VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2: Almost There But Not Quite

VMware came late to the Mac virtualization game after Parallels Desktop for Mac showed that there's a significant subset of Mac users who need to or want to run another Operating System like Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server, or some Linux distribution. However, when VMware Fusion 1.0 arrived more than a year after Parallels Desktop for Mac, it was received many glowing reviews and became a viable alternative to Parallels.

VMware released the second beta for Fusion 2 last week along with a bunch of new features including better integration between Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows applications. The new Unity 2.0 feature now allows Mac applications to be launched from the virtualized Microsoft Windows as well as launching Windows applications from Mac OS X. The ability to create multiple Windows image snapshots was added along with the ability to automate these snapshots using the AutoProtect feature. Enhancements to the DirectX 9.0 graphics support should provide a better environment for gamers and other Microsoft Windows graphics intensive users. The high-end Mac Pro and Xserve users can benefit from the new support for up to four (4) processors for a single virtual machine (VM).

My main interest in virtualization is to (a) let me run Microsoft Windows XP/Vista and Microsoft Server 2003/2008 and their associated applications and (b) run and test various Linux distributions (CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.). I switch between Parallels Desktop for Mac, VMware Fusion, and, more recently, VirtualBox for this work. So, I wanted to see how Fusion 2 looks (so far) with these kind of Guest OSes.

The Virtual Machine Library is the main area. It shows you the virtual machines you have configured and have resident on your Mac. You might note that the large thumbnail on the right actually shows a snapshot of the Guest OS' current visual state. On the left, you can see that one VM is off, one is in suspended state, and the third is actively running.

The new Fusion 2.0 Settings window looks and feels like the Mac OS X Systems Preferences window. Although it looks nice and more Mac-like, I actually don't like it since it forces me to move the mouse more and increases the number of mouse clicks to see and set multiple settings.

The older settings style, and still used by Parallels Desktop for Mac as seen here, is much faster and easier to use than the Systems Preferences style interface. This is especially important during the first configuration of a newly installed Guest OS where you might want to adjust multiple settings several times before settling on a final configuration.

Windows Server 2008 seemed to work well and was reasonably responsive as a Guest OS with 512MB RAM assigned to it on an Core 2 Duo iMac with 2GB total RAM. Windows Vista Home Edition, however, was very very slow with the same amount of RAM assigned to it. VMware Tools were installed in each Guest OS to improve graphics performance and add the enhanced features. Turning off all of Vista's Glass UI features (Vista Home Basic does not have the 3D Aero features at all), however, produced a reasonably fast Vista environment without adding more RAM to the virtual machine. This was not surprising since I've actually adopted the practice of turning off Windows Vista Glass and Aero Glass on all physical PCs that I've installed Windows Vista on to improve performance.

The Fedora 8 Linux Guest OS that I installed to test VMware Fusion 1.0 last year proved to be much more troublesome that Windows Vista or Windows Server. It looks like X11 Windows with Gnome spontaneously resets relatively frequently. The window blanks, what looks like a frequency adjustment occurs (noisy looking lines on the screen), and then X11/Gnome reappears. I install VMware Tools for Linux from the supplied RPM package. It did not recognize Fedora 8 (which is a one generation behind the current Fedora 9 release) and offered to recompile the tools. I accepted each of the tools compile request and rebooted the system. Fedora 8 behaved even worse after VMware Tools was applied. It now not only spontaneously reset X11/Gnome now and then. It added keyboard bounce to the problems (keys repeating). I ended up restoring the VM from a Time Machine backup rather than looking further into the issue. VMware warns the user that Fusion 2 Beta 2 is just that: A beta release that should not be used for production. And, this appears to be good advice. Microsoft Windows Guest OS support looks pretty good so far (especially for Server 2008). But, Fedora Linux has probems. I did not test Ubuntu 8.02. However, based on the documentation available, it appears to be the main Linux supported and is probably more stable as a Guest OS.

Keeping in mind that this is a beta, I'm looking forward to performing further tests with the public release candidate in the near future.