Removing Unnecessary Hardware from VMware Workstation VM

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

You can use virtual machine hardware settings to add, remove, and modify virtual devices for a virtual machine.
To configure hardware settings for a selected virtual machine, select VM > Settings and click the Hardware tab. When you select a device in the left pane, the configuration options for that device appear in the right pane.

Environment

VMware Workstation Pro 16.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation Pro 16.x (Linux)

Cause

If there is unused Hardware present in the VM, it might cause heap overflow and it may lead to security issues

Resolution

You can remove certain types of hardware from a virtual machine.

To remove hardware from a selected virtual machine, select VM > Settings, click the Hardware tab, select the device, and click Remove.
You can remove the following types of devices from a virtual machine.

• Virtual hard disks
• CD-ROM and DVD drives
• Floppy drives
• Virtual network adapters
• USB controllers
• Sound cards
• Camera
• Printers
• Generic SCSI devices

Note: You cannot remove hardware from a virtual machine while it is in suspended.

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
User would not be able to perform any operations associated to that Virtual device, once it is removed from VM.