Selecting a Virtual Machine Configuration

When you start the New Virtual Machine wizard, the wizard prompts you to select a typical or custom configuration.

Typical Configuration

If you select a typical configuration, you must specify or accept defaults for a few basic virtual machine settings.

• How you want to install the guest operating system.
• A name for the virtual machine and a location for the virtual machine files.
• The size of the virtual disk and whether to split the disk into multiple virtual disk files.
• Whether to customize specific hardware settings, including memory allocation, number of virtual processors, and network connection type.

Custom Configuration

You must select a custom configuration if you need to perform any of the following hardware customizations.

• Create a virtual machine that has a different Workstation Pro version than the default hardware compatibility setting.
• Select the I/O controller type for the SCSI controller.
• Select the virtual disk device type.
• Configure a physical disk or an existing virtual disk instead of create a new virtual disk.
• Allocate all virtual disk space rather than let disk space gradually grow to the maximum disk size.