I don't think they deprecated shared folders, only shared VMs (a function that enables Workstation to act as a virtualization server).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation#Version_his...

That’s a shame. I have a high-powered desktop and sometimes it’s nice to work from the patio by opening a few VMs on my laptop. I get the oomph of the big box with the mobility of the laptop.

To be fair, this feature always felt..rickety. But it was very nice.

You can still use remote desktop for accessing remote VMs.

You would be missing the remote power operations.

FWIW, I am working on a product called Vimarun [0] that is aimed to replace most of that missing functionality over time.

No remote power operations yet, but that will come.

[0] https://vimarun.com

I'd also be missing the ability to plug in USB devices, which is very central to the work I do. RDP has some device passover support, but it's not even close to being able to replace vmware's USB support.

You are talking about redirecting USB via workstation as well? eg. connecting USB devices remotely to your VM? (asking as normal USB pass-through doesn't work for a shared VM, see [0])

I hadn't even considered that. Connecting USB devices remotely works well with vSphere, but never tried that with Workstation. They are going to completely removing the hostd engine from VMware Workstation. That would indeed also include that part and it is most likely not easy to get that working without hostd.

[0] http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2005585

Qemu/Spice

Not a bad suggestion, but the host running the VM would have to run Linux in that case, not Windows.