VMware Workstation Pro (known as VMware Workstation until release of VMware Workstation 12 in 2015) is a hosted (Type 2) hypervisor that runs on x64 versions of Windows and Linux operating systems.[4] It enables users to set up virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical machine and use them simultaneously along with the host machine. Each virtual machine can execute its own operating system, including versions of Microsoft Windows, Linux, BSD, and MS-DOS. VMware Workstation is developed and sold by VMware, which has been owned by Broadcom since November 2023. In May 2024, Workstation Pro became free of charge for personal use, with paid subscriptions available for commercial use, while the free restricted VMware Workstation Player (known as VMware Player) was dropped.[5] In November 2024, VMware Workstation was made free for commercial use, with paid subscriptions and support no longer available.[6]
VMware Workstation Pro can save the state of a virtual machine (a "snapshot") at any instant. These snapshots can later be restored, effectively returning the virtual machine to the saved state,[7] as it was and free from any post-snapshot damage to the VM.
VMware Workstation includes the ability to group multiple virtual machines in an inventory folder. The machines in such a folder can then be powered on and powered off as a single object, useful for testing complex client-server environments.
VMware Workstation versions 12.0.0, 12.0.1, and 12.1.0 were released at intervals of about two months in 2015.[9] In January 2016 the entire development team behind VMware Workstation and Fusion was disbanded and all US developers were immediately fired.[10][11][12][13] The company said that "the restructuring activities will not impact the existence of any current product lines", that "roles and responsibilities associated with particular businesses will be moved to other regions and office locations", and that investment would continue "with emphasis on our growth products". The future of Workstation and Fusion became uncertain. On 24 April 2016 maintenance release 12.1.1 was released. In September, same year, the company announced that "we’re very much alive and well".[14] Consequently, on September 13 Workstation 12.5 and Fusion 8.5 were released as free upgrades which added support for Windows 10 Anniversary edition and Windows Server 2016. Since then versions 14 (in 2017, skipping number 13), 15 (in 2018), 16 (in 2020) and 17 (in 2022) were released.
2024 change to freeware
In May 2024 VMware Workstation Pro became free for personal use, with only commercial use requiring a paid license, and free VMware Workstation Player was discontinued as unnecessary.[15]
In November 2024 this change was expanded to include commercial and educational users, thereby making the software free for everyone. At the same time, however, Broadcom discontinued official technical support for the product, instead directing users to seek help from existing documentation and the community.[16]
The compatibility and performance of USB audio and video devices with virtual machines has been improved.
Resolved an issue that prevents a USB device from being connected to Linux RHEL 5 guest operating system.
Easy installation option supports Windows 8.1 Update 1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 as a guest operating system.
openSUSE 13.1 is now supported as a host operating system.
Resolved an issue causing burning CDs with Blu-ray drives to fail while connected to the virtual machine.
Resolved an issue that caused using Microsoft Word and Excel in unity mode causes a beep.
Resolved an issue causing host application windows to be blanked out in the UAC dialog on the Linux host of the Windows 8 virtual machine.
Resolved an issue that prevented the Sound Card from being automatically added to the VM when powering on the virtual machine on a Linux host.
Resolved an issue that could cause a Windows 8.1 guest operating system to display a black screen when launching Metro style applications in the launch menu.
Resolved a hotkey conflict in the Preference dialog of the KVM mode.
Resolved a compatibility issue of GL renderer with some new Nvidia drivers.
Resolved graphics errors with for Solidworks applications.
Resolved an issue causing virtual machines imported from a physical PC to crash on startup.
Resolved an issue about shared folder when the user read and write file using two threads.
Resolved an issue that caused Linux virtual machines to see stale file contents when using shared folders.
Resolved the virtual machine performance issues when using the E1000e adapter.
Resolved an issue preventing Workstation from starting on Ubuntu 14.04.
VMware Workstation 10.0.3 has been updated to the OPENSSL library version openssl-0.9.8za where necessary to address CVE-2014-0224, CVE-2014-0198, CVE-2010-5298, CVE-2014-3470.
At power-on, a virtual machine hangs and a .dmp file is created.
The VideoReDo application does not display the video properly and parts of the application's screen are scrambled.
Copying and pasting a large file from host to guest may fail.
Memory leak in the HGFS server (for shared folders) causes VMware Tools to crash randomly with the error: Exception 0xc0000005 (access violation) has occurred.
New VMs have the same location UUID and MAC address so that the UUID and MAC address are not unique. This problem occurs with WS 9 and WS 10 VMs but not WS 7 and WS 8 VMs.
On RHEL 6.6, vmmon cannot be loaded due to incompatible kernel symbol versions. With gcc, kernel-headers, kernel-devel installed, vmmon module will be recompiled automatically.
Memory leak by the process vmtoolsd.exe when the guest NIC is disabled causes memory consumption by Workstation processes to increase over time.
When USB devices are autoconnected with a hub to a Renesas host controller, the devices are not redirected to the guest.
WS 11 license is accepted by WS 10.0.5 and future 10.0 updates.
When WS is installed on Linux in a non-default location, the Virtual Network Editor fails to run.
Added support for VMware vCloud Air Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand
Bug fixes:
A Linux guest OS booted on EFI firmware sometimes failed to respond to the keyboard and mouse if any mouse motion occurred during a short window of time during OS boot.
Outlook 2010 would occasionally crash when running in Unity mode.
You could not compact or defragment a persistent disk.
The UI sometimes crashed when a user copied and pasted a file between two Windows guests.
Rendering corruption in UI elements in Fedora 20 guests with 3D enabled.
When creating a new virtual machine with SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 12, the Easy Install path was not available.
VMware Workstation and Horizon Client TPView.ddl and TPInt.dll incorrectly handle memory allocation. On Workstation, this may allow a guest to execute code or perform a Denial of Service on the Windows OS that runs Workstation.
This release of VMware Workstation 12 Pro addresses an out-of-bounds memory access vulnerability related to the drag-and-drop feature. This may allow a guest to execute code on the operating system that runs VMware Workstation 12 Pro.
This release addresses an out-of-bounds memory access vulnerability related to the drag-and-drop feature. This vulnerability might allow a guest to execute code on the operating system that runs VMware Workstation 12 Pro.
This release of VMware Workstation Pro addresses the following issues:
VMware Workstation Pro has a heap buffer overflow and uninitialized stack memory usage in SVGA. These issues might allow a guest virtual machine to execute code on the host. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifiers CVE-2017-4902 (heap issue) and CVE-2017-4903 (stack issue) to these issues.
The VMware Workstation Pro XHCI driver has uninitialized memory usage. This issue might allow a guest virtual machine to execute code on the host. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2017-4904 to this issue.
VMware Workstation Pro has uninitialized memory usage. This issue might lead to an information leak. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2017-4905 to this issue.
This update of VMware Workstation Pro exposes hardware support for branch target injection mitigation to VMware guests. This hardware is used by some guest operating systems to mitigate CVE-2018-5715 (also called by the name "Spectre").
This major version release includes the following highlights:
Updated to support the newest versions of MicrosoftWindows 10 (including Enterprise), and Windows Server editions, as well as various Linux distributions
Updated support for the latest Intel and AMD processors and limited or no support for pre-2011 CPUs
Improved virtual firmware support, such as UEFI, and new Secure Boot support
This update of VMware Workstation Pro exposes hardware support for branch target injection mitigation to VMware guests. This hardware is used by some guest operating systems to mitigate CVE-2018-5715 (also called by the name "Spectre").
VMware Workstation Pro has an uninitialized stack memory usage vulnerability in the vmxnet3 virtual network adapter that might allow a guest to execute code on the host. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2018-6981 to this issue.
VMware Workstation Pro contains an integer overflow vulnerability in the virtual network devices which may allow a guest to execute code on the host. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2018-6983 to this issue.
This release of VMware Workstation Pro addresses the following issues:
Workstation does not handle paths appropriately. This may allow the path to the VMX executable, on a Windows host, to be hijacked by a non-administrator leading to elevation of privilege. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2019-5511 to this issue.
COM classes are not handled appropriately. This may allow hijacking of COM classes used by the VMX process, on a Windows host, leading to elevation of privilege. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2019-5512 to this issue.
Workstation contains an out-of-bounds read/write vulnerability and a Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) vulnerability in the virtual USB UHCI (Universal Host Controller Interface). These issues may allow a guest to execute code on the host. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifiers CVE-2019-5518 (out-of-bounds read/write) and CVE-2019-5519 (TOCTOU) to these issues.
There used to be freeware-based version of VMware Workstation with a limited feature set. This version was at first known as VMware Player until VMware Player v7 (released at the same time as Workstation 11). In 2015 the two packages were combined as VMware Workstation 12, with a free VMware Workstation Player version which, on purchase of a player license key granted commercial use along with commercial support, while the purchase of a pro license key became the higher specification VMware Workstation Pro (which also included commercial support).[118] VMware Workstation Player, like VMware Player[119] before it, was free of charge for non-commercial use, or for distribution or other use by written agreement.[120][121] VMware Workstation Player was discontinued in 2024[122] due to redundancy after VMware Workstation Pro was made free for personal use.[122] The differences between VMware Workstation Player and Pro used to be given in VMware's website[123] before the discontinuation of VMware Workstation Player in 2024.
VMware Tools
VMware Tools, a package with drivers and other software available for the various guest operating systems VMware products support, installs in guest operating systems to add functionality. Tools is updated from time to time, with v12.1.5 in 29 November 2022.[124] It has several components, including the following:
Drivers for emulated hardware:
VESA-compliant graphics for the guest machine to access high screen resolutions and/or special window effects such as Windows Aero/Desktop Window Manager
Support of shared folders and drag-and-drop file transfer between host and guest. This functionality is described as HGFS (Host Guest File System), and may be disabled by default for security; it may be enabled by changes to the .VMX configuration file
Clipboard sharing between host and guest
Time-synchronization capabilities (guest synchronizes with host machine's clock)
Support for Unity, a feature that allows seamless integration of applications with the host desktop[125] by hiding the monitor of the Virtual Machine and drawing the windows of applications running in the virtual machine on the host. Unity support was added for Windows 10 and removed for Linux in Workstation 12.[52]
Third-party resources
Ready-to-use virtual machines
Many ready-made virtual machines (VMs) which run on VMware Workstation Player, VMware Workstation Pro, and other virtualization software are available[126] with software for specific purposes ready-installed, either for purchase or free of charge. As one among many examples, there are free Linux-based "browser appliances" with the Firefox or other browser installed[127][128] which can be used for safe Web browsing; if infected or damaged the VM can be discarded and replaced by a clean copy. Or the appliance can be configured to automatically reset itself after each use so that no changes, including personal information, modified files, damage, etc. are stored.[128] VMs distributed legally only have freely distributable operating systems, as operating systems on VMs must be licensed; ready-to-use Microsoft Windows VMs, in particular, are not distributed, except for evaluation versions.
Other tools
PowerWF[129] - Provides a visual representation of VMware VIX scripts, converting them into workflows, or converting workflows into Powershell cmdlets and modules. VIX is VMware's addition to Microsoft's Powershell for automation of the VMware Player.
^Michael Roy (26 September 2017). "Workstation 14 Pro and Player Now Available!". VMware Workstation Zealot - Official blog of VMware Workstation. Retrieved 19 October 2017. VMware Workstation v14 (September 2017) continued to be free for non-commercial use.
^"VMware Player Pro: Compare to VMware Workstation 11". Vmware. Archived from the original on 11 October 2016. Version archived 11 October 2016 compares Workstation 12 Player to Player 7 Pro; Workstation 12 Player (Unlicensed) to Workstation 12 Player (Licensed); and Workstation 12 Player to Workstation 12 Pro. Page is updated; as of October 2017 compares Workstation Player and Workstation Pro, only
