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VM Fusion 5 Installation Question

jtrainor56

jtrainor56

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 23, 2010
122
10
Ephrata, Pennsylvania
I purchased a new iMac 27" with the 3tb Fusion drive. If I connect an external USB 3 drive to the Mac can I install vmware on that external drive? As someone who is new to Mac's I would prefer not to mess with the internal drive if I don't have to, especially since it's work related.

I am in IT and want to be able to setup multiple guests in vmware so that I can not only run Windows 7 & 8 but also run Server 2012 and install Citrix. I already have a Dell server at home but it's an older box and would prefer to use the iMac if possible.

Thanks, Joe
 
K

kohlson

macrumors 68020
Apr 23, 2010
2,425
736
I've run VMware for quite some time, and it works pretty well. But I believe it will be installed, at least to some degree, on the same drive you boot from. For most, this is the drive in the iMac.

You could create a bootable USB drive and install VMware on that instance. Of course, you would miss the thrill of Apple Fusion drive. (Nuts - VMware Fusion and Apple Fusion branding can be confusing.)

If you do create an separately bootable VMware instance, don't forget to figure out a way to back up your data.
 
M

monkeybagel

macrumors 65816
Jul 24, 2011
1,141
61
United States
Are you wanting to move the VMs themselves to the other drive? That would not be a problem. I have run them off of a MyBook hard disk over 1GbE and it works fine that way over the network, too.
 
ChristianVirtual

ChristianVirtual

macrumors 601
May 10, 2010
4,122
282
日本
I would suggest to install Fusion itself on the main disk and run the VM off the external disk. You can even mix and keep some VM on the internal disk and some external.
 
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