Virtualization: VMware Fusion v2 Hands-On Impressions

This blog post references my cover story ‘Virtualization: Silicon And Software Salvation Or Technological Tower Of Babel?‘ in EDN’s October 3, 2008 edition. It’s one of a series of web addendums to the print writeup.

Two weeks back, I gave you a sneak preview of my experiences with the ‘gold’ release of VMware’s Fusion v2, an upgrade to the v1.1.3 that formed the foundation of my recent hands-on cover story. As the screenshots showed, v2 makes welcomed reductions in the average processing ‘load’ it puts on my MacBook, evident both in increased battery life and in less (and less audible) use of the system fan.

I also appreciate the application redundancy-eliminating leverage of cross-O/S link assignments, new to v2. Right now, for example, I’ve got all ‘http:’ links set to go to Firefox v3.0.3 in the native OS X (as a result, I can’t remember the last time I launched Firefox in Windows; I’m about ready to uninstall it), while all ‘mailto:’ links launch email sessions in the virtualized Microsoft Outlook 2000. Fusion v2 also enables you to define cross-platform application assignments for common file types (TXT, JPG, etc.), but I haven’t (yet) turned on this particular feature.

Unfortunately, although the Fusion v2 beta documentation implied that adding support for my MacBooks built-in iSight camera and infrared and Bluetooth transceivers in virtualized operating systems would be more straightforward in Fusion v2, this ended up not being the case. As with v1, and as documented in my article, you again need to extract the necessary Boot Camp v2 drivers off an OS 10.5 disc. And this non-intiutive process still leaves you out-of-date with the latest Boot Camp v2.1 updates (for which standalone drivers are not available). VMware’s product marketing rep, Peter Kazanjy, explains that the drivers are Apple IP and his company hasn’t received permission to redistribute them.

The on-site upgrade that I did a few weeks ago with Kazanjy was quick and uneventful. As part of the process, my virtual machine’s hardware profile was auto-updated as well; if I ever wanted to go back to Fusion v1, or for that matter to move the VM to an older version of VMware’s Player, Workstation or Server products, I’d need to downgrade again. I was a bit disconcerted when I started getting S.M.A.R.T. spin-up errors as soon as I returned to Truckee, but my workaround seems to have done the trick.

I’m still not absolutely convinced that Fusion v2 caused the S.M.A.R.T. issue, although the timing seemed mighty coincidental…my Google research suggests that some HDDs exhibit extended spin-up latencies during their early break-in periods. VMware was unable to replicate my problem, but then again, those doing the debugging used different computers (MacBook Pro and iMac), a different operating system version (OS 10.5) and different hard drives (Fujitsu 2.5" and WD 3.5"), so their results aren’t statistically significant. Apparently, my VMware contacts were asleep in high school class when the scientific method was explained…

Also, as my article predicted, VMware v2 taps into whatever video decoding hardware acceleration resources are present in the system’s GPU, leveraging the CPU via software (as before) for the remainder. With my humble first-generation MacBook chipset’s integrated graphics, that means hardware assists with most of the standard- and high-def MPEG-2 decode pipeline, with a portion of the WMV (aka VC-1) chain, and with nothing else. Newer GPUs and graphics cores embrace MPEG-4 (including the H.264 flavour), of course…but none of today’s silicon offerings are unfortunately able to substantively offload the CPU with On2-native or On2-based Flash content.

Another excellent Fusion v2 addition has to do with VM backups (’snapshots’ in VMware terminology), a concept of which I’m now not only a conceptual advocate but also a real-life apostle. In Fusion v1, you were only able to have one snapshot stored at a time. Fusion v2 expands that snapshot count to, I believe, an unlimited number (practically restricted, of course, by the spare space available on your HDD). Plus, you can even set up Fusion to periodically auto-generate snapshots for you. You still should do regular backups to external storage to comprehend the eventuality of a HDD crash, but auto-archive of your VM will save your rump in case your VM catches a virus (speaking of which, VMware bundles an optional 12-month free subscription to McAfee VirusScan Plus) or a software install causes it to go wonky.

Here’s one final note that, although it might seem like a bit of a nit, I thought was a nice touch. Fusion v2 greatly expands the keyboard and mouse shortcut flexibility initially offered in v1. As a result, for example, I was able to natively assign a Windows-compatible forward-delete function to the number pad’s ENTER key in Fusion instead of continuing to rely on a third-party utility (AutoHotKey) for this capability. Similarly, I was able to map Apple’s copy, cut and paste (respectively CMD+c, CMD+x and CMD+v) keystroke combinations so that they also work in Windows (Windows’ conventional ctrl+ keystroke combos continue to work, too). This added capability is a timesaver when frequently switching back and forth between native and virtualized operating systems, and it’s one of several Fusion v2 enhancements that make the OS X-vs-Windows threshold more seamless than in the Fusion v1 past.