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VMware Fusion 3 to Launch October 27th
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re: viruses
Yes, when you run Windows inside Fusion or Parallels, it's still Windows, so is subject to all of the same risks of spyware and viruses as usual. On the plus side though, if it does get a virus infection, it can't spread to the rest of OS X. It will only affect the Windows installation running inside the emulator.
But sure, if you only launch Windows from Fusion for burning DVDs, I don't see why it would get infected with anything in the first place? You typically have to install software from an unknown source, or surf Internet sites that install trojan horse viruses to get infected.
Yes, when you run Windows inside Fusion or Parallels, it's still Windows, so is subject to all of the same risks of spyware and viruses as usual. On the plus side though, if it does get a virus infection, it can't spread to the rest of OS X. It will only affect the Windows installation running inside the emulator.
But sure, if you only launch Windows from Fusion for burning DVDs, I don't see why it would get infected with anything in the first place? You typically have to install software from an unknown source, or surf Internet sites that install trojan horse viruses to get infected.
Obligatory comment:
Parallels, Fusion, and VirtualBox virtualize a real machine. They do not emulate. Big difference in terms of the technology and definitely speed.
Virtualization allows the guest OS to make use of the physical hardware. Emulation sets up a fake environment for the Guest OS and tricks it into believing it's running on a different architecture or something along those lines.
Thank you very much for your response. I never knew how that worked. Looks like I will give it a shot. Thanks again.
It's OK, not really impressed to much.
I'm sorry but what's the point of having every OS on there? Especially Vista it's not registering in my mind why you have that.
Right, but all wrong at the same time....
All of these tools definitely emulate a different physical machine than the actual hardware - they are all emulators.
Since the host and guest are both x64 (or x86) based, the emulator only has to emulate the virtual hardware - it does not have to do ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) emulation.
VMMs (virtual machine monitors, or "hypervisors" in some implementations) are definitely emulators - the guest OS sees an emulated hardware environment that does not match the physical machine.
For example, my PC has an "Intel PRO/1000 PT Quad Port LP Server Adapter" and a "Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller" - but the VMs on my PC see "Intel(R) PRO/1000 MT Network Connection" NICs and "VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter" NICs - neither of which exist on my PC.
How can the guests see devices that don't exist, unless the VMM is emulating hardware? There's certainly a "fake environment" going on - there's certainly emulation going on.
Don't let the narrow definition of "ISA emulation" blind you to the fact that "virtualization" is by definition "emulation". Even if the virtual machines look exactly the same to the guest as a physical machine - there's emulation going on in that you have more virtual machines than you have physical machines.
All of these tools definitely emulate a different physical machine than the actual hardware - they are all emulators.
Since the host and guest are both x64 (or x86) based, the emulator only has to emulate the virtual hardware - it does not have to do ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) emulation.
VMMs (virtual machine monitors, or "hypervisors" in some implementations) are definitely emulators - the guest OS sees an emulated hardware environment that does not match the physical machine.
For example, my PC has an "Intel PRO/1000 PT Quad Port LP Server Adapter" and a "Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller" - but the VMs on my PC see "Intel(R) PRO/1000 MT Network Connection" NICs and "VMware Accelerated AMD PCNet Adapter" NICs - neither of which exist on my PC.
How can the guests see devices that don't exist, unless the VMM is emulating hardware? There's certainly a "fake environment" going on - there's certainly emulation going on.
Don't let the narrow definition of "ISA emulation" blind you to the fact that "virtualization" is by definition "emulation". Even if the virtual machines look exactly the same to the guest as a physical machine - there's emulation going on in that you have more virtual machines than you have physical machines.
Point taken. I guess my point was these modern applications behave in a different manner than old-school choices like VirtualPC.
More to the point, only Apple users from the bygone PowerPC era (sorry HyperZBoy) associate ISA emulation with virtualization/emulation.
The VMware/Hyper-V/Zone/IBM VMMs have always emulated hardware, but never needed to do full ISA emulation. (Note that the x86/x64 VMMs do have to do partial ISA emulation - a guest OS can't issue most kernel-only instructions. Those have to be trapped and emulated.)
The vast majority of people using VMs have never dealt with ISA emulation - so the "it's not an emulator" argument never comes up unless someone in the group is an old-school Apple user.
What's wrong with Vista? I never has a problem with it, but then again I'm not trying to run it on seven year old hardware with 256MB of memory. Aero works on Vista and not on Windows 7 in Fusion 3, go figure.
Using your BC partition in Fusion also means you can't suspend the VM to disk.
That's odd.
I dug one of my old Pentium 4 PCs out of the attic a few weeks ago, and just for s**ts and giggles, installed the Win7 RC on it. I wasn't expecting Aero to run and it didn't. Performance was better than expected on 1.5 GiB of RAM, but it nevertheless still had the clunky feel of an old PC.
Aero Experience is a little slow right now in VMWare 3.0 Beta
It is slow on my MacBook Pro 2.8 Ghz. The Graphics performance for Aero is 2.9 on the Index.
Here are my index ratings:
Processor: 6.2
Memory: 4.5
Graphics: 2.9
Gaming graphics: 3.6
Primary Hard Disk (my SSD): 5.9
In my opinion, it is not worth the performance hit at this point. Windows 7 still looks good without Aero. Version 3.0 runs more smoothly and reliably than 2.05 did for my on my mac. I'll definitely upgrade at the end of the month.
Bryan
It is slow on my MacBook Pro 2.8 Ghz. The Graphics performance for Aero is 2.9 on the Index.
Here are my index ratings:
Processor: 6.2
Memory: 4.5
Graphics: 2.9
Gaming graphics: 3.6
Primary Hard Disk (my SSD): 5.9
In my opinion, it is not worth the performance hit at this point. Windows 7 still looks good without Aero. Version 3.0 runs more smoothly and reliably than 2.05 did for my on my mac. I'll definitely upgrade at the end of the month.
Bryan
ATI drivers were broken by Apple and they fixed it in the 10.5.8 or 10.5.9 update. If you run the latest version with the latest 10.6 or 10.5 it will run just fine with 3D graphics.
Fusion can use multiple usb devices at the same time but I don't know the maximum number. Most of my stuff is usb2.0 but some is usb1.1 and it doesn't seem to have any problems with that since the very first Fusion beta's 2 years ago. You can even add a floppy drive or a serial or parallel port if you need it (actually it uses the floppy drive itself when you use the easy install option, as well as a second optical drive). You don't need Fusion 3 for that, Fusion 2 is already able to do those things. I know there are several users that report Fusion does a better job at usb than Parallels does.
Some people have a job in the IT business and need to have a lot of different operating systems or machines to test stuff or run certain pieces of software. Some people use it for their own purposes because it's their hobby. Vm's are much easier than physical machines because you can put them on your laptop and carry them everywhere you go, you can copy them back and forth on your ESXi machine if you have one, they are easier to setup, no need for boot camp, no need for dual boot, etc.
That's not true. Since VT-x and VT-d the virtualisation software can allow the vm to access the hardware directly (VT-x is cpu only, VT-d is cpu and I/O only). The vm will detect the same cpu as OS X will. VT-x and VT-d are requirements if you want to run 64 bit vm's. The entire purpose of technologies such as VT-x and VT-d is to allow vm's direct access to the hardware. This increases performance since there is no emulation, there is nothing between the hardware and the vm. VT-x can be found in the Core 2 Duo cpu's Apple uses and VT-d can only be found in the Nehalem cpu's Apple uses (meaning the ones in the Mac Pro and Xserve).
The part about hypervisors is wrong as well. There are 2 kind of hypervisors: one that runs on top of an OS like Windows, Linux, etc. such as VMware Server and the other one are the bare metal hypervisors which run directly on the hardware (ESX(i) is a good example of that).
I suggest you read some wikipedia articles, the articles about VT-x/VT-d and hypervisors are really good to get an idea of what virtualisation is. Your information is very outdated. Virtualisation is something different than emulation though they seem to be the same. The main difference: emulation can be done with any platform on any platform, you can't do that with virtualisation, whatever you want to virtualise can only be done on the same platform. So ppc on x86 is emulation, virtualisation is x86 on x86. Yes, I did explain that a bit too simplistic
That would be correct as opposed to what AidenShaw said. VirtualPC allowed one to run x86 virtual machines on a PowerPC Mac. You can't do that using virtualisation, you need emulation for that. Since Macs are x86 nowadays there is no need to emulate any more so we have virtualisation (different kinds of virtualisation even).
The first thing Fusion does when you use a boot camp drive is turn it into a vm as any other vm so it also uses a disk image as every other vm does. When you're done it should remove that image. The problem with using boot camp in a virtualisation product would be the difference in hardware. Windows does not like it and will bug you with activating your Windows copy. Boot camp and vm is not something that goes well together if you use Windows. Only use it if you really need it/want it. There are some guides on the net that will tell you what to do to avoid those pesky activation screens and run boot camp/vm the best way possible.
I suggest that you read the references from the Intel System Programming Guides, rather than the brief, often misleading, paraphrases on Wikipedia.
Look on page Vol. 3 27-11, where it says:
VT-x does *not* eliminate the need for the VMM/hypervisor to emulate privileged instructions, it just gives a simpler way for the VMM/hypervisor to trap these instructions (without VT-x, "binary translation" is required).
Even with VT-x, some instructions have to be emulated.
Let go of the old-school Apple PowerPC notion that "emulation" means only full ISA emulation.
Even if the VM sees "exactly" the same environment as the host OS - there's clearly emulation going on. The host OS thinks it has a PC. The guest OS thinks it has a PC. Since there's only one PC, yet two systems see a unique PC - clearly one of them is looking at an emulated PC. Start 4 more VMs - now you have one PC, and 6 systems thinking that they have unique PCs. Some emulation's happening here.
Personally, I think that you're better off going with what AidenShaw said....
I suggest that you read the references from the Intel System Programming Guides, rather than the brief, often misleading, paraphrases on Wikipedia.
Look on page Vol. 3 27-11, where it says:
VT-x does *not* eliminate the need for the VMM/hypervisor to emulate privileged instructions, it just gives a simpler way for the VMM/hypervisor to trap these instructions (without VT-x, "binary translation" is required).
Even with VT-x, some instructions have to be emulated.
Let go of the old-school Apple PowerPC notion that "emulation" means only full ISA emulation.
Even if the VM sees "exactly" the same environment as the host OS - there's clearly emulation going on. The host OS thinks it has a PC. The guest OS thinks it has a PC. Since there's only one PC, yet two systems see a unique PC - clearly one of them is looking at an emulated PC. Start 4 more VMs - now you have one PC, and 6 systems thinking that they have unique PCs. Some emulation's happening here.
Personally, I think that you're better off going with what AidenShaw said....
Agree. Hypervisors still need to emulate some privileged instructions which could not run in ring 1. The open source KVM hypervisor in Linux kernel does that. I haven't read the VirtualBox source code, but it should be doing the same thing.
Wow - that's IGPish enough for me. That's a decent step forward in my book... And that's the lowest of any reply.
From what I've been told from a vmware expert, adding an additional processor to a VM usually causes degredation of performance on desktop machines. Unless you have a quad or octo core Mac Pro (or beefy ESX server), stay away from it.
Here is how I understand it: On a dual core processor, running a vm that thinks it has two processors, vmware has to wait for both processors to become available before it can process a task. Because you have other things running (like the OS and its core services), you're constantly waiting for the rare time when both processors are available.
You should only enable a second processor if you have plenty of cores to spare, like on a 4-core or 8-core (dual quad core CPU) Mac Pro. Even then though, it might not be any faster.
The vmware engine itself is very good at moving tasks from one CPU to another to take advantage of available CPU time, so you're still making use of both cores even if the guest VM is not aware of them.