How do recent Broadcom changes affect manual and auto-patching support for VMware products?
Summary
Broadcom has implemented significant changes to the download and installation flow for VMware Workstation products. These updates impact both VMware Workstation Player and Workstation Pro, especially for versions 17 and above.
Key Changes from Broadcom
1. New Download Flow
Broadcom no longer supports the traditional binary download method. Instead, a new centralized download site with a verification layer has been introduced.
Reference: Broadcom Announcement: Changes to How You Download VMware Software Binaries
2. Product Consolidation and Licensing
- Currently, VMWare Workstation Pro is free for personal use, which leads to the discontinuation of their lesser counterparts VMware Workstation Player and VMware Fusion Player.
- The Workstation Player is now bundled with Workstation Pro. When users install or update Workstation Pro, the Player version is automatically included and updated.
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3. Support for Standalone Workstation Player
- Broadcom will continue to maintain the standalone version of Workstation Player for version <=16.
- Version >=17 is affected by the discontinuation and is no longer offered as a standalone product.
Impact on Product Support
For VMWare Workstation Player <=16, we still support Detection, VA, manual patching, auto-patching.
For VMWare Workstation Player >=17, we still support Detection, VA. However, manual patching and auto-patching will no longer be available.
The VMWare Workstation Player >=17 will be updated along with VMWare Workstation Pro, when users install/patch VMWare Workstation Pro on their endpoints.
For VMWare Workstation Pro, we still support Detection, VA, manual patching, auto-patching.
Recommendation: Customers who are using earlier versions of VMware Player will need to update to VMware Workstation for v17+ to ensure their apps are aligned with the latest updates from the vendor.