Virtual disks make running virtual machines easy VMware Workstation provides really great virtual networking capabilities that allow you to run virtual machines on different networks, VLANs, and decide if you want to have DHCP provided as part of the virtual network or have traffic to/from the VM NAT’ed. VMware Workstation allows you to keep your host machine clean and pristine and use VMs for browsing machines and other use cases. When you run local virtual machines, you do not need a separate hypervisor host for virtualization, making it a great alternative to provisioning a dedicated hypervisor host. Guest operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and even nested virtualization, are supported.

It allows running a wide range of guest operating system platforms, regardless of the host operating system.

You can even run things like VMware vCenter in VMware Workstation (not supported but works). If you have a workstation or laptop with additional resources, it is a great tool to use to build out your home lab environment. VMware Workstation is a great platform for an inexpensive home lab. It is software that is equally supported for commercial use or personal use and is a great virtualization platform for a Type 2 hypervisor. All you need is a host machine with extra resources to spare. It offers a streamlined desktop virtualization application for the host OS. In case in the rare event that you have not heard about VMware Workstation, what is it? VMware workstation, now called VMware Workstation Pro is the flagship desktop offering from VMware for running your virtual machine workloads and various operating systems on your Windows or Linux desktops. It contains many new features and capabilities for running virtual machines on your desktop. Those new features and capabilities have now materialized in the VMware Workstation 17 Pro release. I wrote about the latest Workstation beta release with some exciting new features not long ago.

VMware Workstation is arguably one of the premier desktop virtualization platforms today and provides an excellent platform for development, POCs, and even home labs.

Vmware pro