

Graphic-intensive applications get an additional boost through the allocation of 3GB of available host video memory directly to a virtual machine. How big can these virtual machines get? Monster-sized! Massive virtual machines may span up to 16 virtual CPUs, with 64 gigabytes of RAM and 8 terabytes of virtual hard disks. Users can network together sets of operating systems to complete the testing and development of code or of network or server architecture, all on a single desktop computer. VMware Workstation 15 Pro, released in September, is the latest in a series of virtualization products that allow IT professionals to run multiple, isolated operating systems on a single workstation. While much has changed over a decade later, VMware Workstation Pro is still the gold standard.

IT Admins Can Run Massive Virtual Machines MORE FROM STATETECH: Discover data center consolidation best practices for your agency. With VMware Workstation, it is easy to create virtual networks, so I even had all the networks for the cluster heartbeat mapped out. More than 10 years ago, I built my first Microsoft Windows Server 2008 cluster with SQL Server 2005, carefully documenting each step. For as long as I have been an IT professional, VMware Workstation has been the flagship product for testing and developing infrastructure on a local system before trying deployments in production.
