VMware Announces Availability of New Feature-Packed Release of Its Powerful Desktop Virtualization Software

PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today announced the general availability of VMware Workstation 5.5, the newest release of its award-winning desktop virtualization software. VMware Workstation 5.5 has numerous new features and significant platform enhancements that provide unmatched flexibility for developers and testers.

Millions today use VMware Workstation, first introduced more than six years ago, to accelerate software development, testing and deployment and increase product quality. With VMware Workstation, enterprises are able to create a library of virtual machines for 32-bit and 64-bit x86 operating systems, including Linux, NetWare, Solaris x86 and Windows, that replicate production environments. These virtual machines can then be rapidly provisioned and used, making it possible for developers and testers to spend more time developing and testing software and less time configuring and managing their required environments.

"VMware Workstation 5.5 reaffirms VMware's commitment to providing our customers with the industry's broadest virtualization platform," said Brian Byun, vice president of products and alliances at VMware. "Our customers have indicated that features like support for 64-bit guest operating systems and multi-CPU virtual machines are very important to them as they plan their infrastructure for the future. VMware Workstation 5.5 gives developers a powerful platform to accelerate the development, testing and support of their next-generation applications."

"Virtualization will drive increased operational efficiency, flexibility, mobility and integrity for customers across the enterprise," said Chad Taggard, director of Advanced Technologies Marketing for Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "We are pleased to see this first product from VMware supporting the market's first shipping hardware-enabled virtualization technology from Intel. Coupling VMware's robust solutions with Intel Virtualization Technology will expand the adoption of the virtualized enterprise client, mobile and server platforms."

"VMware Workstation 5.5 is the market's first commercially available virtualization software solution to provide 64-bit virtualized Operating Systems on AMD Athlon 64 processor-based systems," said Joe Menard, corporate vice president of Software Strategy at AMD. "AMD helped pioneer the market for x86-64 bit operating environments, and we are pleased to extend our collaboration with VMware to help deliver optimized performance and robustness for today's existing AMD Athlon 64 processor-based systems."

Among the major new and enhanced features in VMware Workstation 5.5 are: -- 64-bit Guest Support for AMD Athlon 64 Processor-based Systems; and 64- bit Guest Support for Systems using Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) with Intel Virtualization Technology (experimental): Building on the 64-bit host operating system support introduced in previous releases, VMware Workstation 5.5 delivers support for 64-bit Linux and Windows guest operating systems and experimental support for 64-bit Solaris x86 and FreeBSD. This gives developers and testers the flexibility to run 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems simultaneously on the same hardware. -- Support for Two-way Virtual SMP (experimental): VMware brings its server-class Virtual SMP to the desktop. Virtual SMP makes it possible for a single virtual machine to span two processors, enabling developers and testers to configure real-world production environments on developer-class desktops. -- Enhanced VMware Virtual Machine Importer: VMware Workstation 5.5 provides developers and testers with the additional flexibility to convert Symantec Live State Recovery images into virtual machines or to open those images in their native format without any modification. Developers and testers can reuse their libraries of physical machine images when deploying or building a virtual infrastructure. -- Enhanced Command Line Interface: VMware Workstation 5.5 offers an enhanced vmrun interface to allow organizations to automate repetitive manual tasks. New vmrun features include the ability to take snapshots, list all snapshots for a virtual machine and revert to a selected snapshot.

"We were very interested in VMware Workstation 5.5 because of its new support for 64-bit operating systems," says Ed Vanderpool, lead network engineer for Gap. "We've been wanting to use 64-bit Ubuntu Linux, so we tried it on Workstation 5.5. It worked flawlessly. The speed was incredible. We have been doing a lot of migrations and testing in Linux. With Workstation 5.5, we get speed, performance and memory management, which is exactly what we're after."

Vanderpool continued: "Workstation 5.5's enhanced VMImporter utility also enabled me to easily convert Symantec LiveState Recovery to VMware virtual machines for migrations. I did the migration on one of the backups previously and was able to move it over with Workstation 5.5 with no problem. Before, you'd have to do extractions; it was a longer, more complicated process. Also, we've noticed that being able to connect virtual machines to simulate tests in multi-tiered configurations is seamless and stable -- even more so than in Workstation 5. We also like the flexible network settings in Workstation 5.5; the setup is straightforward, and it gives us greater flexibility in testing."

"For us, performance and responsiveness is important because we want to emulate production environments for our testing," said David Kiser, IT site services USA support for Business Objects. "To evaluate VMware Workstation 5.5, I put server images in virtual machines on a dual Xeon host with hyper threading. The Virtual SMP worked great as performance increased over using a single processor for the same image. SMP teaming also works well; I tested with MS SQL Server, and it picked up the dual processor image right after a reboot. The Windows 2000 and 2003 Server images recognized the SMP setup with no problems. I was impressed with the responsiveness of the new images when installing the operating systems and running Windows updates. This new version works well with SATA raid controllers. I also found that teaming worked well on server and desktop platforms."

Virtual machines created with VMware Workstation can be deployed to VMware Player, enterprise-class VMware GSX Server and data center-class VMware ESX Server platforms. Once deployed on GSX Server or ESX Server, VMware VirtualCenter can manage these virtual machines. This lets development teams more easily manage the software lifecycle process and seamlessly move computing environments from development to testing, and from staging to production.

Pricing and Availability

VMware Workstation 5.5 for both Linux and Windows host operating systems is available today. The electronic download for Workstation 5.5 is $189 via the VMware Store at http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/; the boxed version available for $199. The product is also available from the VMware VIP Reseller Network and distribution partners at http://www.vmware.com/partners/resellers/. A full- featured 30-day trial version of VMware Workstation 5.5 can be downloaded directly from the VMware Web site at http://www.vmware.com/.

VMware Workstation is also available with VMTN Subscription, which provides developers with the range of VMware products, support and upgrades for an annual subscription of $299 per user. VMTN Subscription provides a consistent virtualization platform for development and test to increase the productivity and efficiency across the software development lifecycle, reduce cost and complexity and improve software quality. VMTN Subscription includes VMware Workstation for individual developer productivity, VMware GSX Server and a developer version of VMware ESX Server with Virtual SMP for team collaboration and VMware Physical to Virtual (P2V) Assistant for migrating physical systems to virtual machines.

Registered customers who purchased VMware Workstation 5 are eligible for a free electronic download distribution update license to VMware Workstation 5.5 via the VMware Store at http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/.

About VMware, Inc.

VMware, an EMC company , is the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. The world's largest companies use VMware solutions to simplify their IT, fully leverage their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands. VMware is based in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit http://www.vmware.com/ or call 650-475-5000.

VMware and VMTN are registered trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or various jurisdictions. All other trademarks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.