VMware Workstation 16 and Fusion 12 Released

VMware has released Workstation 16.0 and Fusion 12.0.

Workstation 16

What’s new:

• Container and Kubernetes Support
  • Build/run/pull/push container images using the vctl CLI.
  • Supports KIND kubernetes clusters running on top of Workstation Pro.
    • Note: Windows 10 1809 or higher is required
• New Guest Operating System Support
  • RHEL 8.2
  • Debian 10.5
  • Fedora 32
  • CentOS 8.2
  • SLE 15 SP2 GA
  • FreeBSD 11.4
  • ESXi 7.0
• Support for DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1 in the Guest
  • Hardware Requirements:
    • For Windows hosts, a GPU that supports DirectX 11.0 is required.
    • For Linux hosts, a NVIDIA GPU is required.
  • Software Requirements:
    • Host Operating System (64-bit):
      • Windows 8 or higher
      • GNU/Linux with NVIDIA drivers that support OpenGL 4.5 and above
    • Guest Operating System
      • Windows 7 or higher
      • GNU/Linux with vmwgfx
• Vulkan Render Support for Linux Workstation
  • Workstation 16 Pro enables 3D support for Intel GPUs on Linux host to deliver DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.3 to VMs using Vulkan renderer.
  • Note: Linux host operating system with a recent Intel/Vulkan driver is needed, Mesa 20.1 or later is recommended.
• Sandboxed Graphics
  • Virtual machine security is enhanced by removing graphics render from vmx and running it as a separate sandbox process.
• USB 3.1 Controller Support
  • The virtual machines virtual XHCI controller is changed from USB 3.0 to USB 3.1 to support 10 Gbps.
• Larger VM
  • 32 virtual CPUs
  • 128 GB virtual memory
  • Note: Running virtual machines with 32 vCPUs requires that your host and guest operating systems both support 32 logical processors.
  • 8 GB virtual graphics memory
• Dark Mode
  • Workstation 16 Pro supports Dark Mode for optimized user experience.
  • Note: Requires host operating systems to be Windows 10 1809 or higher
• vSphere 7.0 Support
  • In Workstation 16 you can perform the following:
    • Connect to vSphere 7.0.
    • Upload a local virtual machine to vSphere 7.0.
    • Download a remote virtual machine running on vSphere 7.0 to the local desktop.
• Performance Improvements
  • Improved file transfer speeds (Drag and Drop, Copy and Paste)
  • Improved virtual machine shutdown time.
  • Improved virtual NVMe storage performance.
• Improved Accessibility Support
  • Accessibility improvements have been added so Workstation Pro is compliant with WCAG 2.1 criteria.

See full release notes here.

Fusion 12

What’s new:

• Free Product for Personal Non-Commercial Use
  • Fusion Player (previously Fusion Standard) is now free for personal non-commercial use.
• Support macOS 11 Big Sur
  • Run macOS 11 Big Sur as a host operating system.
  • Run macOS 11 Big Sur as a virtual machine.
• DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1 Support
  • Support has been added for DirectX 11 (DX11) and OpenGL 4.1 in the guest operating system.
    • Hardware requirements for DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1:
    • MacPro 2013 and later
    • iMac 27-inch 2014 and later
    • MacBook Pro 13-inch 2015 and later
    • MacBook Pro 15-inch 2015 with dual graphics and later
    • MacBook Air 2015 and later
    • MacBook 2015 and later
    • iMac 21-inch 2015 and later
    • iMac Pro 2017 and later
    • MacMini 2018 and later
  • Software requirements for DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1:
    • Guest OS: Windows 7 or higher, or Linux with vmwgfx.
• External GPU support
  • Fusion provides support for external GPU when an external GPU is connected to the host. Choose the Prefer External GPU option from the Fusion UI.
• Sandboxed Graphics
  • Virtual machine security is enhanced by removing graphics render from vmx and running it as a separate sandbox process.
• New Guest Operating Systems Support
  • RHEL 8.2
  • Debian 10.5
  • Fedora 32
  • CentOS 8.2
  • SLE 15 SP2
  • FreeBSD 11.4
  • ESXi 7.0
• USB 3.1 Controller Support
  • The virtual machine’s virtual XHCI controller is changed from USB 3.0 to USB 3.1 to support 10 Gbps.
• Larger Scale VM
  • 32 virtual CPUs
  • 128 GB virtual memory
  • Note: Running virtual machines with 32 vCPUs requires that your host and guest operating systems both support 32 logical processors.
  • 8 GB virtual graphics memory
• Create VM from APFS Recovery Partition (Now limited to macOS 10.15 host)
  • Performance Improvements
  • Improved file transfer speeds (Drag and Drop, Copy and Paste, HGFS)
  • Improved virtual machine shutdown time.
• Improved container performance.
  • vSphere 7.0 Support
  • In Fusion 12 you can perform the following:
    • Connect to vSphere 7.0.
    • Upload a local virtual machine to vSphere 7.0.
    • Download a remote virtual machine running on vSphere 7.0 to the local desktop.
• Login to Container Image Registry
  • Ability to login to a container image registry with the vctl login command has been added.
• Kubernetes Support
  • Fusion 12 now supports KIND kubernetes clusters.
• Improved Accessibility Support
  • Accessibility improvements have been added so Fusion is compliant with WCAG 2.1 criteria.

See the full release notes here.