Workstation 2023 Tech Preview Ideas Ideas

The ability to choose all available priority for input grabbed/ungrabbed

Scumbrues — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 04:47:09 GMT

Currently the only available options are (normal, high) for grabbed and (normal,low) for ungrabbed.

It would be very useful if you we can choose all possible priority for grabbed and ungrabbed:

idle: 4
below normal: 6
normal: 8
above normal: 10
high priority: 13
real time: 24

Stability and performance

norbert-wnuk — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 19:49:18 GMT

I would like to propose a few of long-time existing glitches and performance limitations (that affects hundreds of my coworkers and are quite frequently mentioned on this forum as well).

- Manual tweaking of power throttling (in Windows) and P cores affinity (VMX) to avoid freezes, that reduces performance of the VM since 1/3 of the cores cannot be effectively activated (E cores on Intell 12/13th generation processors).

- Mysterious random GUI/Xorg freezes that forces to suspend and / or restart VMs with certain 5.15/5.19 Linux kernels for supported Ubuntu 22.04 LTS releases (at least this seems to be gone in 6.2 kernel).

- Limited performance of NVME disks, that after tuning can reach only <75% (Ubuntu 22.04 6.2 HWE) of raw host performance (5.x kernels are worse). Additionally, NVME controller is affected by strange I/O timeouts on certain workloads / configurations (23H1 beta seems to be reducing number of timeouts but not eliminating). Finally, in my case SCSI is not a fallback since performance is significantly worse, reaching ~30% of raw host performance (especially terrible latency).

- Limited performance of SVGA3D driver, especially now when GPU Partitioning becoming a thing in Hyper-V for standard GPUs.

Hadware decoder (vp9 if not av1)

jen2 — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 09:59:57 GMT

Playing videos is almost a task that performed by everyone these days. Withou a video decoder it will use lots of CPU cycles to play videos inside a VM. Enabling video decoder will free lots of CPU cycles for other work. Please check this post https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/When-does-vmware-pro-support-dx12/m-p/2981069#M182267

VMware Workstation Pro Korean Language Support

JasonBae — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 01:55:47 GMT

Hi, I have a something question.

Have you any plan for korean language support?
many koreans people wants korean language support.

If possible, can Korean language be supported in the next version (VMware Workstation Pro 18)?

Security Patches! (not updates)

jen2 — Sat, 05 Aug 2023 05:04:54 GMT

I would like to see security patches for small components for both VMWare workstation and tools, for OpenSSL, zlib ... , that can be released separately and faster than the regular updates.

The installer is huge, and almost quarterly updated, where are sometimes new releases for some components with security fixes.

For example, zlib library is about 100 kb and it was outdated with a security vulnerability. a small security patch of 100kb will fix the issue with no need to full installation

It would be nice if VMWare release security patches immediately for all its apps, so that these component are patched immediately and reduce the risk for breaches.

Each security patch will have a version and will be always included in new updates, and it can be seen in the about version.

I am sure there are too may paranoid users, like myself, and they will happy to see this feature.

What I would like most to be patch immediately is OpenSSL

Trim/Unmap support on GuestOS using FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE on HostOS (Thick provisioned vmdk)

LevaEng — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 14:00:44 GMT

Hi

I'm spinning multiple VMs on top of a ZFS filesystem dataset

Each VM has its disk fully allocated (Thick Provisioned), but given that ZFS support native compression (and deduplication of data too) the actual on-disk-size of each vmdk file is only as big as the written data (or even 1 / N with dedup)
Generally speaking this is what should happen on any modern FileSystem than support sparse-file / Fallocate/ Hole-Punching
(This setup is better than sparse vmdk because it have superior performance generally and extra far better storage efficiency if combined with ZFS native compression and on-line data deduplication )

This work good and well while the GuestOS write data, but then when such data is deleted it is never freed-up on the Host side because the HostOS can never know (if not hinted) that this range of the vmdk file has been "released" by the upper GuestOS

For this, at least on linux based OSes there is the fallocate( FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE | FALLOC_FL_KEEP_SIZE ) that can "punch hole" in the file and free the not used space (logical size of the file stay the same but physical on-disk size shrink as needed)

But when configuring a VM on Workstation 17 with:
- Thick Provisioned Disk (single file)
- I/O controller : LSI Logic SAS
- Disk Type : NVMe

The GuestOS (Windows11) report that the disk do not have Trim support
But Trim support in this case should be supported and then converted in a fallocate call on the vmdk file by the HyperVisor (VMWare Workstation)

How can I can enable this behaviour? I already tried adding to the .vmx configuration file:
- nvme0:0.virtualSSD = "TRUE"
- disk.scsiUnmapAllowed = "TRUE"

But GuestOS is still reporting no Trim support

Thanks,
Luca

Also posted here

Nested hypervisor support under Windows Hypervisor Platform

ralish — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 03:59:08 GMT

Are there any plans to supported nested virtualisation under Windows Hypervisor Platform?

If Hyper-V is installed, or any of several security features are enabled on the host OS (Virtualisation Based Security), then the Windows Hypervisor Platform is used instead of VMware's native hypervisor. This breaks support for VMs which required nested virtualisation (e.g. ESXi guests, Windows guests that themselves have VBS enabled). The underlying support appears to be present in the Windows Hypervisor Platform given nested virtualisation can be used on VMs directly created using Hyper-V, but VMware Workstation does not have any awareness of it.

Previously discussed on these topics but have not received any comment from VMware:

Auto pause (not suspend)

jen2 — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 05:48:20 GMT

There is already a question but this option is not available. Please add an option to auto pause a VM after a certain time to save energy. I don't want to suspend the machine cause it will use lots of disk activity and there is a risk the machine will not power again (this is rare but happened before, machine failed to load after suspend)

Move files from the Temp folder instead of copying them in case of drag and drop files to VM

jen2 — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 01:32:10 GMT

Make all logs optional!

jen2 — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 01:30:55 GMT

1- In the Temp folder there will be hundreds of useless logs for the user interface and unify helper. they are in the form of vmware-ui-xxxxx.log and vmware-unity-helper-xxxxx.log where xxxxx is a random number please make these logs optional.

2- In the temp folder the is a folder vmware-system with USB service logs. These logs are always the same and they are not accessible with normal permissions. please make them optional.

3- Installer logs vminstutil.log will be place in system32 folder and various location. useless logs, please make them optional before installing.

4- Disable mksSandbox.log when the logs for the VM are set to none (disable)

Bigger working screen

jen2 — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 01:20:57 GMT

Few feature requests for the future version

Clemond — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:44:18 GMT

(1) Per-VM setting for mouse/game optimization - At this moment it is a single global setting

(2) Higher refresh rate - This is possible. Parallels' windows guest are running at 120hz refresh rate

(3) Not sure if this is already supported - Headless guest?

(4) More customizable vmnet settings. i.e. routing settings, DHCP options , etc.