VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation

antc · 24 Jun 2015 at 16:29

Hi all,

A question for you knowledgable folk. I have an MBP, running a 2.2 QC i7 chip with 16gb ram and a 500gb ssd.

Now, I realise you can't get Workstation for Apple, but is Fusion just as good? In terms of features and what you can do. I would like ideally to use the above setup for revision/lab purposes for my Microsoft exam studies for 2012 server.

Please let me know your thoughts and experiences.

Deleted member 77746 · 24 Jun 2015 at 18:16

Fusion is fantastic, I use it myself! Will be able to do nearly everything Workstation does!

Feek · 25 Jun 2015 at 07:40

For what you want, you'll probably find that Virtualbox does everything you need and it's free.

antc · 25 Jun 2015 at 13:40

Thanks both for you replies. I shall have a good look at Virtualbox, totally forgotten about that, used it a very long time ago.

shiver · 25 Jun 2015 at 13:45

Virtualbox is good for the basics but can be unstable and restrictive compared to the premium VMware/parallels

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2015 at 13:48

VMWare > Parallels > VirtuaBox.

The latter can be very buggy, Parallels seem to release a new version every few months and charge a lot to upgrade. I've personally found VMWare fusion to be the best of the bunch. I'm still on 6, no need for me to upgrade to 7.

I like the fact I can just drag and drop the virtual machine between my Mac and iMac and it works on both without issue.

antc · 25 Jun 2015 at 13:56

I have Fusion 5 here, not used it in a while, would it be worth upgrading to 7? I see VmWare have a sale on with 25% off at the moment too. And I see the they do a pro version of Fusion now too.

Terminal_Boy · 25 Jun 2015 at 14:07

I'm running Fusion 7.1.2 on a mid 2014 rMBP and it's been flawless so far.

Haven't bothered with Bootcamping a native Windows partition as Windows 8 is required on rMBPs now and I only need Windows 7 for running various telecoms tools.

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2015 at 14:08

antc said:
I have Fusion 5 here, not used it in a while, would it be worth upgrading to 7? I see VmWare have a sale on with 25% off at the moment too. And I see the they do a pro version of Fusion now too.

It's up to you, but do you need any of the new features or not? I use mine to run up Windows once in a blue moon, so for my uses 6 is perfectly adequate. For anything intensive I have an ESXi server at home.

antc · 25 Jun 2015 at 14:45

Terminal_Boy said:
I'm running Fusion 7.1.2 on a mid 2014 rMBP and it's been flawless so far.

Haven't bothered with Bootcamping a native Windows partition as Windows 8 is required on rMBPs now and I only need Windows 7 for running various telecoms tools.

Cheers and good to know! Are you running the normal or pro version?

S2KIP said:
It's up to you, but do you need any of the new features or not? I use mine to run up Windows once in a blue moon, so for my uses 6 is perfectly adequate. For anything intensive I have an ESXi server at home.

Mmm......its a good point. I have a server here (ML110 G6) which I had an old version of ESXI running on. My thought was that I can have a full virtual setup on my MBP that I can take anywhere but also have the server with a bit more grunt if I need to, which I believe in Fusion 7 you can now connect to just fine.

I guess I really need to go and look at the exact differences between Fusion and Fusion Pro.

simbady · 25 Jun 2015 at 15:00

Really depends on what you want to use Fusion for. If your wanting more 'enterprise' type features like connecting to different VMWare server or having a ton of different options for networking. Fusion is nowhere near on par with Workstation. But for just a VMHost it's fine.

Feek · 25 Jun 2015 at 15:34

S2KIP said:
VMWare > Parallels > VirtuaBox.

The latter can be very buggy, Parallels seem to release a new version every few months and charge a lot to upgrade. I've personally found VMWare fusion to be the best of the bunch. I'm still on 6, no need for me to upgrade to 7.

I like the fact I can just drag and drop the virtual machine between my Mac and iMac and it works on both without issue.

It all depends - I use Parallels (they release a new version roughly once a year, certainly not every few months), it's regularly patched and for desktop virtualisation, I've had absolutely no issues whatsoever.

I understand that if you want to VM servers then Fusion has the edge but I don't, so I prefer to use Parallels. I did consider changing to VMWare but I had some issues when I ran a trial and didn't bother trying to resolve them.