VMware has released VMware Workstation 6.0 yesterday. It is the sixth generation of the Workstation virtualization product. This version brings enhancements on the virtual devices and connectivity for the virtual machines (USB 2.0 support, more network cards, multiple-display). Seemlessly run both 32bit environments and 64bit (x86-64) on the same host. Supports running virtual machines in the background with headless operations. Enhanced support for developpers.

Up to this point nothing earthshattering right. Well two new features that VMware Workstation 6.0 brings to virtualization are :

• Virtual Machine Interface (VMI) support (experimental): VMware Workstation 6.0 is the first virtualization platform to allow execution of paravirtualized guest operating systems that implement the VMI interface. Please note that VMI configuration is only available in i386 kernels for the moment. x86-64 will come.

• Continuous virtual machine record and replay (experimental): Users can record the execution of a virtual machine, including all inputs, outputs and decisions made along the way. On demand, the user can go “back in time” to the start of the recording and replay execution, guaranteeing that the virtual machine will perform exactly the same operations every time and ensuring bugs can be reproduced and resolved.

Having taken part of the two beta releases and the release candidate of the Workstation 6.0 product, I immediately upgraded my Workstation 5.0 for Linux license to the new version last night. This is an amazing product !!!