Yes, you're right; I wasn't very clear in my description. What I was referring to was the vSphere client which I use to manage my clusters and vm's, which is run from my Windows 8.1 PC at work.
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VMware Launches Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro With Windows 10, OS X El Capitan and Cortana Support
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http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&
externalId=1003661
"ESXi 5.1 will install and run only on servers with 64-bit x86 CPUs."
externalId=1003661
"ESXi 5.1 will install and run only on servers with 64-bit x86 CPUs."
VMware supports various non-Windows operating systems too. Actually, if you want to virtualise anything that isn't Windows you should opt for a product from VMware as they have the best non-Windows support. ESXi on a Mac will also support OS X vm's (it is officially supported by VMware).
The same way as on non-Apple hardware. It just has to be on VMware's HCL for that particular ESXi version. That's the main thing with ESXi: if it is on the HCL then it'll work, if it is not then there maybe is some sort of driver for it by someone on the internet which could be broken with any patch or other kind of update or even upgrade you install. Or simply put: if not on HCL then it doesn't work.
You'd need Workstation for that. Does it really matter? Nope because about 90+ % of the code in ESXi, Workstation, Player and Fusion are the same. That's why the changelogs of their products are so unbelievable similar.
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Yup. Warning new users -- you will be paying for bug fixes packaged and sold as the next major version. I was flabbergasted at the lack of updates to fix major VMWare Fusion 5 issues, and finally an update was available. I was so excited, only to find out that they were calling the update 6 and wanted me to pay up again.
I'm all for developers getting paid for major releases -- but I don't like VMWare's track record with Fusion and won't be a returning customer.
Hardware Compatibility List. Just a list of hardware that is officially supported. In case of ESXi it is rather important as it can be really picky about the hardware it runs on. If you the hardware isn't on the HCL the installer can even refuse to run.Now, HCL, I'm not familiar with that, what is it?
There's no need for Workstation to use ESXi– you can connect to VMs on there with Fusion Pro, and there are more management features which I haven't explored in Fusion Pro 8. There's also a new HTML5 management GUI that'll work in Safari, but it isn't an official patch at this point. I'm hoping it'll be an official release some time soon:
http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2015/08/new-html5-embedded-host-client-for-esxi.html
It wasn't about connecting to VMs hosted on an ESXi host, it was about vSphere running on Windows. The only VMware products that run on Windows or Linux are Workstation Player and Pro. Fusion is a Mac only product and thus only runs on OS X.
Both Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro are able to connect to an ESXi host and interact with the VMs on it which can be very useful. You can also upload and download VMs (make sure they are shutdown and then simply drag 'n drop). For full management of ESXi you need to use the good old C# client (which only runs in Windows) or vCenter (either the C# client or the web interface which is painfully sloooooowwwwwwwww). The functionality in Workstation/Fusion Pro doesn't replace the vSphere clients.
The HTML5 web interface is a Fling (look at it as a 3rd party extension as we've come to know from Firefox, Chrome, Safari) and at the moment requires you to have vCenter. Luckily their aim is to support all the vSphere versions including the free hypervisor only version (aka ESXi). This web interface aims to be a replacement for the current slow and buggy vCenter web interface. Hords of VMware admins around the globe will celebrate as if there is no tomorrow the moment they make that happen. The vCenter one is that bad.
Cash to burn? I am self-employed. The yearly cost of either product is way less than I make in a single hour. Both products are assumed to be integrated better with OS X compared to VirtualBox, which is cross platform. I have both Parallels and VirtualBox on my Mac mini, by the way, and work most of the time in a Linux VM running in Parallels, which seriously outperforms my previous devbox (bare metal), a Dell Vostro 200ST. I consider the Mac mini the best computer I've ever had for running Linux.
In that case you probably don't understand what either product does. It allows to run various OSes at the same time as OS X. I run sometimes several VMs on both Paralles and VirtualBox and it works great. When you run your VMs full screen you can 4-finger swipe between VMs and the host OS. It's super convenient if you are a developer like me.
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It's either 300GB or 310GB. On the surface, it may sound like a lot, but as I said, the first time i uploaded my 190GB photo collection to iCloud, I knew I would be in trouble. Then my new MacBook arrived and everything had to then sync back down! Not to mentioned trying to watch Netflix and HBO Now. And I'm just one user in my household. We're not doing anything out of the ordinary but some months have to pay dearly for it. It's crazy considering some Comcast markets don't have a cap. It's pure greed. I know there are some out there that may be taking advantage, but I'm not one of them, but feel like I'm being punished. That's why I can't wait to FIRE them as soon as Google Fiber arrives. I can't get AT&T in my neighborhood yet...
Support for DirectX 10?!?!? Holy Cow Batman! That means you will be able to run almost non-existent DirectX 10 games made exclusively for Windows VISTA!!!! Oh boy!!!
How about adding support for DirectX 11.x (i.e. Windows7 and Window8) where most of the gaming improvements are. Meanwhile, they add support for Windows 10, but no DirectX 12 support means even if you have the hardware for it, you won't get any benefit from it now or in the future until this is rectified unless you use Boot Camp. Of course, Parallels 11 seems to have the exact same problem. That doesn't stop either of them from charging out the wazoo on every little update, though. You're better off just using Boot Camp, except that of course Apple keeps removing support for older Windows versions (i.e. it would be nice to have them all available as needed or desired. The one cool thing about VMWare Fusion is the ability to not only run XP for games, but Win98 and even Win3.1 or Dos if you want. I have a couple of games that only run right on Win98 and seeing my Win98 Retail has not been in use for some time, I used it to run a Virtual version and games like Leisure Suit Larry Love For Sail run properly once again. It even sees my Blu-Ray USB3 drive as a CD-Rom drive in Win98).
But there's no possibility of playing something like Pinball Arcade with DirectX11 through either of these (i.e. Pinball Arcade has a Mac version, but the lighting effects are vastly inferior to the Windows DirectX9 version for reasons unknown; they look like daylight compared to the Windows versions semi-dark room. There's also a DirectX11 mode it can run in and the tables are then "dark room" versions with really big lighting effects. My 2012 Mini is DirectX11 capable, but I'd have to boot into Windows 7/8/10 to use it. The makers of Pinball Arcade indicate the Mac version is based on the iOS version and thus has few improvements, but the lighting effects I see are just a matter of Contrast/Brightness issues VS DirectX9 (the DX11 effects are something different; although theoretically Metal would allow them if they supported it). Sadly, it's hard to get any fixes /adjustments for the Mac as they consider it such a tiny market compared to others. The ONLY reason the Mac got a version before Windows was that it was simple for them to convert the iOS version. The Windows version came later, but it's visually improved and closer to the PS3/4 & XBox versions. But even running Pinball Arcade in VMWare Fusion with XP with DirectX9 results in relatively slow performance (i.e. my 2008 MBP running XP in Boot Camp runs full speed with no slow-downs with Pinball Arcade, but my 2012 Quad-i7 runs fine in OSX, but VMWare is definitely dragging it down in XP. I haven't wanted to buy Win7 or 8 with 10 coming out, but I can't get Windows 10 either until I update OSX to Yosemite or El Capitain as Boot Camp for Mavericks is depreciated. I have had zero interest in Yosemite so that's a problem, but Metal in El Capitain might be enough to get me to update next month at which I could finally play this game with DirectX 11 mode in Windows 10 at least. All of this just begs OS X to get better gaming support. I hope Metal works out for it in the long run.
The gist is that until Parallels and/or VMWare support DirectX 11 and/or 12, they are going to be near useless for anything but running really old games in outdated versions of the OS (e.g. WinXP and Win98). They're probably fine for business software and the like. You'll need Boot Camp to do any serious modern gaming in Windows.
How about adding support for DirectX 11.x (i.e. Windows7 and Window8) where most of the gaming improvements are. Meanwhile, they add support for Windows 10, but no DirectX 12 support means even if you have the hardware for it, you won't get any benefit from it now or in the future until this is rectified unless you use Boot Camp. Of course, Parallels 11 seems to have the exact same problem. That doesn't stop either of them from charging out the wazoo on every little update, though. You're better off just using Boot Camp, except that of course Apple keeps removing support for older Windows versions (i.e. it would be nice to have them all available as needed or desired. The one cool thing about VMWare Fusion is the ability to not only run XP for games, but Win98 and even Win3.1 or Dos if you want. I have a couple of games that only run right on Win98 and seeing my Win98 Retail has not been in use for some time, I used it to run a Virtual version and games like Leisure Suit Larry Love For Sail run properly once again. It even sees my Blu-Ray USB3 drive as a CD-Rom drive in Win98).
But there's no possibility of playing something like Pinball Arcade with DirectX11 through either of these (i.e. Pinball Arcade has a Mac version, but the lighting effects are vastly inferior to the Windows DirectX9 version for reasons unknown; they look like daylight compared to the Windows versions semi-dark room. There's also a DirectX11 mode it can run in and the tables are then "dark room" versions with really big lighting effects. My 2012 Mini is DirectX11 capable, but I'd have to boot into Windows 7/8/10 to use it. The makers of Pinball Arcade indicate the Mac version is based on the iOS version and thus has few improvements, but the lighting effects I see are just a matter of Contrast/Brightness issues VS DirectX9 (the DX11 effects are something different; although theoretically Metal would allow them if they supported it). Sadly, it's hard to get any fixes /adjustments for the Mac as they consider it such a tiny market compared to others. The ONLY reason the Mac got a version before Windows was that it was simple for them to convert the iOS version. The Windows version came later, but it's visually improved and closer to the PS3/4 & XBox versions. But even running Pinball Arcade in VMWare Fusion with XP with DirectX9 results in relatively slow performance (i.e. my 2008 MBP running XP in Boot Camp runs full speed with no slow-downs with Pinball Arcade, but my 2012 Quad-i7 runs fine in OSX, but VMWare is definitely dragging it down in XP. I haven't wanted to buy Win7 or 8 with 10 coming out, but I can't get Windows 10 either until I update OSX to Yosemite or El Capitain as Boot Camp for Mavericks is depreciated. I have had zero interest in Yosemite so that's a problem, but Metal in El Capitain might be enough to get me to update next month at which I could finally play this game with DirectX 11 mode in Windows 10 at least. All of this just begs OS X to get better gaming support. I hope Metal works out for it in the long run.
The gist is that until Parallels and/or VMWare support DirectX 11 and/or 12, they are going to be near useless for anything but running really old games in outdated versions of the OS (e.g. WinXP and Win98). They're probably fine for business software and the like. You'll need Boot Camp to do any serious modern gaming in Windows.
The dual boot worked just fine for Windows 7 retail versions which can be activated against more than one machine to allow moving to new hardware, something OEM limits. If you had OEM, you needed two Windows licenses. Hardware usually ships with the OEM licensing, so that probably explains some of those problems you read about. There was a bit of finagling for saving and restoring Winclone images with both activations intact. The vmware service has to be running to save/swap between the two.
VMware has acknowledged this bug when using Windows 10 dual boot clients. I was asking if this bug with dual boot Windows 10 clients and activation swapping has been addressed in the Fusion 8 update.
Support for DirectX 10?!?!? Holy Cow Batman! That means you will be able to run almost non-existent DirectX 10 games made exclusively for Windows VISTA!!!! Oh boy!!!
Has it occurred to you that not everyone uses this for gaming?
Exactly. You can't do any of that.
You need to install Windows 8.1 in your desired virtualization setup, and upgrade to Windows 10 thenceforth. As I said, they provide a generic key; in fact, what happens in the upgrade is that Windows registers your machine's hardware in their servers during the upgrade, nothing else. So if you change the VM, you're changing the hardware, thus rendering your Windows copy useless.
It just happened to me by the way. I did exactly what you described and ended up getting a new key.
Maybe Microsoft treats enterprise customer's privacy more than personal privacy.
Too bad to see Windows 10 Enterprise is only available through Volume Licensing. Enterprise version is the closest version compare to previous Windows 7 Ultimate.
By the way, I use group policy to completely disable Windows Update on my machine, which is likely not possible on Home version of Windows 10.
El Capitan is not official, right? They are supporting beta software? Or another update for official release support?
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Has it occurred to you that you don't need to reply if you don't have an issue with it?
Personally, I try not to use Windows for anything BUT gaming if I can help it.
Warning to anyone who uses an Nvidia web driver card: 3D acceleration setting in Fusion 8.0 causes hard crashes. Disable 3D acceleration for now.
I don't use my virtualization for gaming, but when I do I use Windows 10 streaming my xbox one games, works perfect.
I know it's not technically running the game, but we still like it.
Did you use the upgrade pricing for Parallels customers?
What did you pay?
They say they give a 40% discount if you switch from Parallels but 40% off of what?
The regular price is $79.99 but on the Parallels upgrade page they post a price comparison to Parallels and on there they show $69.99.
So is the upgrade $79.99 x .6 or is it $69.99 x .6?
Or is it something else entirely?