VMware Workstation 16 Pro Release Notes (2024)

What's in the Release Notes

• About VMware Workstation Pro
• System Requirements
• What's New
• Public Support Notices
• Important Fixes
• Resolved Issues
• Known Issues

About VMware Workstation Pro

VMware Workstation Pro™ enables technical professionals to develop, test, demonstrate, and deploy software by running multiple x86-based Windows, Linux, and other operating systems simultaneously on the same PC.

You can replicate server, desktop, and tablet environments in a virtual machine and allocate multiple processor cores, gigabytes of main memory and graphics memory to each virtual machine, whether the virtual machine resides on a personal PC or on a private enterprise cloud.

For more information, see the VMware Workstation Pro documentation.

System Requirements

Systems using Processors (CPUs) launched in 2011 or later are supported,exceptfor the following:

• Intel Atom processors based on the 2011 Bonnell micro-architecture. For example, Atom Z670/Z650 and Atom N570.
• Systems using Intel Atom processors based on the 2012 Saltwell micro-architecture. For example, Atom S1200, Atom D2700/D2500, and Atom N2800/N2600.
• Systems using AMD processors based on the Llano and Bobcat micro-architectures. For example, code-named Hondo, Ontario, Zacate, and Llano.

The following systemsarealso supported: Systems using Intel processors based on the 2010 Westmere micro-architecture. For example, Xeon 5600, Xeon 3600, Core i7-970, Core i7-980, and Core i7-990.

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 OperatingSystemSupport
  • 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 Prois compliant with WCAG 2.1 criteria.

Product Support Notices

• Removal of Shared VM feature
  Shared virtual machines (Workstation as server) has reached end of life and been removed from VMware Workstation 16.
• Removal of restricted virtual machines
  Restricted virtual machine has reached end of life and been removed fromVMware Workstation 16.

Important Fixes

This release of VMware Workstation addresses the following issues:

• Workstation addresses multiple out-of-bounds read vulnerabilities in Cortado Thinprint component. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifiers CVE-2020-3986, CVE-2020-3987, and CVE-2020-3988 to these issues. For more information, see VMSA-2020-0020.

• Workstation addresses a denial of service vulnerability due to an out-of-bounds write issue in Cortado Thinprint component. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2020-3989 to this issue. For more information, see VMSA-2020-0020.

• Workstation addresses an information disclosure vulnerability due to an integer overflow issue in Cortado Thinprint component. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2020-3990 to this issue. For more information, see VMSA-2020-0020.

Resolved Issues

• After priority.ungrabbed = "low" is set in the virtual machine configuration file, the priority of vmware-vmx process shows as Normal, when checked on theHost Task manager

  This setting has always worked until Workstation Pro 15.5 was released,however with the 15.5.5 release the status of the process stays at Normal.

  This issue is now resolved.

• A Windows XP x64 virtual machinefreezes during boot,when Workstation is running on Win10 host with Hyper-V Enabled

  MSFT has bugs in APIC virtualization that blockWinXP SP2 boot process.

  This issue is now resolved.

Known Issues

• After the easy install operation is complete, the info bar shows that VMware tools needs to be installed manually

  Easy install will not install VMware tools in some guest operating systems including Windows 7, Windows server 2012 R2 and Windows server 2008 R2. This is because some specific Windows update packages need to be installed manually prior to VMware Tools installation.

  Workaround: Perform the following steps after the guest operating systembecomes ready:

  For Windows 7 and Windows server 2008 R2 Guest:

  1. Review the information available here:https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4472027/2019-sha-2-code-signing-support-requirement-for-windows-and-wsus.
  2. Download and install the required Windows updates available at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4474419/sha-2-code-signing-support-update and https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4490628/servicing-stack-update-for-windows-7-sp1-and-windows-server-2008-r2.

  For Windows server 2012 R2 Guest:

  1. Manually get the Windows update, then download and install the Update Package (KB2919355) from https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=42334
  2. Install the .NET 3.5 Framework.
  3. Manually install VMware Tools in the guest operating system.
• Low performance or failures might occur when using vctl CLI on machines with HDD (Hard Disk Drive) as the system disk

  When you runvctl commands on machines using the HDD (Hard Disk Drive), the command execution might be very slow or even fail.

  Workaround: It is recommended to use the vctl CLI on machines with SSDs (Solid State Drive).