Advanced Options Settings Panel

In addition to these options, this tab displays the paths to the virtual machine’s configuration (.vmx) file and its log file. Although you cannot edit these paths, you can place your cursor inside the paths and use arrow keys to scroll to the end of a path.

You can run a virtual machine so it collects additional debugging information that is helpful to VMware technical support in resolving issues. Use the Gather debugging information list to select a debugging mode.

Workstation has three modes with regards to collecting debugging information: none (which means that no debugging information is gathered), statistics mode, and full debugging mode. Selecting None will allow the virtual machine to run faster than in the other modes.

You might need to use one of the debugging modes under the following conditions:

•	If the virtual machine sometimes crashes and you want to determine the cause, use full debugging mode so that you can then send the debugging logs to VMware Technical Support.

•	If, when not in a debugging mode, the virtual machine runs extremely slowly under some workloads, and you want to determine the cause, use statistics mode so that you can then send the statistics file to VMware Technical Support.

When the cause and remedy for either of these situations have been found, return to normal mode by selecting None.

Enabling the record/replay feature will automatically set Gather debugging information to Full. For best performance, reset the debugging option to None when you disable the record/replay feature.

In rare instances, you might find that when you install or run software inside a virtual machine, Workstation appears to hang. Generally, the problem occurs early in the execution of the program. In many cases, you can get past the problem by temporarily disabling acceleration in the virtual machine. To disable acceleration, select Disable acceleration.

Disabling acceleration slows down virtual machine performance. Therefore, the setting is recommended only for getting past the problem with running the program. After you pass the point at which the program encountered problems, be sure to clear the Disable acceleration check box. You might then be able to run the program with acceleration.

Workstation uses a memory trimming technique to return unused virtual machine memory to the host machine for other uses. While trimming usually has little impact on performance and might be needed in low-memory situations, the I/O caused by memory trimming can sometimes interfere with disk-oriented workload performance in a guest. To disable memory trimming, select Disable memory page trimming.

Workstation uses a page sharing technique to allow guest memory pages with identical contents to be stored as a single copy-on-write page. Page sharing decreases host memory usage, but consumes some system resources, potentially including I/O bandwidth. You may want to avoid this overhead for guests for which host memory is plentiful and I/O latency is important. To disable page sharing, see chapter about performance tuning in the VMware Workstation User’s Manual.

Select Log virtual machine progress periodically to increase logging information for debugging and troubleshooting purposes. By checking this box, you do not have to edit a configuration file or restart the virtual machine to extract more detailed logging for technical support.

When you create a linked clone of a virtual machine, the clone depends on the parent virtual machine to function. If a linked clone is unable to access the parent virtual machine or the snapshot on which the clone is based, the clone no longer operates. You can avoid this problem by designating the parent virtual machine of a linked clone as a template.

Normally, to clone a virtual machine, you must have write access to that virtual machine. A virtual machine that is designated as a clone template can be cloned by users who do not have write access to the template virtual machine.

To designate this virtual machine as a template, select Enable Template mode.

In order to protect linked clones, a template virtual machine cannot be deleted or added to a team. None of the template’s snapshots be deleted. For more information on linked clones, see Snapshot Actions and see the chapter about cloning virtual machines in the VMware Workstation User’s Manual.

If you have a VMware VMI (Virtual Machine Interface) enabled kernel in the guest operating system, you might see improved performance if you enable paravirtual support in the virtual machine.

See the VMware Workstation User’s Manual for instructions on getting a VMware VMI-enabled kernel and replacing the kernel in your Linux virtual machine with the VMware VMI-enabled one. Then select the check box called Enable VMware paravirtual kernel support.