VMware Workstation 16 and Fusion 12 Released

September 15, 2020 0 By Allan Kjaer

VMware has released Workstation 16.0 and Fusion 12.0.

Workstation 16

What’s new:

  • Container and Kubernetes Support
    • Build/run/pull/push container images using the vctl CLI.
    • Supports KIND kubernetes clusters running on top of Workstation Pro.
      • Note: Windows 10 1809 or higher is required
  • New Guest Operating System Support
    • RHEL 8.2
    • Debian 10.5
    • Fedora 32
    • CentOS 8.2
    • SLE 15 SP2 GA
    • FreeBSD 11.4
    • ESXi 7.0
  • Support for DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1 in the Guest
    • Hardware Requirements:
      • For Windows hosts, a GPU that supports DirectX 11.0 is required.
      • For Linux hosts, a NVIDIA GPU is required.
    • Software Requirements:
      • Host Operating System (64-bit):
        • Windows 8 or higher
        • GNU/Linux with NVIDIA drivers that support OpenGL 4.5 and above
      • Guest Operating System
        • Windows 7 or higher
        • GNU/Linux with vmwgfx
  • Vulkan Render Support for Linux Workstation
    • Workstation 16 Pro enables 3D support for Intel GPUs on Linux host to deliver DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.3 to VMs using Vulkan renderer.
    • Note: Linux host operating system with a recent Intel/Vulkan driver is needed, Mesa 20.1 or later is recommended.
  • Sandboxed Graphics
    • Virtual machine security is enhanced by removing graphics render from vmx and running it as a separate sandbox process.
  • USB 3.1 Controller Support
    • The virtual machines virtual XHCI controller is changed from USB 3.0 to USB 3.1 to support 10 Gbps.
  • Larger VM
    • 32 virtual CPUs
    • 128 GB virtual memory
    • Note: Running virtual machines with 32 vCPUs requires that your host and guest operating systems both support 32 logical processors.
    • 8 GB virtual graphics memory
  • Dark Mode
    • Workstation 16 Pro supports Dark Mode for optimized user experience.
    • Note: Requires host operating systems to be Windows 10 1809 or higher
  • vSphere 7.0 Support
    • In Workstation 16 you can perform the following:
      • Connect to vSphere 7.0.
      • Upload a local virtual machine to vSphere 7.0.
      • Download a remote virtual machine running on vSphere 7.0 to the local desktop.
  • Performance Improvements
    • Improved file transfer speeds (Drag and Drop, Copy and Paste)
    • Improved virtual machine shutdown time.
    • Improved virtual NVMe storage performance.
  • Improved Accessibility Support
    • Accessibility improvements have been added so Workstation Pro is compliant with WCAG 2.1 criteria.

See full release notes here.

Fusion 12

What’s new:

  • Free Product for Personal Non-Commercial Use
    • Fusion Player (previously Fusion Standard) is now free for personal non-commercial use.
  • Support macOS 11 Big Sur
    • Run macOS 11 Big Sur as a host operating system.
    • Run macOS 11 Big Sur as a virtual machine.
  • DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1 Support
    • Support has been added for DirectX 11 (DX11) and OpenGL 4.1 in the guest operating system.
      • Hardware requirements for DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1:
      • MacPro 2013 and later
      • iMac 27-inch 2014 and later
      • MacBook Pro 13-inch 2015 and later
      • MacBook Pro 15-inch 2015 with dual graphics and later
      • MacBook Air 2015 and later
      • MacBook 2015 and later
      • iMac 21-inch 2015 and later
      • iMac Pro 2017 and later
      • MacMini 2018 and later
    • Software requirements for DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1:
      • Guest OS: Windows 7 or higher, or Linux with vmwgfx.
  • External GPU support
    • Fusion provides support for external GPU when an external GPU is connected to the host. Choose the Prefer External GPU option from the Fusion UI.
  • Sandboxed Graphics
    • Virtual machine security is enhanced by removing graphics render from vmx and running it as a separate sandbox process.
  • New Guest Operating Systems Support
    • RHEL 8.2
    • Debian 10.5
    • Fedora 32
    • CentOS 8.2
    • SLE 15 SP2
    • FreeBSD 11.4
    • ESXi 7.0
  • USB 3.1 Controller Support
    • The virtual machine’s virtual XHCI controller is changed from USB 3.0 to USB 3.1 to support 10 Gbps.
  • Larger Scale VM
    • 32 virtual CPUs
    • 128 GB virtual memory
    • Note: Running virtual machines with 32 vCPUs requires that your host and guest operating systems both support 32 logical processors.
    • 8 GB virtual graphics memory
  • Create VM from APFS Recovery Partition (Now limited to macOS 10.15 host)
    • Performance Improvements
    • Improved file transfer speeds (Drag and Drop, Copy and Paste, HGFS)
    • Improved virtual machine shutdown time.
  • Improved container performance.
    • vSphere 7.0 Support
    • In Fusion 12 you can perform the following:
      • Connect to vSphere 7.0.
      • Upload a local virtual machine to vSphere 7.0.
      • Download a remote virtual machine running on vSphere 7.0 to the local desktop.
  • Login to Container Image Registry
    • Ability to login to a container image registry with the vctl login command has been added.
  • Kubernetes Support
    • Fusion 12 now supports KIND kubernetes clusters.
  • Improved Accessibility Support
    • Accessibility improvements have been added so Fusion is compliant with WCAG 2.1 criteria.

See the full release notes here.

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