Virtualization products like VMware Workstation are quite important to developers and enthusiasts who are trying to test their software on multiple operating systems or just want to fiddle around in the depths of an OS without risking their primary machine. Today, VMware Workstation 17.0 Pro has been released, and it brings lots of new features that will likely please many users.
The key highlight of this release is that VMware Workstation 17.0 Pro now supports virtual Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 which is a mandatory requirement for running Windows 11 through official means. The introduction of this feature means that the virtualization software now officially supports Windows 11 as a guest OS (there was already a workaround before), along with many other new additions such as Windows Server 2022, RHEL 9, Debian 11.x, and Ubuntu 22.04.
There are several other useful features too, including auto start of local virtual machines when the host machine boots up, the ability to choose between Full or Fast encryption, support for OpenGL 4.3 (guest OS should be Windows 7 or higher, or Linux with Mesa 22.0.0, or Linux kernel 5.16.0), and Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) version 1.2. That said, you should know that it is no longer possible to mount or map a virtual disk to a drive on the host OS.
There are a couple of known issues to be aware of too. You might see the incorrect version number when you select an ISO image of a FreeBSD, but it does not impact the actual installation. You may also encounter a blank screen on the virtual machine console on host boot up if you have configured auto start. There are a couple of workarounds and lots of other minor fixes that you can check out here.
With this release, VMware Workstation Pro has joined the ranks of VirtualBox in offering official support for Windows 11 through a virtual TPM 2.0. It'll be interesting to see if this gets more people to try out Windows 11 on a virtual machine ahead of installing it on their primary machine.
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