Adding Virtual Hardware Devices to Virtual Machines in VMware Workstation

VMware is a versatile virtualization application that allows administrators to create virtual machines and add or remove additional virtual hardware peripherals easily. Adding or removing virtual hardware devices to or from virtual machines becomes necessary when administrators want to use VMs for some special purposes. For example USB controllers can be added to a virtual machine if administrators want to insert USB drives to the physical computers but want to view the contents in the virtual machines. By default most common devices are included with the virtual machine when it is created. However if administrators want they can still add other virtual devices as per the requirements. As a VMware administrator if you want to add a virtual hardware peripheral device to a virtual machine you need to follow the steps given below:

1. Open VMware console window by double-clicking its icon available on the desktop.

2. From the left Sidebar right click on the virtual machine to which you want to add additional virtual hardware device(s) and from the appeared menu click on Settings.

3. On Virtual Machines Settings box make sure that you are on Hardware tab and click on Add button.

4. On Add Hardware Wizard box choose the appropriate hardware device and click on Next button.

5. On the next page leave everything as default and click on Finish button.

   

   (Optionally you can configure the settings on this page as per the requirements before clicking on Finish button.)

6. Back on Virtual Machine Settings page click on Ok button to accept and confirm your settings.