System requirements for VMware Workstation Player
Before we dive deeper into all the cool features that VMware Workstation Player provides, let’s get the boring stuff out of the way – here is a list of all the requirements you need to fulfill in order to install and run Player on your computer:
Host operating system (this is the machine you will install Player on):
CPU
• at minimum 64-bit x86 CPU with 1.3 GHz core speed.
For 64-bit guest operating systems (the operating systems installed in a virtual machine), the host system must have one of the following processors:
• AMD CPUs need to have segment-limit support in long mode.
• Intel CPUs that has VT-x support.
The good news is that most newer processor support the requirements listed above. Check out the website of your CPU’s manufacturer to determine if these features are supported.
Memory
• 1GB minimum, 2GB and above is recommended.
• in order to use Windows 7 Aero graphics in a virtual machine, 3GB of host system memory is required.
It’s important that the host on which you plan to run virtual machines has enough RAM to operate smoothly. If the host runs out of the physical RAM, it starts swapping to disk, which drastically reduces the system performance. To make sure the swapping never happens, the total amount of RAM in your computer should be more than the total amount of RAM that your virtual machines will use, with an addition of (at least) 2 GB for the host operating system.
Hard disk
• IDE, SATA, and SCSI hard drives are supported.
• a minimum of 1GB free disk space is required for guest operating systems.
Optical CD-ROM and DVD
• IDE, SCSI, and SATA optical drives are supported.
• CD-ROM and DVD drives are supported.
• ISO disk image files are supported.
Network
• any Ethernet controller that the host operating system supports.
Host operating systems
You can install Player on a variety of Windows and Linux operating systems. Note that Player requires a 64-bit host operating system. The supported operating systems are:
• Windows 10
• Windows 8
• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2008
• Ubuntu 8.04 and above
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and above
• CentOS 5.0 and above
• Oracle Linux 5.0 and above
• openSUSE 10.2 and above
• SUSE Linux 10 and above
Guest operating system
A guest operating system is the operating system you will install in a virtual machine. Both 32-bit and 64-bit operating system versions are supported. Some of the most popular guest operating systems are:
• Windows 10
• Windows 8
• Windows 7
• Windows Vista
• Windows XP
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Server 2003 R2
• Ubuntu
• RedHat
• SUSE
• Oracle Linux
• Debian
• Fedora
• openSUSE
• Mint
• CentOS
• Solaris
• FreeBSD
