You can configure advanced settings for the selected virtual machine to disable memory page trimming, enable Template mode, and boot the virtual machine from EFI.

To configure additional advanced options for a selected virtual machine, select VM > Settings, click the Options tab, and select Advanced.

Note:

You cannot configure these options for a shared or remote virtual machine.

Table 1. Additional Advanced Options

Option

Description

Disable memory page trimming

Workstation Pro uses a memory trimming technique to return unused virtual machine memory to the host machine for other uses. While trimming usually has little effect 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.

Log virtual machine progress periodically

When enabled, Workstation Pro includes information about your virtual machine's virtual CPU state, instruction pointer, and code segment registers in the log file. This is useful for troubleshooting or optimizing the performance of your virtual machine.

Enable Template mode (to be used for cloning)

When you create a linked clone of a virtual machine, the clone depends on the parent virtual machine to function. If a linked clone cannot 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.

You typically must have write access to a virtual machine to clone it. 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 protect linked clones, you cannot delete a template virtual machine. You cannot delete snapshots of the template.

Boot with EFI instead of BIOS

When enabled, the virtual machine is booted from Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) instead of BIOS. The guest operating system to be installed on the virtual machine must support EFI firmware. You can specify the EFI firmware option when you create a remote virtual machine in shared virtual machine mode.