Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

  1. Home
  2. Wireless-infrastructure
  3. VMWare Revs Desktop Software Now Vista-Ready
Wireless Infrastructure

VMWare Revs Desktop Software Now Vista-Ready

VMWare Workstation 6 includes Vista support and paravirtualization.
May 11, 2007

I like that VMware has vetted workstation for Vista, even though some Microsoft licensing specifically forbids running the OS in virtual environments. Multimonitor support and 64-bit functionality will be useful to niche users (personally, I'm a fan of two or three monitor rigs as an admin or when I'm writing a big piece). Finally having USB2.0 support is great for external drives or MP3 player file-transfer speeds.

Linux shops maintaining multiple builds (native hardware + virtualized) should be able to capitalize on the paravitualization tech that is part of VMwares' new build. New Linux kernel (2.6.20) includes paravirt-ops functionality; VM6 + hypervisor HW + paravirt-ops in new kernel = same Linux kernel build on virtualized or native iron. Long term, this is nice and helps simplify plan/build/run. However, I'm not quite sure how much of an immediate boon this will be for virutalization customers as it requires all pieces to be in place for full advantage.
Joe Hernick
contributing editor

VMware this week introduced a new version of its desktop virtualization software, most notably adding support for Windows Vista machines.

VMWare Workstation 6 also also includes support for multiple monitors and USB 2.0 devices, improvements that ease how admins can work with the software.

VMWare continues to lead the way with its standalone virtualiation product, though Microsoft is chasing--albeit belatedly (link to the MS VM story to come today). The addition of Windows 64-bit Vista support in VMware Workstation should be useful for enterprises that are moving rapidly to deploy the new operating system. VMware workstation supports Windows, Linux, NetWare, Solaris x86 and FreeBSD.

Tags:

News
Wireless Infrastructure
Networking
  • 1