VMware Fusion Evaluation
Since much of my job involves rolling out Linux solutions I’ve been experimenting with VMware Fusion Beta for the Macintosh in my development environment. Given that the product is still in beta, I have very few complaints about its actual stability. Most of the features work reliably as advertised, but there are some basic points of functionality that I feel the software is lacking. More on that later.
First, let’s take a look at exactly what VMware Fusion is. At its core, the package allows the user to create and run virtual machines on the Macintosh. For those who are new to virtualization, it is a way to run multiple virtual computers on one actual computer. The hardware resources are abstracted and shared to the virtual machines through the virtualization software — in this case VMware Fusion. A complete description on virtualization can be found here.
Previous to Fusion, only VMware player was available to Macintosh users, so it is nice to actually be able to create virtual machines locally. The snapshot feature is also very nice for development purposes since you can instantly roll back to a previous working state should you corrupt the software on the virtual machine.
Perhaps the problem that annoyed me most, however, was the fact that there is no clear way to delete virtual machines from within the software. I actually tried to get rid of one by deleting this folder:
/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/myaccount/Documents/Virtual Machines/Mymachine.vmwarevm
But I just ended up breaking the “Virtual Machine Library” application and having to uninstall and reinstall everything from scratch. The process detailing how to delete a virtual machine did not exist anywhere in the VMware Fusion FAQ or documentation as far as I could tell. Granted, it’s beta software, but I would think this should be a core feature of any virtualization product. At least they provide an “Uninstaller” script.
VMware Fusion is a basic piece of software that succeeds in fulfilling the most fundamental of virtualization requirements. If all you want to do is be able to run a virtual machine or two on your Mac, it will most likely work for you. If you are looking to deploy it as part of an enterprise solution, I would suggest letting the product mature a while and using something like Parallels instead.
Using My New Mac Mini
My new Mac Mini came in yesterday and I just got it all up and running. I had some misgivings about allowing the system to transfer over all my applications and information from the old system, but I went ahead and did it anyhow simply because I seriously doubted I could find all the CD’s for my software. For the most part, the process went smoothly, although I had to do a little cleanup afterwards because a few applications did not work after the migration.
I was also a bit concerned about what kind of performance I would get out of the new Intel processor because many of my applications are older and were compiled on the old PPC chips. This has turned out to be a total non-issue! I got the new Mini fully loaded with a 1.83Ghz Intel Core Duo processor, 2 Gigs of RAM, and a 160 Gig SATA drive, so even the older applications that require the carbon libraries scream right along.
While I would have obviously liked to get the Mac Pro, I am very much enjoying using my new Mini, and feel that I can recommend it fully.
