Workstation Virtualization
Featuring VMware Workstation 6.5

We highly recommend VMware Workstation 6.5 for everyday virtualization use, especially if you are a software developer or run applications on multiple operating systems. When coupled with high-performance, high-efficiency computing hardware (CPUs, storage solutions, and the like), Virtualization can save you a fortune and increase your productivity substantially! Although the product name implies only "Workstations", you can also certainly use VMware Workstation to run virtual machines on a Server.

Virtual Machine (VM) technology allows you to exploit the true power and flexibility of your desktop or laptop computer and reduce hardware costs by 50% or more by running multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC. With modern Processors / CPUs (like those offered by Intel), coupled with leading-edge virtualization software from VMware, you will be amazed at how efficiently and transparently you emulate "multiple machines" on one computer.

Mainstream and affordable hardware virtualization is truly one of the most exciting technological advances in computing of recent years, and it promises to be a technology that will only expand in scope in the future. And this power is surprisingly simple to use, thanks to the innovations that VMware Workstation brings to the market.

With VMware Workstation, you can easily:

• Run multiple operating systems simultaneously on same computer (e.g., Linux, Windows XP, Windows Vista), as well as the applications specific to each operating system.
• Host legacy applications and overcome platform migration issues
• Demonstrate multi-tier configurations on a single PC - e.g., you can have a SQL-Server Database Server running in one VM, a Web-Server in another, a middle-tier / object server in another, and yet another VM for your client-side application(s).
• Configure & test new software or patches in an isolated environment, thus reducing deployment risks and costs.
• Automate tasks for software development and testing.

VMware Workstation creates fully isolated, secure virtual machines that encapsulate an operating system and its applications. VMware uses a virtualization layer that maps the physical hardware resources (i.e., Devices on your Desktop PC, Workstation, or Server) to the virtual machine's resources in such a way that each virtual machine has its own CPU, memory, disks, networking, and other I/O devices, and is the full equivalent of a standard x86 machine.

VMware Workstation is simply an application that you install onto your computer's host operating system, like any other application install you are accustomed to. The VMware application setup takes care of installing the virtualization layer drivers and virtual-machine management software components you will need to run any type of supported Guest Operating System and applications (be it Linux, Windows XP, Vista, Server, etc) and provides broad hardware support by inheriting device support from your host computer.

Once you have the VMware Workstation software installed, you can create as many guest virtual machines as you desire, and these "guest" operating systems are essentially just like having another computer running on your computer, but within a self-contained Window (and, with the new VMware Unity-mode view, an application within a guest operating system can appear as though it is a normal application Window running on your computer, without the virtual-machine management window surrounding it). Creating a guest operating system is a rather straightforward process, as it is a task performed with the help of virtual machine setup "wizards" (i.e., step-by-step prompted setup tasks with simple selection dropdowns, checkboxes, and radio-buttons) that make this a very simplified procedure. It is very easy to choose how big the virtual machines' allocated disk space will be, how much RAM the VM will be alloted, and so forth.