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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

@VMware Workstation Product manager : please publish the necessary vmx-file hacks that are required to run WS 14 on unsupported CPUs

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 )


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

52 Replies
wila
Immortal
Immortal

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

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
ddunn123456
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

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

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

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


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

Mikero
Community Manager
Community Manager

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.

-
Michael Roy - Product Marketing Engineer: VCF
continuum
Immortal
Immortal

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


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

continuum
Immortal
Immortal

First complaints in VMplayer section are coming in ...
VmWare Workstation 14 Player


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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louyo
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

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:

Host System Requirements

Like physical computers, the virtual machines running under Workstation perform better if they have faster processors and more memory.

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

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

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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louyo
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

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

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

At the moment system requirements are listed as:

TECH SPECS

System Requirements

  • 64-bit x86 Intel Core 2 Duo Processor or equivalent, AMD Athlon™ 64 FX Dual Core Processor or equivalent
  • 1.3GHz or faster core speed
  • 2GB RAM minimum/ 4GB RAM recommended


There is no mentioning of the VMX Unrestricted Guest feature.


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

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

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
wila
Immortal
Immortal

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

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

@ 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 ....


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hi,

If you try and go buy Fusion then at the bottom of the "upgrade" page there's this bit:

pastedImage_0.png

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

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

> 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 Smiley Wink


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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Pavlinux
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Use WS12, in WS14 nothing interested

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

> 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


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

wila
Immortal
Immortal

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

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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voidp
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

> 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

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