Hello Workstation product manager
I am shocked to realize that none of my 3 hosts that I used to run Workstation or ESXi qualifies for WS 14.
I was able to find a vmx-file tweak to enable me to try the Beta but the performance was horrible.
Suggestion: publish the best vmx-file hacks that will allow to run WS 14 on unsupported CPUs.
Suggestion: publish a small test tool so that users can check if their hosts will be able to run WS 14.
Suggestion: Do that right now
Regards
Ulli Hankeln
( a former Workstation evangelist and most active user in this community since 2003 )
Hi,
I second this, it is VERY unclear which 64 bit processor is supported by Workstation 14 due to the required VMX unrestricted guest functionality.
When I read this thread What is VMX Unrestricted Guest? I really worry about an upcoming shit storm (technical term) coming from users buying WS 14 only to find out it doesn't work on their host.
--
Wil
continuum,
Can you provide the CPU information for your systems? Based on your description of the issue, I'm pretty sure they are Nehalem systems but I would like to confirm.
cat /proc/cpuinfo on Linux works. Or a snippet of an old vmware.log file. If you provide the "Intel (R) Xeon (R) CPU ...." string, I can figure out the rest.
Thanks,
David Dunn
Hi David
For the record : this post is not about my CPU-issues.
This is about YOUR PAYING CUSTOMERS with all types of now suddenly unsupported CPUs.
This is about YOUR PAYING CUSTOMERS who just right now install the new version without expecting that it will not run on their hardware.
When they find out that they have the same problem we will have lots of posts asking the very same questions.
I am no paying customer since WS 3 and WS 4..
I am just an idiot who used to spend a significant amount of my time supporting YOUR customers free of charge.
Here is a list of posts where you can find vmware.logs or CPU specs regarding this problem
Most of your users will not run strings against the WS binaries to find out about possible tweaks like I did.
So we need this vmx-parameters asap.
Ulli
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/570853
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/568746
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/572931
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/572804
Thanks Ulli, we hear you. I see David's already asking questions and we're putting a plan together on how to best address this going forward.
Hi Michael
thank you for looking into this.
Please also review the release notes.
The requirements for the CPU appear a bit vague - it would be useful to be as precise as possible.
Ulli
First complaints in VMplayer section are coming in ...
VmWare Workstation 14 Player
Hi Uli, I guess I don't understand the problem.
I go to the blog:
https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2017/09/workstation-14-now-available.html
I go to the system requirements page:
http://pubs.vmware.com/ws6_ace2/ws/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=ws&file=intro_sysre...
I click on System requirements and it is all there:
Like physical computers, the virtual machines running under Workstation perform better if they have faster processors and more memory.
Workstation 6.0 and Workstation ACE Edition 2.0 Online Library | Send feedback | Copyright © 2006-2007 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
What could be simpler?
Lou
Lou,
You are pointing to a page from ACE 2.0 from Workstation 6?
The point is this:
VMX unrestricted guest errors with Workstation 14 or Fusion 10 - PlanetVM
Also note that VMware is working on updating their pages that might contain incorrect system requirements. The Fusion 10 product page had invalid system requirements yesterday morning, by the evening that was corrected.
What we want is to have all the pages that still list incorrect CPU requirements eliminated and preferably highlighting the change in host CPU requirements in comparison to Workstation 12.x
Of course even better would be to bring back binary translation support, but I guess that won't happen.
--
Wil
The smiley said I was trying to be funny. Sorry.
I just clicked on links from the announcement BLOG, they took me to the outdated non-info.
Lou
At the moment system requirements are listed as:
There is no mentioning of the VMX Unrestricted Guest feature.
Hi Ulli,
Yikes... that's pretty bad.
For the record it is on this link:
https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation.html#techspecs
Also as has been mentioned elsewhere by users, besides Workstation/Fusion itself recognizing it can't run on older processors, the installation programs should already warn on not being able to run. The install should bail out before actually removing the old -working- setup.
What good is successfully installing Workstatoin 14 / Fusion 10 if you can't run it anyways?
--
Wil
LOL, the way it looks like none of my linux or windows host in the office are capable of running Workstation 14.
Yes I have machines that can run it, but they are either vSphere or *BSD and that won't change, so no WS14 for me either.
Luckily my macOS hosts have no issues for Fusion 10.
--
Wil
@ Michael
any news ?
So far all we know is that the vmx-parameter
monitor.allowLegacyCPU = "true"
seems to help for Intel Xeon CPUs
but does not help for Intel Quad Core CPUs.
We also do not know what drawbacks the monitor.allowLegacyCPU = "true" parameter has ....
Hi,
If you try and go buy Fusion then at the bottom of the "upgrade" page there's this bit:
Still showing the WRONG system requirements.
Common guys, this is ... let's stick with "making me speechless", because the words I want to say are not fit for consumption at the forum.
--
Wil
> Common guys, this is ... let's stick with "making me speechless", because the words I want to say are not fit for consumption at the forum.
What about this : this approach to alienate your users will definetely work.
That is a positive way of expressing the issue
Use WS12, in WS14 nothing interested
> Use WS12, in WS14 nothing interested
Sure - that is the pragmatic approach and so I use the last known good version 12.01
The idealistic intention of this post is to persuade product management that the decision to drop support for old CPUs (binary translation) was a poor one and that it would be good to review it.
Ulli
Yep, would love to see proper Binary Translation support to come back as well as support for those older processors.
VMware absolutely championed that particular area.
BT also helped for running nested guests. Some 32 bit guests that I have now have to require me to add virtualisation support to the outer guest.
Even after that it just doesn't run as well as it did using Binary Translation.
From my point of view they made a big mistake by removing that.
Then they blundered on top of that by not updating the processor requirements in many places.
Stating "Just use WS12.x" is not paying attention to that WS12.x just went into maintenance release mode and has to be happy with security patches (hopefully all of them until EOL next year)
WS12.1 has a lot of security issues I'm afraid.
--
Wil
> Suggestion: publish a small test tool so that users can check if their hosts will be able to run WS 14.
Are there any utilities that can detect the "VMX Unrestricted Guest" feature?
SysInternal's CoreInfo reports:
VMX : Supports Intel hardware-assisted virtualization
SVM : Supports AMD hardware-assisted virtualization