Instant Getting Started with VMware Fusion

To install Windows 8 in VMware Fusion, you'll need the following:

For this recipe, we start with Windows 7 and then upgrade to Windows 8. We'll take a snapshot before upgrading to Windows 8 so that we can use Windows 7 when we need to.

You can download the Windows 7 "Trial" install image directly from the official Microsoft repository and save it to your Mac's Downloads folder, available at http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59186.iso.

For Windows 8, purchase the download directly from www.microsoftstore.com and access the download and the license key through your Microsoft Store account. It is quick and easy to get access to the download, and we'll do this within the same Windows 7 Trial virtual machine that we're about to create.

Since you should already have Fusion installed, let's get right to it.

Step 1 – installing Windows 7

Follow these steps:

1. The first thing to do is to launch VMware Fusion and create a new virtual machine using the Windows 7 Trial .iso file that we have downloaded from Microsoft, as shown in the following screenshot:

   

   Walking through each of the steps to install Windows is beyond the scope of this book, but you can follow the process using the following resources:

   • Creating a new virtual machine in Fusion from http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1011677

   • Using the step-by-step process on my YouTube channel, available at www.youtube.com/mikeroysoft

2. Choose your Windows 7 .iso file or physical DVD with the Choose a disk or disk image button and choose Windows 7 x64 as the Operating System type. If you use the download link I provided, the filename is X17-59186.iso.

3. Use the Customize Settings option to save the virtual machine and set the CPU and RAM settings before starting the installation. If your Mac has 8 GB or more of RAM and a quad-core CPU, to make Windows 8 perform at its best, I recommend setting the number of Processors to 2 processor cores and setting the RAM to 4096 MB (4 GB ), as shown in the following screenshot. If your Mac has only 4 GB of RAM and a dual core CPU, assign 2048 MB (2 GB) of RAM and 1 processor core to the virtual machine.

   

   The reasoning is simple: give Windows enough resources to do the work it needs to do, but keep enough on the Mac to keep the rest of the computer running smoothly.

4. After you start the virtual machine for the first time, when the Windows 7 installer asks, perform the following steps:

   1. Create your username and password when prompted.

   2. Do not enter a license key. Make sure Automatically activate windows when I'm online is unchecked.

5. Let the installer complete. Once the installer has completed and you have access to the Windows 7 desktop, now is the time to take a snapshot.

6. Take a snapshot or a linked clone. We can later go back to this point in time and switch between using Windows 7 and Windows 8. We'll discuss this in detail in the Much ado about snapshots (Intermediate) recipe. To take a snapshot, simply click on the Snapshots button as shown in the following screenshot:

   

7. Now, click on the Take button, as shown in the following screenshot:

   

Windows 7 is installed, and we now have a snapshot; so, now we can go ahead and upgrade to Windows 8. Ultimately, if we want to use Windows 7, we'll need to license it. If you have a retail license for Windows 7, this is a perfect way to use it. If you have an OEM license (one that came with a PC), it might be better if you convert your existing PC, which is covered in a later recipe, and upgrade that to Windows 8 or 8.1.

We have seen what the Snapshots screen looks like. Taking a snapshot is as easy as a click of a button. Note that to take a linked clone, the virtual machine must be powered off and not suspended.

You can also take a linked clone if you are using Fusion Professional.

Note

Attack of the clones

Clones are a new feature of Fusion 6 Professional, and work just like they do in VMware Workstation or vSphere, for those familiar with these platforms. There are two kinds of clones: linked clones and full clones.

A linked clone is a new virtual machine that uses an existing virtual machine as its "base image", also called a parent. It does not alter the original, but does read from it when it's running, so the original must be in the folder where it was when the linked clone was created. If it goes missing, the linked clone will not be able to start and will ask you to find the parent VM.

A full clone is a complete copy of a virtual machine, and does not require the original to be present. You can choose to preserve settings, such as IP address and MAC address, or have them given new properties at boot.

Clones are effectively treated as completely independent virtual machines; however, linked clones must be able to reach their parent virtual machine in order to work. They do not use the snapshot editor to be managed; however, each clone can even have its own independent snapshot tree using the snapshot editor.

Simply right-click on the virtual machine from the VM Library window and select Create Linked Clone..., as shown in the following screenshot:

The clone shows up in the virtual machine library like any other virtual machine, and can even be running at the same time as its parent VM.

In order to migrate your PC, the PC must be connected to your home network. A wireless connection will take an extremely long time (I've seen days). It's recommended that you use a Gigabit Ethernet connection for both the Mac and the PC. You could also directly connect the Mac and the PC with an Ethernet cable and turn on Internet Sharing on the Mac by navigating to System Preferences | Sharing. This will allow the Mac and the PC to connect with each other without needing a router.

The process is pretty straightforward if you follow the wizard. To get started, make sure both your PC and Fusion are up and running. Both need to be connected to your network or to each other directly. Use Ethernet to connect everything for performance and stability.

The process works because of the agent that was installed in the PC. Aside from just connecting the PC to the Fusion Migration Assistant with the four digit code, the agent copies the PC from the inside while it's running, and places the copy on your local Mac via the network. The fastest network connection would be using Gigabit Ethernet. Using Wi-Fi is not recommended. To compare, Wi-Fi (802.11n) usually pushes around 100-150 Mbps; Gigabit Ethernet, however, can hit 1000 Mbps. Plus, a large transfer like that over Wi-Fi is prone to interruption due to interference. Starting a 40-hour transfer all over again because someone turned the microwave on halfway through is certainly no fun!

The Migration Assistant that comes with Fusion isn't the only way to convert your PC of course! Read on for other options.

Firstly, the VM doesn't have to be running, but it can be. The snapshot feature is powerful enough to work even when the VM is still running, but goes much faster if the virtual machine is powered off or suspended. We can use the snapshot we took when we finished installing Windows 7. If you didn't take a snapshot at that time, you can go ahead and take a new snapshot now by clicking on the Take button from the snapshot window.

Snapshots are best taken when a VM is powered off. It doesn't have to be, but your computer will complete the "Take Snapshot" operation much faster if the VM is powered off or suspended. Both fully powered off and suspended tasks are much faster because the VM isn't in motion when the snapshot is taken, allowing the operation to finish at a single stroke. Otherwise, the way the snapshot mechanism works when a VM is running is that once it finishes, it has to now gather the new data that changed from when the snapshot operation started. So, if it took five minutes to take a snapshot, it then has to gather itself up to date for those five minutes. That might take a minute. After that, it has to go back again to gather that last minute. If that minute takes 20 seconds, it has to then gather those 20 seconds again. This is made worse with the more things you're doing within the virtual machine. So, get it done in one motion by suspending or powering off the VM first.

In Fusion, all of the VM's files, are stored under Documents | Virtual Machines by default. Your C:\ drive in Windows is actually a series of files on the Mac named in sequence, with a .vmdk extension inside the Virtual Machines folder, as shown in the following screenshot. You can view the files by right-clicking on the VM and clicking on Show Package Contents from the Virtual Machines folder in the Finder.

When you create a VM, it starts with one virtual disk (called the base disk). This virtual disk, or VMDK, is broken up into 2 GB "chunks" by default, but it can be one big chunk if desired. So, for a 20 GB disk, you end up with about 10 or 11 .vmdk files. This is for easy transport with drives that don't support large drives (such as MS-DOS/FAT32-formatted drives), and you may also have a performance benefit in certain cases.

When you take a snapshot, the currently active VMDK goes into read-only mode, and a new VMDK is created. All writes go to the new VMDK, and reads happen from the original VMDK when the bits are there. Fusion is smart enough to keep track of what files are where; so, when the VM is running, Fusion is reading all of the snapshots in the current state's chain.

A .vmdk file is thus named <disk_name>-<snapshot_number>-<slice>.vmdk.

So, in my example, Virtual Disk is my disk name. (I could have customized and specified something different by performing a Custom Virtual Machine operation at the beginning.)

I have three disks: Virtual Disk, Virtual Disk-000001, and Virtual Disk-000003. This means I have two snapshots and a base disk. (I took one snapshot and deleted it, which is why there's no Virtual Disk-000002).

Each of those disks are of 60 GB capacity, so there are 31 slices. (s001 to s031). Each file starts around 300 KB and can grow to just over 2 GB. You can see where things can start to get confusing now.

It gets even better when you have snapshots that are based on snapshots. You can have multiple snapshots with a common parent, which introduces a new concept in Fusion, that is, snapshot trees.

Snapshots are also a great way to make sure something new isn't going to destroy your VM. So, if you are about to install some software that might be risky, take a snapshot. It's easy to roll back if something goes wrong.

Snapshots are complicated, but there's great material out there by the gurus behind Fusion itself about how they work on a more technical level.

To protect Your VM, the first thing to do is make sure your Virtual Machines folder is excluded from Time Machine backups. This is done by navigating to System Preferences | Time Machine on your Mac. Click on Options and then on + to add the Virtual Machines folder to be excluded, which is in the Documents folder. Fusion may have already set this for you when it was installing.

This of course means we must manually back up the VM, but that's the whole point. To do this, you'll need an external hard drive with sufficient free space. You can use your Time Machine drive (and indeed, I do), just not the Time Machine application itself.

To protect Your Data, we will use Shared Folders and Mirrored Folders to get your important data out of Windows where it can be safely backed up with Time Machine like the rest of the files on your Mac.

As we discussed earlier, there's Your VM and Your Data. Let's explore how to keep each of those safe independently.

With a backup of Your VM on an external drive and Your Data being backed up safely by Time Machine, you're now in a position to recover from just about any disaster.

In this recipe, we'll go through setting up Printer Sharing, try USB pass-through, and connect to the printer directly from within Windows via the network.

With so many ways to print, let's look at how we can get the job done. Remember that you shouldn't use all of these methods, but pick one that works with your setup and stick with that. Once you're there, you can always switch to a different option, but just don't try to do more than one at a time, as they will conflict.

Option 2 – USB pass-through

Connecting to the printer directly via USB pass-through is essentially the same as plugging the printer directly into a physical Windows PC using a USB cable. Because Windows is virtual in our case, it means that you have to take the USB connection away from the Mac to give it to Windows. This means that you can only have the printer connected to either the Mac or Windows at one time, but not both.

To use USB pass-through, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Printer icon from the bottom of the virtual machine window.

2. Click on Connect <your printer name>.

Or, follow these steps:

1. Click on the menu bar.

2. Go to Virtual Machine | USB.

3. Click on Connect <your printer name>.

However, when you plug the printer in via USB, Fusion will ask you what you want to do with the device. You can tell it to always connect it to Windows if you wish to use this method, and you'll never have to bother with going through that menu to pass it through to Windows from the Mac side again, as shown in the following screenshot:

This action is the same as plugging the printer into a USB port on a Windows PC.

From here, standard Windows printer installation steps apply as directed by the printer manufacturer (installing drivers, software, and so on), as shown in the following screenshot:

Printer Sharing offers a very basic driver to Windows and allows you to print from both Windows and the Mac at the same time without changing any settings, but is limited in its capability.

Connecting directly via USB pass-through is the same as plugging the printer into a Windows PC with a USB cable, providing full functionality of the printer, but you can only connect it to either the Mac or Windows at one time, not both.

Connecting via the network is the best of both worlds if possible, providing both connections to the Mac and the Windows VM at the same time, while delivering full functionality to both.

When I use my virtual machine, it's usually at my office. We have Wi-Fi, and that's fine for most of my tasks, but sometimes I need to do things on the corporate Intranet.

So, because I don't want all of my traffic to go through the corporate Intranet, I can set things up so that Windows uses it, but then set the interfaces on the Mac so that the Mac goes through the Wi-Fi first. Essentially, I now have Windows on Wi-Fi and Mac on Ethernet connecting to the corporate network. So, Internet Explorer can cruise the company SharePoint repositories and check stuff out with MS Word and MS PowerPoint (my favorites!), while Safari on the Mac side is blissfully cruising about the Internet at large.

So, as described, VMware Fusion provides three different types of network adapters. The adapter is what determines which sort of virtual network shows up in Windows.

The options are:

In this recipe, we'll explore the different options and discuss when it's appropriate to use them.

You can always change these settings if something isn't working out with just a few quick clicks.

Option 1 – Internet Sharing/NAT

This is your standard Internet Sharing feature. It creates a virtual router, and that router provides the Windows VM with an IP address. It's exactly the same thing your wireless router at home does with your Mac.

I like to consider it as an Internet splitter as it shares one IP address with many devices. Using this mode, Windows may have issues accessing things that are on the network the Mac is connected to because of Network Address Translation, and if that's the case, you can use the Bridged method, as shown in the following screenshot:

It's best to use NAT/Internet Sharing for general web surfing or Internet connectivity from Windows. If you really need Internet Explorer to browse the Internet, this is how I would do it.

In the following screenshot, using the Mac's Activity Monitor utility, we can see the vmnet-natd process running on the Mac side. This is what gives the Windows VM its "NAT" or "Shared" networking connection.

Option 2 – Bridged Networking

Bridged networking bypasses the NAT feature of Internet Sharing and instead allows you to connect directly through one of the available interfaces. Let's have a look at the following screenshot:

In this screenshot:

1. You can see that I have a Wi-Fi adapter and a Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter on my Mac (however, my Thunderbolt isn't connected right now, hence the red icon).

2. When using this mode, you can either specify a specific network adapter, such as my Thunderbolt Ethernet example I described earlier, or you can simply use Autodetect, which will pick the interface that the Mac is using to connect to the Internet.

3. If you want to make the Mac access one network and Windows another, you must set the Service Order in your Mac system preferences, as shown in the following screenshot:

   

4. Set the option you want the Mac to use to be at the top. In my case, it's my VPN, followed by the Wi-Fi adapter that I want to give to the Mac, and the Thunderbolt Ethernet I'll put lower on the list and give it to Windows, as shown in the following screenshot:

   

5. Bridged Networking is best suited for corporate environments (but sometimes won't work if the network security is really high, in which case you must use NAT), or if you need to communicate with resources on the same network as the Mac (that is, network printers, scanners, other shared Windows systems, file servers, and so on).

6. Like I mentioned earlier, I prefer to get the best of both worlds. In my corporate environment, we have a Wi-Fi and an Ethernet setup, and while the Wi-Fi isn't as locked down, it also isn't connected to the corporate services (the ubiquitous "LAN"). The wired/Ethernet connection is on the LAN; however, its access to the Internet is limited for obvious security reasons.

7. So, as I described earlier, instead I plug a Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter into the Mac. I use Bridge Networking to my Windows VM (which in my case is a different VM provided by the company). I then set the network Service Order to have Wi-Fi at the top, so the Mac uses that first.

8. This way, my Windows machine is on the corporate LAN and I can access all the internal tools with it. (Hooray for SharePoint!) My Mac is on the Wi-Fi network, which has less restricted access to the Internet, so I can do all the research and communications that I need to using my Mac.

This gives me the best of both worlds, delivered through the power of VMware Fusion's advanced networking capabilities.

Option 3 – Private to my Mac in Custom

Custom networking provides the Host Only mode, as shown in the following screenshot, which prevents the Windows VM from connecting to anything but the Mac it's running on.

Custom networking in VMware Fusion Professional has the ability to define custom networks, whereby you can specify the details of the virtual network that Windows is given.

The best time to use Private to my Mac networking is if you must restrict your VM to only access the Mac itself and nothing else, including the Internet.

With the three networking types, VMware Fusion can essentially act as a router or as a switch. A router provides Network Address Translation (NAT), and it can be thought of like a home router that "splits" one Internet connection to multiple computers (via Wi-Fi or Ethernet). Bridged networking turns Fusion into a switch, making it the same as if you had plugged in your Windows computer to the same thing your Mac was plugged into, putting them on the same network layer. Host Only is an isolated network type that is good for testing or when using a virtual machine that needs some networking, but can't be connected to the Internet. This is great if you build websites and want to test them in Windows but don't want to expose that machine to the Internet for security reasons.

In this recipe, we'll walk through connecting the FaceTime camera and an external keyboard to Windows. The keyboard process can be repeated to add a dedicated mouse if you wish; the process is the same, and the modify VMX step only needs to be completed once.

To do this, you'll obviously need an extra USB or Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a Mac with a FaceTime (or the older iSight) camera.

This is a pretty exciting recipe. Here, we'll show you how to have one computer behave completely like two independent computers; the Holy Grail of VMware Fusion's possibilities!

What we're going to do is modify the virtual machine's configuration settings. Thanks to input from the Fusion Support team, we included a quick way to do this that doesn't involve having to dig through Finder to get to the VMX configuration file. You're welcome.

Firstly, make sure your virtual machine is powered off and not suspended! It's important to do this first because TextEdit on Mac as of OS X 10.8 will save your file every time you change anything (you don't need to click on Save anymore), so it's not such a great idea to do this when a VM is actually running! You will likely break it if you do! You have been warned!

Follow these steps:

And voila! Repeat this process for a mouse and you have yourself a whole computer-within-a-computer with an independent keyboard and mouse!

The two main setups for this would look like the following:

The positioning of Windows is just a matter of dragging the Fusion toolbar where you want it and hitting the green button in the upper-left corner to fill the screen.

To call VMware, it's good to have a My VMware account first. If you purchased Fusion directly from VMware, you're good. If you bought a box copy somewhere else, make sure you register your copy of Fusion at my.vmware.com before calling.

The following is a list of basic resources that you can use to help you get set up. These resources are also very handy in case you run into any issues while using the software: