VMware Workstation 25H2 — A New Name and Era for VMware Workstation — Virtualization Review

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VMware Workstation 25H2 — A New Name and Era for VMware Workstation

I am a big fan of VMWare Workstation, and the release of VMware Workstation Pro 25H2 marks a significant moment for this underappreciated desktop hypervisor, as it not only includes a host of new features but also represents a fundamental and long-overdue shift in its naming convention.

The Workstation Legacy
This continuous evolution of Workstation is a testament to its enduring relevance within the IT community, a topic that I cover extensively in Virtualization & Cloud Review. For instance, in my November 2024 article, “Take 5 with Tom Fenton: 5 Things You Can Do with VMware’s Free Workstation Desktop Hypervisor” I highlighted some of the overlooked strengths of Workstation, such as its built-in support for Linked Clones, its command-line manageability via its new vmrun command, and its often overlooked ability to connect to vCenter Server and ESXi Hosts. Features like Linked Clones, which allow rapid deployment of testing environments with minimal disk space, continue to be a crucial component for Workstation users. But the feature that I find most useful is its ability to Replicate Poor Network Conditions as this is not something that I have found in any other hypervisor, and I find indispensable when working testing applications or EUC solutions.