Feature Articles

VMware Fusion - A Virtualization Trip

By Vincent Chang - 27 Aug 2007

Installation and Setup

Installation and Setup

Our first foray into virtualization on the Mac started with an entry level MacBook with a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, onboard graphics from Intel and 1GB of DDR2 memory. No doubt, such modest specifications will not find favor among power users but among casual users, it's a reasonable system and we wanted to see if the common tasks we take for granted on any computer, like playing videos, surfing the Internet and office productivity applications will run as usual using VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop
. Since our focus today is on the recently released VMware Fusion, here's the system requirements needed to run it:

  • An Intel-based Mac (to run 64-bit operating systems, an Intel Mac with a Core 2 Duo or Xeon processor is required)
  • 512MB of RAM (1 GB or more recommended)
  • 275MB free disk space for VMware Fusion
  • 1GB free disk space for each virtual machine (10 GB or more recommended)
  • Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or later

VMware's website has a list of the guest operating systems (Fusion supports 32-bit and 64-bit versions) that are supported by VMware Fusion. These include many flavors of Linux and Windows and we recommend that you check out this list here. Despite what you may be thinking, running Mac OS X as a virtual machine is not possible, due to the licensing of Mac OS X.

Not forgetting that the most common method of running Windows on Mac hardware is with Boot Camp, we first installed the Boot Camp, partitioning our hard drive to fit the Windows operating system. Next, we installed a full retail version of VMware Fusion provided by the company and a trial copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac. For users keen to try these virtualization software, you should know that trial versions of both are available for download from their respective websites. Nothing beats hands-on experience, not even a ton of screenshots.

After installing VMware Fusion, it automatically detected our existing Boot Camp partition. Other options here include creating a new virtual machine and installing another OS, downloading a virtual machine (VM) through VMware's virtual appliance section on its website (basically downloading someone else's VM) or running the existing VM, in this case the Boot Camp partition. Meanwhile, the settings allow you to configure the VM, like allocating the amount of system RAM to give it and whether multi-CPU support is present.

Similarly, Parallels Desktop also detected our Boot Camp partition automatically while the configuration settings are practically identical to those we saw on VMware Fusion.

As you can see, both virtualization software automatically located our Boot Camp partition and we could load this partition easily without rebooting, unlike Boot Camp. The configuration settings for both are similar, pertaining to how much memory to assign to the Windows OS on Boot Camp. Here's a look at some of the settings on VMware Fusion:

Here's where you specify how much RAM to assign to the VM. Having too much for the VM could leave your Mac OS X struggling so be wary of that. We tried giving the maximum allowed to our Windows OS and it ended up very laggy in both the guest and host OS. We strongly recommend having ample memory, like 2GB or more if possible.

3D graphics acceleration is supported in VMware Fusion, though this is 'experimental' and only DirectX 8.1. Also, an important note is that when Unity is enabled, 3D acceleration is not supported. Our MacBook and its Intel onboard GMA 950 graphics failed the requirements for hardware acceleration and hence, no guarantees about the performance.

Most USB 2.0 devices should have no problems being detected by the VM while in Fusion. Bluetooth is also supported, a feature that seems to be lacking in Parallels.

From the VMware virtual library menu, you can choose New and install your operating system of your choice. We went with Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 and the install process is as simple as filling in the form and stating the location of your installation
disc or files.

Installing Windows XP (SP2) is as easy as entering your user name, password and the product key. The installer will handle everything automatically from here.

Some important differences that we found here between VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop:

  • Parallels does not support 64-bit operating systems, so if you have a pretty powerful system, like a Xserve with more than 4GB of system RAM, this will be unfortunate since 32-bit OS will not support all that memory. In contrast, Fusion can use up to 16GB of memory, with up to 8GB for one virtual machine.
  • Apparently, Parallels does not have SMP support for the guest OS, so while it will work on these systems, the virtual machines will run like it's been powered by a single processor. Parallels has said that future revisions may include such support. Meanwhile, this is supported by VMware Fusion and it's an option you can select from the configuration settings.
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