Bridging a virtual machine connection to OS X

[tjusafa14]

Hello again macrumors!*

I just got my first Mac, a retina MacBook Pro and a have a few odd questions that I need some help with. I go to a military academy and the network there is not Mac friendly at all. I have an issued Fujitsu T730 laptop that has windows 7 and all of the engineering software and programs I use for classes. Just for some background for my questions, the way the network works is that to access school websites, email and military sites I have to use a smart card with a chip in it that us read with an express card reader built into my Fujitsu laptop that reads the certificates off my card and I authenticate them with a pin number. In our academic building, to access the wireless network I have to have my smart card inserted and then I am asked for my pin to authenticate and connect to the network.*

I hope to get windows and my programs installed on my MacBook pro via bootcamp so I can ditch the Fujitsu laptop and it can be done through my computer help desk, they will do everything for me. So my questions pertain to the network connection so I can run Mac and windows side by side at the same time via parallels or VMWare Fusion

1. How much should I partition for bootcamp? I will need to install a lot of security, and programs such as Matlab, Mathematica, and MathCAD on windows. I have the 256GB RMBP.*
2. Should I get Parallels or Fusion. Does one of them allow more options for networking.*

3. This is the biggest issue for me of all. If I'm running my bootcamp install of windows 7 under a virtual machine inside OS X I have been told I can't use the virtual machine to connect to the school network. But if I am able to connect in my virtual machine to the network, is there any way to share the internet connection with my non-virtualized OS X? Like bridge the connection from my windows 7 virtual machine to my OS X.*

Thanks for any help!

 

[tillsbury]

Don't know about virtualisation, would imagine not as the Bootcamp OS is completely isolated when you're running OSX. But maybe.

One thing to remember, though, is that OSX has full read-write access to the bootcamp partition as a separate drive. Windows 7 in bootcamp, however, can only read the OSX drive not write to it. Thus you might want to make a bigger Bootcamp partition than you first thought, and store most things on it, even data that you actually use in OSX. In effect, make your 'main' computer the bootcamp drive and leave the OSX partition just big enough to boot and run OSX.

 

[greggcasey]

Don't know about virtualisation, would imagine not as the Bootcamp OS is completely isolated when you're running OSX. But maybe.

One thing to remember, though, is that OSX has full read-write access to the bootcamp partition as a separate drive. Windows 7 in bootcamp, however, can only read the OSX drive not write to it. Thus you might want to make a bigger Bootcamp partition than you first thought, and store most things on it, even data that you actually use in OSX. In effect, make your 'main' computer the bootcamp drive and leave the OSX partition just big enough to boot and run OSX.

Actually this is not true. VMWare gives you full control over this. You can grant access to Windows or any other operating system to any folder/directory you like. Just go to the VMWare menu option "Virtual Machine/Sharing/Sharing Settings". See the attached screen shot.

I hope this helps.