Yes, they are beta channel release IPs, ever since the release of 19041.1 there was no watermark anymore. Atm, only dev channel releases and standalone fe_release server 2022 have watermark and expiration date.
Some VMware drivers are offered by WU now even ahead of their official release in esxi. They may be released in Workstation, but in such a case should not be offered in esxi. It happens on server installations too. Better to ignore and install only with the VMware official package, unless keen to test...
I get the VMWare INC system and driver updates offered since a few months when installing any Windows OS on workstation pro, normal and optional.
more and more drivers are offered by Windows Update since summer 2020, when device manager lost his great "update driver online" now is fully automated and mandatory but sometimes install wrong drivers for occasional webcam, wireless, audio, and some old amd gpu ... ms seems like break old good functionnality
There are no new release preview ISOs of 19041, the current Beta Channel release is 19043.867: https://forums.mydigitallife.net/th...2-21h1-vb_release.80763/page-333#post-1650658
Do you have the VMware tools already installed when the VMware drivers are offered? I experience the same issue on ESXi with the VMware tools already installed. However, what comes on WU is a higher version which is not available (yet) on normal VMware channels. In general, one of the future ESXi patches will come with the newer version of the drivers. It is unusual that Microsoft has higher drivers versions though compared to what the manufacturer provides. To a certain degree, this started with another hypervisor XenServer, which is currently open source but the main contributor is the previous brand owner, Citrix.
Please someone shed some light on the following Subversion .631 (as in 19041/2.631) was released in February, .508 was released in January and the one for March is .867, right?
1904x.508 was released in September 2020 (and was the first release of 20H2 as MVS ISO) 1904x.631 was released in November 2020. 1904x.867 was released in March 2021.