I just got a beta announcement for VMware Workstation v6.0 which looks to have some pretty nifty new features.  This release adds Vista support, multi-head support (different monitor per VM or single VM on mutli monitors), headless support (run a VM in the background without Workstation UI), and a set of automation APIs to allow scripted or programmatic interaction with the VM.

In addition, one of the features I thought sounded interesting is what they call the “Virtual Debugger” for VS and Eclipse.  From what I gather, this means an Eclipse plugin that uses the automation APIs to start a VM, deploy a Java program to the VM, and communicate between the Eclipse remote debugger and the Java app in the VM.  I am sure all of this is possible today with 5.5, but the productivity aspect of the Eclipse integration sounds pretty cool, not to mention that I bet it does more than I mention here.

On that note, if you aren’t using VMware Workstation, you probably should be.  I think it is easily one of the most useful software tools that I use and I don’t think I could live without it for QA and integration testing.  I spend a lot of time evangelizing VMware to my clients and friends in the Java world and it just amazes me that more people aren’t using it.

By the way, for $299 you can get a VMTN subscription that includes a bunch of VMware software for development and testing.  Go get it.