VMware Workstation 11 released

VMware

VMware Workstation 11 Unmatched OS Support

At the start of October VMware announced Workstation 11, along with VMware Player 7 Pro and said both products would be available sometime in December. Well today is the day, VMware has now officially released VMware Workstation 11!

Workstation 11 adds support for the latest version of Windows and Linux, as well as the latest processors and hardware, and also adds the ability to connect to VMware vCloud Air.

Key VMware Workstation 11 features

  • Ready for Windows 10 Technical Preview as well as Ubuntu 14.10, RHEL 7, CentOS 7, OpenSUSE 13.2
  • Supports the latest Intel 64-bit x86 processors, including Haswell. Taking advantage of key new Haswell extensions, also delivers up to 45 percent improvement in CPU intensive operations like multimedia and encryption/decryption compared to Workstation 10.
  • Create virtual machines with up to 16 vCPUs, 8 TB virtual disks, 64 GB memory, and now 2GB video memory.
  • Ability to connect to VMware vClount Air which allows you to upload, run, and view virtual machines right from the VMware Workstation interface.

VMware Workstation 11 can be purchased for $249.99 and upgrades from Workstation 9.x and 10.x to VMware Workstation 11 will cost $149.99 at VMware.com.

VMware Workstation, 30% discount!

VMware kicked off a “Cyber Monday” promotion, on Dec 1th, 2014, offering a 30% discount on VMware Workstation 11, VMware Player 7 Pro, VMware Fusion 7 and Fusion 7 Pro. This offer ends however on Dec 5, 2015 at 11:59pm PST!

This brings the price down on VMware Workstation 11 to $174.99 and $104.99 for the full and upgrade versions respectively.

Similar Posts

VMware Recertification Policy

VMware
1 Comment

VMware certified

Starting today, March 10 2014, new VCP certifications must be re-certified within two years of it’s earned date. Anyone who currently has their VCP certification prior to March 10 2013 has until March 10, 2015 to re-certify.

The new policy gives you three options to re-certify:

  1. Take the current exam for your existing VCP certification solution track. For example, if you are a VCP3, you could take the current VCP5-Data Center Virtualization (VCP5-DCV) exam.
  2. Earn a new VCP certification in a different solution track. For example, if you are a VCP-Cloud, you could recertify by earning VCP5-Desktop (VCP5-DT) certification.
  3. Advance to the next level by earning a VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP) certification. For example, if you are a VCP5-DCV you could earn VCAP5-DCA certification.

I can understand why they are doing this but I don’t agree with the changes. As per the announcement if you let your certification expire, “Your certification will be revoked,and you will no longer be entitled to use the certification logo or represent yourself as VMware certified“. Really? You mean everything that was done prior and after taking the exam means nothing?

Read More “VMware Recertification Policy”

VMware Workstation 12.5.5 released, fixes Pwn2Own exploits

VMware
0 Comments

VMware Workstation 12.5

VMware has just released Workstation 12.5.5 which includes bug fixes as well as fixes for several vulnerabilities found in this years Pwn2Own contest, which two hacking teams, 360 Security (@mj011sec) and Team Sniper was able to successfully complete a virtual machine escape.

While these are serious exploits, VMware has said they are not aware of any active exploitation of the vulnerabilities that has now been fixed in 12.5.5.

Read More “VMware Workstation 12.5.5 released, fixes Pwn2Own exploits”

VMware Horizon View 5.3 has been announced

VMware
1 Comment

Horizon View 5.2 is receiving an update to 5.3! Doesn’t sound like much, but in that tiny dot number increase VMware has in fact brought a number improvements and features to Horizon View.

In a nut shell, some features Horizon View 5.3 brings is the ability to connect to a virtual desktop from any HTML5 capable web browser (yes, even Chromebook!), ability to bring full workstation class user experience with 3D graphics, deploy Windows Server 2008 as a desktop, as well as completely rewritten the Windows client with support for Windows 8.1 and a new iOS7 client too.

In more detail, Horizon View 5.3 brings…

Read More “VMware Horizon View 5.3 has been announced”

How to upgrade vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 to 7.0

VMware
28 Comments

VMware vCenter 7.0 has been released for several months now and figured it was about time I upgraded my home lab to the latest version.

This post will detail all the steps needed to upgrade vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 to 7.0 without any issues.

Getting Started

Before beginning, I HIGHLY recommended you first check the VMware Interoperability Matrix before performing any upgrade to check compatibility of other VMware products.

Then go download the VCSA 7.0 ISO if you haven’t already and lets get started with the upgrade!

Read More “How to upgrade vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 to 7.0”

How to use Site Recovery Manager DR IP Customizer

VMware
1 Comment

As one of the tasks given to me include protecting critical virtual machines via Site Recovery Manager (SRM) I ran into an environment that needed to be protected and have static IP’s assigned to them. The environment consists of about 15 VM’s, all of the VM’s each have 5 NIC’s with two of the VM’s having 9 NIC’s – that’s a lot of NIC’s to manually configure on both the Protected and Recovery side in SRM.

Looking through the SRM Documentation I was able to see that VMware has graced us with a wonderful tool to greatly speed up this process, dr-ip-customizer.exe!

How to use VMware DR-IP-Customizer

Read More “How to use Site Recovery Manager DR IP Customizer”

Install ESXi 5.1 from a USB Flash Drive

VMware
1 Comment

Many servers already come with a DVD/CD-ROM drive or some kind of ability to virtually mount an ISO image from a network share onto your server to then install ESXi. However, not all do or you just want to have your ESXi image readily available. Here’s a quick step by step instructions on how to use a USB flash drive to install ESXi.

  1. Download ESXi 5.1 from VMware (if you haven’t already) as well as UNettbootin.
  2. Plug in your USB Flash Drive.
  3. Open UNetbootin and select “Diskimage”, set Type to “USB Drive”, select Drive letter of your USB flash drive, and set the path of your ESXi 5.1 ISO image. Then click on “OK”.
    unetbootin setup

    4. Read More “Install ESXi 5.1 from a USB Flash Drive”