VMware Fusion: VMware lays off developers

[throAU]

Curious...

Aside from the price, what are the primary differences between Parallels and VirtualBox - stability, functionality?

The GUI on virtual box sucks. It works, but it's just clunky and confusing.

I have heard quite a lot of bugs in various versions of VirtualBox with regards to VM corruption. But in terms of functionality.. swings and roundabouts. Virtual box can actually do live migration of VMs from one machine to another, like vMotion in VMware ESX(i)/vSphere. Which is cool.

If you're looking to abandon Fusion, I'd suggest checking out VirtualBox and see how it works for you. It's free, got nothing to lose...



edit:
Oh, and hyperV isn't exactly free. It requires either Windows server, or the PRO versions of Windows 8 onwards.

 

[S.B.G]

Oh, and hyperV isn't exactly free. It requires either Windows server, or the PRO versions of Windows 8 onwards.

I just built a few VM's in Hyper-V yesterday for the first time (Win10 Pro).

Do you know if Hyper-V can create a VM from a working machine over a network?

 

[throAU]

I just built a few VM's in Hyper-V yesterday for the first time (Win10 Pro).

Do you know if Hyper-V can create a VM from a working machine over a network?

I don't believe so. VMware has or used to have a cold-clone disc you could burn to import a shut down machine, and can also do it "live" (at least from within vSphere i think? its been so long since i've dealt with physical servers). So you could maybe do that and then convert, but yeah, hyperV i don't think so.


But i could be wrong, last time i used HyperV was in Server 2008 R2, and not really extensively.

 

[S.B.G]

I don't believe so. VMware has or used to have a cold-clone disc you could burn to import a shut down machine, and can also do it "live" (at least from within vSphere i think? its been so long since i've dealt with physical servers). So you could maybe do that and then convert, but yeah, hyperV i don't think so.


But i could be wrong, last time i used HyperV was in Server 2008 R2, and not really extensively.

Thanks. I do use vSphere and have done live clones with it, which is very nice when you can't afford downtime for upgrades. I was curious about Hyper-V since I've never used it until yesterday.

 

[370zulu]

I'm considering trying out Parallel's, but I see mixed reviews. Some reviews talk about the upgrade pricing and required freqency. Seems that this is similar to VMware's model for Fusion. Generally speaking, is that so?

 

[D.T.]

I'm considering trying out Parallel's, but I see mixed reviews. Some reviews talk about the upgrade pricing and required freqency. Seems that this is similar to VMware's model for Fusion. Generally speaking, is that so?

A couple of us already commented on this, but to cover it again

Parallels has been supporting two major OS X versions per PD version. So for example, I upgraded to PD10 when Yosemite was released, I'm still on PD10 using El Cap. I mean, they continue to market "All new features" in PD11, but it's not needed for compatibility. The updates are $49, so that (thus far) has covered you for 2 years, so ~$25/year. I've also managed to score it with a promo for $39, and it's sometimes bundled meaning it's x % of the bundle, or you can sell some of the bundle off (reducing the price).

I've been using it since PD6, with a VM image that was transferred from an old HP, for several years, and recently used my original Win 7 Pro to a get free Win10/64 Pro upgrade/license, that's now running in a new VM, I'm also running multiple Server VMs.

Mine has been nearly flawless, and none of the issues were ever catastrophic, it mounts a drive so it's handy to access from OS X, I can D&D between machines, I use it for development (VS2010/2013, SQL, Oracle), and usually have a machine running concurrent to everything I have going on (email, safari, iTunes, term windows, messages, a bunch of background procs/services/servers).

FWIW, my server VMs were dev ISOs I simply downloaded, ran a conversion against (utility supplied by Parallels), and launched the VM directly, very handy.

My original preference for Parallels was due to the speed and the Coherence mode that allows you to run Windows windows "in" OS X (vs. in a self-contained VM window).

 

[in Cider]

This news is blowing my mind... I know the datacenter products are where the real bread is at, but the workstation/fusion product lines have such a strong install base.

 

[maflynn]

This news is blowing my mind... I know the datacenter products are where the real bread is at, but the workstation/fusion product lines have such a strong install base.

Maybe with the sale to Dell may be causing this move. Dell if you remember is trying to buy EMC, and EMC owns 80 percent of Vmware.

 

[throAU]

This news is blowing my mind... I know the datacenter products are where the real bread is at, but the workstation/fusion product lines have such a strong install base.

Yeah, it's a bit crap.

Low scale/low end virtualisation these days is commoditised now though. There are plenty of free hypervisors out there, the money is in the management tools and the virtualisation of the whole stack (virtual networking, virtual storage).

I guess they decided there's no money in consumer stuff, which is a shame. It was nice to have common platform VMs between the cluster, OSX, Linux and Windows.

 

[in Cider]

Yeah, it's a bit crap.

Low scale/low end virtualisation these days is commoditised now though. There are plenty of free hypervisors out there, the money is in the management tools and the virtualisation of the whole stack (virtual networking, virtual storage).

I guess they decided there's no money in consumer stuff, which is a shame. It was nice to have common platform VMs between the cluster, OSX, Linux and Windows.

Agreed, its harder to make it profitable for sure, especially with their overhead/bulk. Still completely unexpected and sad to see them kill off the product that launched them.
[doublepost=1454697297][/doublepost]

Maybe with the sale to Dell may be causing this move. Dell if you remember is trying to buy EMC, and EMC owns 80 percent of Vmware.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense now that you mention it.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

Curious...

Aside from the price, what are the primary differences between Parallels and VirtualBox - stability, functionality?

Last I knew, accelerated graphics support was a major distinction between them with VirtualBox being nowhere near either Parallels or Fusion in capability.

I just posted elsewhere a preference for Fusion over Parallels. I hope it does not go away but my use for it isn't anything terribly important really so I guess I'll just see what happens like everyone else. I have been wanting to have a look at what's new in the Linux world as it has been a very long time since I ran Linux for work related purposes, a very long time. So just geeking around checking out all the newness would be fun for me and I'm guessing VirtualBox would work well for this. I should try it and see.

 

[Gjwilly]

Does anyone else think VMWare might be doing this because they see Apple putting an end to this type of software?
Apple seems to have become unfriendly toward 3rd party kernel modules and now that there is virtualization support built into OSx and VMWare competitor products approved in the App Store do you think VMWare might just be seeing the writing on the wall?

 

[maflynn]

Does anyone else think VMWare might be doing this because they see Apple putting an end to this type of software?

No because its been mentioned in this thread that its the entire team, which also produces the Workstation product, so this not only affects Fusion, but Vmware Workstation.

 

[chrfr]

Does anyone else think VMWare might be doing this because they see Apple putting an end to this type of software?

No. EMC is trying to streamline itself so that it can be bought by Dell.
What could Apple possibly have to gain by killing off 3rd party software? Apple makes a lot of money off the Mac ecosystem as it exists today.

 

[dyn]

Virtualisation is even part of the EULA since Lion (as of Lion the EULA allows you to virtualise OS X on an Apple computer). This is purely a decision made by management to make the company (=EMC) more attractive to Dell. Dell is only interested in the storage products (thus EMC) and not the virtualisation stuff (=VMware). VMware is not 100% owned by EMC, they only have the majority, IIRC it was about 80% of the shares. I don't think VMware is easy to sell due to the current virtualisation market (very competitive). Microsoft could buy them but they may not be allowed to. The same applies to Citrix. Other companies are not big enough or have no interest for virtualisation (again, too much competition). The only really interesting VMware products is the enterprise stuff which is about everything but Fusion, Workstation and Player.