With over 3 million downloads worldwide, VMware Server continues to innovate to provide users with a superior introductory experience to virtualization—for free. The newest beta version offers the capabilities from before, plus an array of new features, increased performance and stability.
New features and enhancements in the VMware Server 2.0 Beta 2 release:
- Updated VMware Infrastructure (VI) Web Access management interface: With the faster performance, improved stability and broader range of configuration options, the VI Web Access management interface provides a simple, flexible, intuitive and productive management experience. In addition, embedded help files are context sensitive based on the task being performed.
- Independent virtual machine console: With the new VMware Remote Console, you can access your virtual machine consoles independent of the VI Web Access management interface plus resize the virtual machine console windows as needed.
- Support for USB 2.0 devices: Transfer data at faster data rates from USB 2.0 devices.
- Multi-tiered permissions: Configure different levels of permissions to access virtual machines in different ways, including browsing, interacting, configuring and administering virtual machines.
- New hardware editors: Edit and add devices such as USB 2.0 devices and legacy devices such as floppy drives, serial and parallel ports.
- Automatically start your virtual machines: Select which virtual machines that you want to automatically start when VMware Server starts. In addition, there is also an option to boot the virtual machine directly into the BIOS Setup Screen.
- Link to Virtual Appliance Marketplace: Access thousands of pre-built, pre-configured, ready-to-run enterprise applications packaged with an operating system inside a virtual machine. This speeds up time to value and simplifies software development, distribution, and management.
Existing VMware Server 2.0 Beta features
- New operating system support: The broadest operating system support of any host-based virtualization platform currently available, including support for Windows Vista Business Edition and Ultimate Edition (guest only), Windows Server 2008, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Ubuntu 7.10 in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
- More scalable virtual machines:Support for up to 8 GB of RAM (up from 3.6 GB in Server 1.0) per virtual machine, 10 virtual network interface cards and up to two virtual SMP (vSMP) processors per virtual machine.
- 64-bit guest operating system support:Use 64-bit guest operating systems on 64-bit hardware to enable more scalable and higher performing computing solutions.
- Support for Virtual Machine Interface (VMI): This feature enables transparent paravirtualization, in which a single binary version of the operating system can run either on native hardware or in paravirtualized mode to improve performance in specific Linux environments.
- Support for VIX API 1.5: This feature provides a programming interface for automating virtual machine and guest operations.
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