more production-like environment.
  • Upload to vSphere –Workstation 8 enables users to drag and drop a VM from a user's desktop to VMware vSphere. This feature allows users to deploy a complete application environment from a PC to a server for further testing, demoing, and analysis.
  • New User Interface –The VMware Workstation 8 user interface has been revamped with simplified menus, live thumbnails, improved preferences screens, and a new virtual machine library with enhanced searching. Users can now search and access a large library of virtual machines that can reside on your desktop, a server, or on another PC running VMware Workstation.
  • Improved Virtual Machine Capabilities – With support for HD audio with 7.1 surround sound, USB 3 and Bluetooth devices, Workstation 8 delivers new levels of virtual machine performance. In addition, improvements to virtual SMP, 3D graphics performance and new support for 64-GB RAM allows users to run the most demanding applications in a virtual machine.

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