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whorsfall
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VMware Workstation 17 Release Date?

Hi,

Is there any planned or approximate release date for Vmware Workstation 17?

Thanks,

Ward

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wila
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Hi,

First off.. I don't work for VMware and second, VMware does not normally comment on time lines.

With that out of the way.

Normally every year the major version number is incremented by 1 and that tends to be around August-November.

But there's exceptions.. and we had one last year, it was incremented by 0.2 for both Workstation as well as Fusion.
See also: https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2021/10/workstation-16-2-now-available.html and https://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2021/10/fusion-12-2-now-available.html

If next years major release follows the normal time line then we're at least 7 months away from a new major release.

--
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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bluefirestorm
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Ditto with the same disclaimers as wila.

On top of that, there was another post where mikero mentions they like to keep Fusion / Workstation in step/sync so maybe the timing for Workstation 17 this time around might be tied to Fusion for Apple ARM chips.

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mw73
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I'm more curious what's going to be in version 17. Direct access to video cards via IOMMU from a virtual machine would be very nice.

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wila
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Hi,

First off.. I don't work for VMware and second, VMware does not normally comment on time lines.

With that out of the way.

Normally every year the major version number is incremented by 1 and that tends to be around August-November.

But there's exceptions.. and we had one last year, it was incremented by 0.2 for both Workstation as well as Fusion.
See also: https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2021/10/workstation-16-2-now-available.html and https://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2021/10/fusion-12-2-now-available.html

If next years major release follows the normal time line then we're at least 7 months away from a new major release.

--
Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
bluefirestorm
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Ditto with the same disclaimers as wila.

On top of that, there was another post where mikero mentions they like to keep Fusion / Workstation in step/sync so maybe the timing for Workstation 17 this time around might be tied to Fusion for Apple ARM chips.

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mw73
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I'm more curious what's going to be in version 17. Direct access to video cards via IOMMU from a virtual machine would be very nice.

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whorsfall
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Hi wila,

Excellent information. Thanks for a great answer.

Ward

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mkubecek
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@mw73 wrote:

I'm more curious what's going to be in version 17. Direct access to video cards via IOMMU from a virtual machine would be very nice.


That would be nice but I don't think it's likely. Personally (like others, I am not and never were affiliated with VMware) I think VMware does not want to introduce this kind of features in their "desktop" products so that they do not jeopardize sells of their "enterprise" products. I would appreciate SR-IOV support for network cards but I'm afraid it's the same story.

Sorry for being blunt but based on previous experience, I rather expect some more "bells and whistles" in UI from a new version than serious technical improvements. And, of course, another upgrade fee, which seems to be the main point. Of course, I would be happy to be wrong.

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mw73
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Unfortunately, I agree. 😞

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rakotomandimby
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Just Windows 11 VM easier support on Linux hosts, I guess

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RDPetruska
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@rakotomandimby wrote:

Just Windows 11 VM easier support on Linux hosts, I guess


And don't forget the removal of more existing features which have worked just fine for years until the past year and updates!

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mw73
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Which features are being removed?

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RDPetruska
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@mw73 wrote:

Which features are being removed?


The main one which I require for my job is the mapping/mounting of virtual disks to the host.  It's been working since I started using Workstation at version 5, through 16.1.2.  They broke it at 16.2.x, and are removing it from the future version (at least that's what the release notes for the Tech Preview indicate, plus a message from the main developer).

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mw73
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I never used that feature because I always used NFS or SMB to do stuff like that. That's just more bad news and that and other things makes me wonder if Workstation is going to be around much longer. Its been two years since there has been a major release and they used to announce new releases every year at VMworld. The tech preview doesn't really add much other than support for Windows 11 and even it hasn't been released yet. So I wonder if it will be the final version of Workstation. I've used the product since it first came out in 1999; thats 3 jobs, and 2 kids ago, can't imagine working without it.

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RDPetruska
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I use a lot of DOS VMs which are standalone... so of course, no VMware Tools and no sharing unless you install a networking client, which takes up valuable system resources.  Can use floppy disks/images to get small files in/out; and CDs/images to get large (or many) files in; but the easiest and best way to get large or many files in AND out is mapping the drive to the host.

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rakotomandimby
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Relevant use case, indeed...

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Technogeezer
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@mkubecek wrote:

@mw73 wrote:

I'm more curious what's going to be in version 17. Direct access to video cards via IOMMU from a virtual machine would be very nice.


That would be nice but I don't think it's likely. Personally (like others, I am not and never were affiliated with VMware) I think VMware does not want to introduce this kind of features in their "desktop" products so that they do not jeopardize sells of their "enterprise" products. I would appreciate SR-IOV support for network cards but I'm afraid it's the same story.


I don't think there's a feeling that the desktop products will jeopardize sells of vSphere. I'm not of that opinion, but I think there is a feeling within VMware of 

  1. how can we reuse intellectual property from vSphere to keep our costs down and compatibility with vSphere
  2. How do the desktop products fit into the overall product strategy.

To item 2: I'm quite confident that consumers, gamers and "I need to run Windows on Macs" are not high on VMware's goals like they are for some competitors. From what I'm interpreting on some public statements by @Mikero , there are some synergies in the development process (think what they're doing with Tanzu) that they believe the desktop products provide. Not to say that a GPU pass-through wouldn't be nice for some developers that are trying to use GPUs as compute accelerators.

item 1 above is quite problematic. It seems that both Microsoft and Apple are pushing for the use of native hypervisor capabilities (e.g. Hyper-V is becoming very ubiquitous in Windows). To support these means accepting the limitations of these capabilities - some of which have led to performance issues and "missing functionality" over the VMware native hypervisor.

Makes you wonder though - how much of ESXi intellectual property can be reused in these environments? That impacts both the engineering budgets and compatibility with ESXi. (for example, virtualizing newer macOS versions on Apple Silicon isn't going to be done with existing ESXi technology because of Apple's requirements).

Also, not owning the hypervisor means that VMware may not have an easy time implementing hardware pass-throughs like SR-IOV and direct access to GPU. Those are a lot easier to implement when you own the underlying hypervisor components and drivers like ESXi does.

However - this does not excuse letting some "no-brainers" functionality die on the vine. The ability to mount and access virtual disks is one of them (and I don't buy VMware's comment that Microsoft is making that difficult with newer Windows releases - but I'd be open to being proved wrong). And then there's the pathetic implementation of shared folders. It's an important feature, but somehow VMware has ignored it to the point that it's a running joke in the community. And we won't speak further of the nightmare of getting Workstation to reliably build its required kernel modules on Linux - really, VMware, we have to resort to a third party GitHub site to get more reliable build scripts than you provide?

To the upgrade fee - yes. it's annoying. But, commercial software doesn't come for free. You'll either pay a fee for a new version, a fee for a subscription, or a fee for support that includes version upgrade rights.

My big pet peeve on the IT industry in general ( and I worked in it for over 40 years) are the forced paid upgrades that are the only way to get fixes to bugs found in prior versions. If there's a bug in the version that you're using, you should get the fixes for free. VMware's desktop products are a offender because of their ridiculously short support windows. I'm sure there are bugs they know about in Workstation 16 that are not going to get fixed until Workstation 17 (or whatever they're going to call it) is released. And that's not right.

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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While I've not yet seen any announcements, here is the Workstation Pro 17 FAQ page: VMware Workstation 17.x Pro sales, licensing, and compatibility FAQs (90060)

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Technogeezer
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Attempting to access that leads to a page not found on VMware's sites. Suspect it is an internal/partner document that either got released erroneously for public consumption or that it was released prematurely. A similar document existed for VMWare Fusion 13 with a similar page not found error. 

No public announcements so far. We're all waiting.

- Paul (Technogeezer)
Editor of the Unofficial Fusion Companion Guides
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DrWhoIs
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workstation 17 released today!

for me it solved all problems!

go get it

rakotomandimby
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v17 Released november 17th. Well done 😀

First sight: no more "try it" button 🤣 (or it is not obvius to find)

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rakotomandimby
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rakotomandimby_0-1668762186626.png

Still tryable after first launch though. 👍

 

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