Regarding CBC to XTS:
Overall, great product, thanks... the above is just feedback fwiw... things are fine, but did not like this experience to a certain degree, hope fb helps, thanks for your efforts!
A quick follow-up: Was just thinking, if VMware were truly serious that users should, for maximum safety and security of their valued VMs, perform a full backup before beginning the CBC to XTS upgrade, you would imagine a prompt such as the following...
"While we are excited about the advantages of moving from CBC to XTS, we do not recommend you upgrading until after you have performed a full backup of your VM. Have you performed a full backup of your VMs, and are you now ready to upgrade from CBC to our latest and greatest encryption offering?"
See the difference? The message as it really is does not really care if the user backs up first even though the blog (which you must get to indirectly) states you should backup. The actual upgrade wants you to upgrade now/today, backups or not. It is this latter part I have an issue with. Thanks again for listening and the great product.
Note the below screenshot of the upgrade encryption prompt...
Thanks.
Thanks for the heads up.
Today I finally had a chance to backup my 17.0.2 VM in prep for CBC-to-XTS 17.5 upgrade. After backup, I started the VM, usual upgrade prompt, clicked Upgrade... upgrade took only a few seconds... then booted into OS... not much drama...
...I'm guessing this was quick because of partial instead of full encryption.
Some follow-up points in case any VMware reviews any of this feedback...
All of this amounts to a nit now that I know about this particular experience... but I cannot assume this beforehand... the main point.
All that said, VMware Workstation Pro is a really awesome product and it's great to be able to purchase a license to use a product that is well-tested and rock solid around so much important data management from handling snapshots, VM disks, all of that... those features work well, and that would not happen without investment in good engineering/testing. I really mean that... when offline after ranting on this Upgrade thing, I was using features and thinking how great the product is.