What are shared folders?

Using shared folders you can share files between virtual machines and the host system. The shared directories can be on the host system, or they can be network directories that are accessible from the host computer. Shared folders can save you a lot of time, especially when you are installing software that would otherwise take a long time to download – you can download the software only once on the host system, and then use shared folders to distribute the software to all the VMs in your environment.

To use shared folders, you must install VMware Tools in the guest operating system, specify which directories are to be shared, and use one of the following supported guest operating systems:

• Windows Server 2003 R2
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10
• Linux with a kernel version of 2.6 or later
• Solaris x86 10