Free tool: VMware Software Manager

While browsing the VMware site I noticed a free download that I have never seen before. On March 12, 2015 VMware released VMware Software Manager.

VMware Software Manager – Download Service is a tool for managing downloads of VMware suite products. The tool allows you to browse and download software, monitor the progress of downloads, and locate your downloaded software in an organized folder structure.

After installation a browser window is opened to a local service (http://localhost:8000). After login the Software Manager updates the list of downloadable software under your current contract. For now only the Datacenter & Cloud products are listed, but hopefully in the near future other downloads will be available as well.

After selecting your suite and version you can chose to click on the download button or make a finer selection, only downloading the specific products you want.

After downloading the downloads are nicely organized in a folder on your system. No more hunting for that ISO or downloading the same file over and over again, just browse through the folder structure.

All in all a very useful tool for bulk downloads. I hope VMware adds all other downloadable content as well. It will be a very useful tool.