Workstation Pro Upgrade. How does it affect current virtual machine

[hwidman]

I need to upgrade from Workstation Pro 12.5.9 to 16.1 (Windows 10 host) and am concerned about how the update will affect the existing virtual machine. Will the installation of the upgrade delete or affect the existing VM at alI, and if not will I simple be able to bring up the existing VM in the new version and go along my merry way? The "Upgrading Workstation Pro" page kind of hints that that will be the case but I just wanted to make sure that is truly the case before I go ahead with the upgade.  If I had to rebuild the VM and get the guest OS and everything installed and setup to where it is now it will take some serious time to do, and it may prove to be problematicat that  since the current VM was build by someone else some time ago).

Also, is there a way to keep version 12 in place and install version 16?

Thanks,

Henry

[wila]

Hello Henry,

You cannot run Workstation version 12 and Workstation version 16 at the same time or even have both installed at the same time.

The upgrade story is often compared to upgrading Microsoft Office where the VMs are compared to your documents. Upgrading Office does not change your documents. With newer versions of VMware Workstation you are always able to run VMs from older versions of VMware Workstation.

There's one "snag" if you want to call it that and that is when you open your Workstation 12 VM in Workstation 16, it will update that VM's virtual hardware to Workstation 16. If you want to open that VM again in Workstation 12, then you first have to downgrade the virtual hardware.

Recommended steps before upgrading are:

- Shut down -not suspend- the VMs,
- If you have snapshots open on the VMs and don't absolutely require them, delete the snapshots
- Close VMware Workstation

After that you should be fine in upgrading your VMware Workstation.

Note that it is _always_ a good idea to have backups of your VMs, the most simple way is to make a copy of the whole folder in which your VM lives to an external disk. If you want something more fancy for making a backup then you can take a look at my virtual machine backup product called vimalin (see my signature)

Hope this helps,
--
Wil

[ender_]

The first version of Workstation I ran on this Windows install was 7.0, and I upgraded through all versions to current 16.1 (I also upgraded Windows several times). There never were any problems running VMs from the old VMWare version (by default Workstation runs them in mode that emulates the old version, and if you want to use the new features, you have to upgrade the virtual hardware manually).

[hwidman]

Thanks Wila and ender.  I appreciate the information, and I feel a lot less anxious about upgrading to the latest version.

Henry