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VMware Fusion

Score7.7 out of 10

74 Reviews and Ratings

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What is VMware Fusion?

Vmware Fusion is a virtual user session software built to run Windows applications on Macintosh to run any Windows applications.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about VMware Fusion.
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VMware Fusion pro, a viable desktop hypervisor for macOS

Incentivized
Matteo BisiView profile
DevSecOps Engineer in Information Technology at SIGHUP (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

VMware Fusion is used to virtualize Windows environment where needed. It's doing is job very well, the vm are stable, fast and reliable. The software has quite often updates that increment the reliability and addresses the security issue. During last period VMware Fusion pro has been switched free for personal use so most of my collegues also use it at home, this is good because increment the knowledge and confidence about the sw.

Pros

  • Virtualize OS
  • Stable
  • Secure
  • reliable

Cons

  • it could be slow in graphical operation compared to competitor
  • it could lack in macOS integration compared to competitor
  • the prices for business use could be better

Return on Investment

  • positive: fully compatible with windows and linux
  • negative: it needs to be payed
  • positive: it's frequently used for business and personal use so it's well known by the users

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Oracle VM VirtualBox and Parallels Desktop for Mac

Other Software Used

Brave, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Tabby

An excellent fusion of great virtualization features, high performance, and pricing that fits the bill for almost everyone.

Incentivized
Shion Song
Art Director & Web Developer in Marketing at shion.ca (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

VMware Fusion is used in a multitude of development scenarios including spinning up Linux servers for early-stage development before the code is pushed to an internet-facing dev server for clients to see. It allows easy maintenance of different VM images to test different application environments easily and safely. It is also a great "lab rat" to test code against bleeding edge versions of PHP and popular web apps. Fusion is also used to run Windows-only business-related applications on the intel mac platform, thereby eliminating having to reboot or run maintain multiple physical hardware. While the Mac software library has grown, Windows counterparts from the same developer are often still better so Fusion helps eliminates this shortfall.

Pros

  • The option for a perpetual license makes it a cost-effective option for occasional-use scenarios.
  • Features like "Unity" are well implemented to make windows applications appear as if they were native macOS apps.
  • Support for external USB devices (especially audio) runs more stable than Parallels.
  • Snapshots are helpful in quickly returning to a previous state if a setting or application causes issues.
  • The low power footprint makes it a great option for laptops on battery power. (Idle power consumption of the VM is negligible when measured at the wall using a Kill-A-watt).

Cons

  • Configuring a boot camp install to run inside macOS via VMware fusion can be tricky to configure and sometimes leads to license/activation issues depending on the application.
  • Some apps become sluggish/do not behave well when running the VM in "Unity" mode.
  • Fusion lags behind its competitors in terms of graphics API support.
  • Although early at this time, lack of M1 support is an area of concern for the future.

Most Important Features

  • Perpetual licensing option as our use-case is mostly occasional. We can upgrade on our own terms as needed.
  • VM performance.

Return on Investment

  • Eliminated the need to maintain separate windows hardware as well as multiple OSes for testing.
  • Saved a lot of hours needing to configure VM instances to serve specific needs (e.g. can create an image and use it as an image template for similar projects going forward).

Alternatives Considered

Parallels Desktop and Oracle VM VirtualBox

Other Software Used

Parallels Desktop

Usability

If you need to run Windows apps on a Mac, VMware Fusion is great!

Incentivized
Jim ChandlerView profile
Founder in Professional Services at 360intentionality, LLC (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • Runs a full version of Windows on a Mac, allowing access to both environments.
  • Gives an immersive Windows experience when running the app in full screen. It is like having two computers in one.
  • Allows for copying and pasting from one environment to another, which is very handy.

Cons

  • It is very rare for this to happen, but sometimes the Windows environment loses the internet connection while the Mac environment still has it. Rebooting the Windows environment in VMware Fusion fixes it.
  • It does not always recognize printers that are set up through the Mac, particularly if they are connected via WiFi instead of hardwired.

Return on Investment

  • This had a positive impact because I did not have to purchase an additional computer (Windows PC) just to run a couple of Windows-only apps.
  • This is a time-saver because it is easy to switch back and forth between the Windows and Mac environments on one computer.

Other Software Used

Zoom, Microsoft Office 365, Evernote, Dropbox, Google Drive, Calendly, Zapier

Switch Between Software Development Environments With Ease

Incentivized
Jonah DempcyView profile
Web & Mobile Developer in Engineering at Bluefire Productions (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • Running isolated software development environments. Setting up environment variables and installing the right software versions for a given project can be time consuming and fragile. By doing all of this within a virtual disk image, we can easily switch between software environments without risk of breaking anything.
  • Running Windows-only programs on a Mac is invaluable. We use MacBook Pro laptops for our primary development environment. There are simply some programs we cannot run on OS X. Having VMWare Fusion is an invaluable asset for running Windows apps on Mac laptops on the go.

Cons

  • This is not the fault of VMWare Fusion, per se, but the disk images are rather large. Being able to have one parent disk image and then save smaller variants of the disk image with slight changes would be nice.
  • Copying files to and from the disk image and its host machine is a little bit clunky. It would be nice to be able to drag-and-drop files. I have read that this is possible but have not personally been able to get it working, so instead, I just put files in a shared folder. It's not too tricky, and I imagine there is a way to get drag-and-drop working, but it doesn't seem to work right out of the box, at least for me.

Return on Investment

  • VMWare Fusion has had a positive impact insofar as it has mitigated our need to purchase Windows laptops to be able to run Windows applications (as we use MacBook Pro laptops as our primary development environments).
  • It has also saved countless hours in environment configuration by allowing us to configure an environment once in a virtual machine and then save it as a disk image.

Alternatives Considered

GitHub, Bitbucket, Parallels Desktop and Oracle VM VirtualBox

Other Software Used

Parallels Desktop, Oracle VM VirtualBox, GitHub, Bitbucket

An excellent high performing product that makes desktop virtualization simple and cost effective

Incentivized
Stefan SemoView profile
Director of IT Infrastructure, Security & Compliance and Customer Service in Information Technology at Success Academy Charter Schools (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

  • Accelerates Windows applications on Mac very smoothly.
  • Great options for VM management down to CPU cores and host RAM utilization.
  • Very easy to update/upgrade with just a click of the mouse.

Cons

  • Video Acceleration could be improved.
  • More features can be added for integration to the host OS, such as to send email to VM client.
  • Smoother coherence.

Return on Investment

  • Being less expensive than the competition, it has enabled us to deploy more computers for our students
  • It has reduced the effort to manage and update that our IT staff have to exert to keep the systems up-to-date
  • It has provided our students with a great learning environment that is flexible and allows for fine control of resource utilization

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Parallels Desktop

Other Software Used

Parallels Desktop, VMware ESXi, VMware Horizon (formerly VMware View)