Deep Dive: VMware Workstation Pro (Part 1) – Installation, Interface and General Settings

VMware Workstation Pro: Introduction and Installation

Hello and welcome to Techaptic! Today we are starting a new video series focused on one of the best Type 2 hypervisors: VMware Workstation. Why are these tools important? Whether your purpose is to learn an operating system, test a piece of software, or build out a complex configuration, it is critically important to do all of these things in a safe and isolated environment first. If we don’t test and instead directly implement changes into a production environment, it can lead to irreversible problems. Creating virtual environments lets us work without the fear of making mistakes, and learning from them is important. In this first video of the series, we will walk through the installation, get to know the user interface, and configure the general settings. Let’s get started.

To be able to use this software, it needs to be installed on our computer. If it is not installed, we can download it from the Broadcom website. We need to go to access.broadcom.com and log in with our credentials. If we don’t have an account with Broadcom, we can create one easily from the upper section. After specifying our credentials and logging in, we are presented with the website where we can download the software. From the left section, click ‘Download’ and then click the button that directs us to the free software download section.

After that, we need to search for the product. If you are a Mac user, you should search for ‘VMware Fusion’ instead of ‘VMware Workstation Pro’, click the search results, and then click ‘VMware Fusion’. There you will see the latest version (which is currently VMware Fusion 17.6.2) and after clicking it, you can download it easily from there. If you’re a Windows user, we should search for ‘VMware Workstation’ instead of ‘VMware Fusion’ in the product search section. Type ‘VMware Workstation’ and click ‘Show Results’. After that, click ‘VMware Workstation Pro’; it will display the latest version, currently 17.6.2. Clicking it again allows you to download it easily.

Some users may find that the download button is not clickable. In case this happens, you need to agree to the terms. For example, if I haven’t installed the 17.6.2 version before and I want to download it, I click it and see that the HTTPS download option is not active. To enable it, I need to agree to the Terms and Conditions. However, I cannot simply click the checkbox. I need to click on the ‘Terms and Conditions’ link first, which opens a new tab. Then, going back to the previous tab, the checkbox becomes clickable. Once you accept the terms, the download button will be enabled.

Let’s assume you have downloaded the software to your computer; we can continue from here. Just double-click the executable. We click ‘Next’, accept the license agreement, and click ‘Next’ again. It might say Hyper-V is not detected, which is fine as we will be using VMware’s hypervisor. Click ‘Next’, and it asks where to install the software. The default location is fine. In the following section, it asks to check for updates on startup; we can keep that enabled. Generally, I uncheck the ‘VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program’ option, as I don’t want to join. Click ‘Next’, ‘Next’ again, and then ‘Install’. Once the installation process is completed, we can start exploring the user interface.

Exploring the User Interface

When you open the software, you will see the Home screen. There are mainly three sections here. The first is to create a new virtual machine. We will do this in the next videos; we will not create virtual machines now. The second is to open a virtual machine. If we previously installed or configured a virtual machine, we can open it here. There is a specific extension called VMX. When we select a VMX file, we can easily import the virtual machine into the library. Because we already installed Windows 11, it appears here in a second tab. The third option is to connect to a remote server. Let’s say we have an ESXi environment with virtual machines under it. We can connect to the ESXi host by specifying an IP address, username, and password, and we can list the VMs here easily.

Now let’s jump to the upper left section of the product. There are ‘File’, ‘Edit’, ‘View’, ‘VM’, ‘Tabs’, and ‘Help’ menus. Let’s jump into the ‘File’ section. We already covered creating, opening, and connecting to a server, but there are other configurations. ‘Scan for Virtual Machines’: what does it do? If we select a directory on our disk, it can easily discover and search for new or previously installed virtual machines. It targets VMX files. When we specify a directory, the system searches it, and if there are any virtual machines, we can easily import them. As you can see, it discovered about five virtual machines, and when we click ‘Finish’, they are imported into our library. If we don’t see them, it’s because we haven’t enabled the library menu. To do that, we can click ‘Show or hide the library’ or use the F9 shortcut.

There is another section here: ‘Configure Auto Start VMs’. What does it do? If you want specific virtual machines to start when your main computer boots, you can configure them here. To make this happen, there is a dependency: the VMware Autostart Service needs to be started automatically on the host computer. When we go to ‘Run’, type ‘services.msc’, and click ‘OK’, we will see the services list. Under the VMware section, we see that the Autostart service needs to be set to Automatic and started for this feature to work on the next boot.

The ‘Edit’ menu contains the ‘Virtual Network Editor’, which is one of the most important parts and will be covered in next videos. According to our needs, we may want to change or create new networks. Some virtual machines may need internet access or isolation, or they might need to communicate with each other. These network configurations are managed under the Virtual Network Editor.

Before jumping into ‘Preferences’, let’s look at the other menus. In the ‘View’ section, we partly explained the library. If you want, you can also enable the Thumbnail Bar. Since the library and tab menu are very easy for me to use, I usually disable the Thumbnail Bar. The ‘Autosize’ section is important, but the default settings are fine, and we don’t need to change anything. I strongly suggest keeping these settings as they are.

The ‘VM’ menu options are currently grayed out because we haven’t selected any virtual machine. But when we select an active virtual machine, these options become available. We can shut down, restart, or suspend the VM. We can also manage USB devices using the ‘Removable Devices’ section to connect or disconnect hardware. You can send the Ctrl+Alt+Delete combination from here. Snapshot and clone mechanisms are also very important and will be covered in another video. In short, a snapshot allows you to capture the current state of a virtual machine and save it. If you take a snapshot before making critical changes, you can restore to that state if something goes wrong, saving you from reinstalling the VM. You should use this option extensively. There is also the option to install or reinstall VMware Tools. VMware Tools installs display drivers and enables features like automatic resolution changes and seamless mouse/keyboard access. It is very important to install it. Finally, the ‘Settings’ section for the virtual machine allows us to add, remove, or modify virtual hardware and VMware settings. We will dive into this later.

The ‘Tabs’ menu allows us to jump to the next or previous tab. Alternatively, you can use the shortcuts Ctrl+Tab for the next tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab for the previous tab. In the ‘Help’ section, you can display the current build of the product and manually check for software updates using the ‘Software Updates’ section.

Configuring VMware Preferences

Let’s jump to our final section: ‘Preferences’ from the ‘Edit’ menu. Some of these configurations are very important. Let’s start with ‘Workspace’. Setting a default workspace saves a lot of time when you create many virtual machines. Normally, VMware assigns a default folder location. Since virtual machines take up a lot of space, you should specify a default location here that suits your storage needs, saving you from defining directories for each new VM. The other settings here can be accepted as they are.

The ‘Input’ tab handles hotkeys. When working inside a virtual machine, your keyboard and mouse are captured. To return control to your main computer, you use the Ctrl+Alt key combination. The cursor icon changes, and you can use your main computer again. This is the default combination, but you can change it here.

In the ‘Hot Keys’ section, you’ll find other combinations. For example, Ctrl+Alt+Enter toggles the virtual machine into full-screen mode. The ‘Display’ section is important, but the default settings are generally good. The system automatically synchronizes the resolution of the virtual machine when we resize the window, preventing scroll bars from appearing.

For the ‘USB’ section, the default option ‘Ask me what to do’ is the best choice. When you plug in a USB device, the system will ask whether to connect it to the host or the virtual machine.

In the ‘Updates’ section, I strongly suggest enabling the option to update VMware Tools automatically. When VMware Workstation is upgraded, VMware Tools usually needs an update as well. Enabling this lets the system handle it automatically rather than updating each VM manually.

Under ‘Feedback’, we already declined the Customer Experience Improvement Program during installation.

The most important part of this section is ‘Memory’. While the default is generally fine, it is important to understand how it works. Under ‘Reserved memory’, we allocate physical RAM for all virtual machines to use. In my case, I have 128 gigabytes of RAM and am allocating 110 gigabytes to the VMs.

How the system allocates this memory is also crucial. The first option, ‘Fit all virtual machine memory into reserved host RAM’, means all VMs will directly use physical memory. While this sounds good, it is not flexible or stable because your host computer might need memory that is currently locked by VMs. The second option, ‘Allow some virtual machine memory to be swapped’, brings flexibility. It allows the system to balance between physical memory and swap files. If your host has a fast SSD or NVMe drive, the performance impact of swapping is minimal. The third option, ‘Allow most virtual machine memory to be swapped’, relies heavily on the disk and will result in lower performance compared to the second option. In my opinion, the second option is the best for all scenarios. The ‘Priority’ and ‘Devices’ settings are generally fine and don’t need changing. When we want to save the settings, we just click ‘OK’.

Thank you for watching, see you next time!