Web site: www.vmware.com
Category: Machine Emulators
Platform: Linux, OS X, Windows
License: Proprietary
Interface: GUI
Wikipedia: VMware Workstation
First release: 1999
VMware Workstation – a commercial software package provided by VMware Inc. (now owned by EMC Corporation).
VMware, Inc. is an American virtualization software company. It was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. In 2023, the company was acquired by Broadcom with the End User Computing division spun off and sold to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.
Its most important component is a workstation, consisting of a virtual machine suitable for a computer in the x86 architecture, which allows you to create and run many virtual computers simultaneously. Each virtual machine, the so-called host, can run its own operating system, the so-called guest, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, BSD family systems and many others.
The VMware Workstation application allows you to run many operating systems simultaneously on one physical machine. Additionally, systems run as virtual can communicate with each other using Internet protocols. This allows, for example, testing of created client-server solutions. Other VMware products help manage virtual machines, facilitating, among other things, their transfer between many real machines.
The computer and operating system running VMware Workstation is recognized as the host. Operating system installations running within a virtual machine are recognized as guests. Like an emulator, VMware Workstation exposes the guest system’s completely virtual hardware: for example, when connecting to an existing (physical) network, the guest computer will recognize an AMD PCnet network card. VMware emulates all the hardware within the virtual machine, including the graphics card, sound card, network card, and hard drives. It also provides access to physical devices via USB, RS-232, and LPT ports.
Because all guest machines use identical drivers regardless of the current host computer, virtual machine instances are highly portable between computers.
