VMware 5.0 Build 11888 釋出

Whether you're a long-time power user of VMware Workstation or a beginning user who is just learning what you can do with virtual machines, the new features in VMware Workstation 5 extend its capabilities and make it easier to use.

Here are highlights of some key features added in VMware Workstation 5:

Workstation 5 greatly enhances the snapshot functionality available in previous releases of the product. You can now take unlimited numbers of snapshots to capture the state of the environment at different points in time. In addition, you can restore to any previously taken snapshot with the new Snapshot Manager. When you create a new snapshot, a new branch is automatically created so that other snapshots continue to be available. With multiple snapshots, you can keep an arbitrary number of restore points for your virtual machines, allowing you to branch and explore many possibilities—all from the same virtual machine! See Understanding Snapshots for more information on this feature.

Workstation 5 introduces an easy way for you to configure complex multi-tier applications on your desktop by leveraging teams. A team is a collection of virtual machines connected by one or more private network segments. Once a team is created, you can operate on it just like you would on a single virtual machine - you can power on/off and suspend/resume teams with the click of a single button. View active thumbnails of all the virtual machines in a Team. Create private networks for teams, using individual LAN segments that simulate bandwidth caps and and packet loss (e.g. network fault injection). See Teams Overview for more information on this feature.

Workstation 5 allows you to clone virtual machines in two different ways - linked and full. If a virtual machine (parent) is available on shared storage, you can get up and running quickly by creating a linked clone of the virtual machine instead of copying it to your PC. Any changes made to the cloned virtual machine are then saved locally. You can now easily collaborate with team members by simply passing along just the changes saved locally instead of the entire virtual machine. Your team members can clone the parent virtual machine and copy your saved changes to their local disk to share your configuration. Linked clones make it easy to set up a single virtual machine as a template and reuse it multiple times with minor modifications, using little additional disk space for each clone. Workstation 5 also supports full clone whereby you can make a complete copy (disks, etc.) of a virtual machine from the user interface. See Creating Clones for more information on this feature.

Workstation 5 offers support for isochronous USB input devices such as web cams and microphones, and output devices such as speakers. Use your webcam or work with multi-track audio—within a guest operating system!

Workstation 5 improves the experimental support offered in version 4, supporting 64-bit host hardware including the AMD64 Opteron, Athlon 64 and Intel IA-32e. We also support new 64-bit host operating systems, including SuSE 9.1, Windows XP (64-bit edition), and Windows Server 2003 (Beta 64-bit edition).

We're constantly improving performance. Workstation 5 reduces guest operating system memory footprint, while enhancing audio, increasing network bandwidth, optimizing disk and memory cache, and much more.

Snapshot and suspend resume have enhanced performance, and are now background operations whenever possible.

Enhanced networking performance—Workstation 5 offers enhanced networking performance by leveraging our custom network driver. Once you install the updated VMware Tools, the necessary network drivers install seamlessly to offer significantly improved network performance.

Better memory utilization when running multiple virtual machines concurrently—Workstation 5 includes significant improvements in memory utilization when multiple virtual machines are used concurrently. This allows you to efficiently run multiple virtual machines with much less total memory.

Shared folders and Sound features are improved in Workstation 5.

We want you to have the best experience possible, whether you run multiple virtual machines or only one at a time.

Longhorn—Workstation 5 includes ongoing experimental support for the latest Longhorn beta releases.

Java Desktop System—support now included in Workstation.

Mandrake 10.

Experimental support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 beta.

Experimental support for SuSE 9.2.

Workstation 5 offers a gtk2-based user interface on Linux, which provides an improved look and feel, and enhanced usability

Workstation 5 streamlines VMware Tools installation for Linux virtual machines by allowing you to install VMware Tools without exiting the X session. (Command line installations remain available, as in previous versions.)

Now you have a choice how to install VMware Tools on Linux guests: use the new rpm installer, or the traditional tar installer.

The new VMware V2V Assistant converts a virtual machine created in Microsoft® VirtualPC™ for use with Workstation 5!

The V2V Assistant—a separately-downloadable Windows application—creates a VMware virtual machine without changing your VirtualPC virtual machine. See the VMware V2V Assistant User's Manual, or Converting a VirtualPC Virtual Machine for more information on this feature.

On Windows hosts, you can automatically install a new release over an existing Workstation release. The installer automatically uninstalls the previous version before installing the new version.

Workstation 5 now offers you the ability to record all activity in a virtual machine and save it in an .avi format. The resulting .avi file can then be replayed on any Windows PC running our playback codec. The codec is installed automatically with Workstation 5, and you can also download a stand-alone installer from the vmware website.

Movie capture has many uses, such as giving you the ability to record steps to reproduce defects in a particular configuration, or to record configuration steps prior to running an application, etc. (Note this release does not include recording audio with movies.) See Creating a Screen Shot or a Movie of a Virtual Machine for more information on this feature.

Workstation 5 offers guest operating system support for the "no execute" NX page table protection bit, also called Execute Disable Bit (EDB) technology. Aimed at thwarting malicious buffer overruns, NX/EDB allows properly-written applications to designate memory space as executable, preventing execution of any code trying to access other memory space.

Use the new vmrun command line utility for automating team operations. See Command Line Reference.

Workstation 5 VMware Tools provide experimental support for guest operating systems that support ACPI S1 sleep. See Guest ACPI S1 Sleep.