VM Fusion on an external drive?

[cookie]

can i put windows partitions for VMWare Fusion on an external USB2 drive? i looked on their site and can't seem to find the answer.

would USB2 be too slow, and would it be any good using a firewire drive?

TIA

ps. if it does work, can you move that drive between macs, or will you run into windows activation issues?

 

[Darkstar]

In fact I do this very thing.

Because VMWare runs a file (or series of) to specify the machine parameters and HDD location (the HDD is infact a file), you can run it from a usb HDD or even a flash key.

You shouldn't run into any activation problems as windows only detects the VMWare supplied environment and therefore thinks its the same machine even if it's run on a different mac.

One thing to watch however is the licensing issue. Because windows doesn't complain about activation, doesn't mean some of the things you can do are legal. Copying the VM and running concurrently on two macs is most likely against the licensing agreement (unless you have a valid VLK for your company). Likewise, using the media & code supplied with a pc (OEM) would not be legal as OEM software should live and die with the machine it was purchased with.

Hope that helps!

Steve

 

[cookie]

so you could install xp or vista on a big 16/32GB flash drive.

hmmm, that's a great idea


obviously i would never impinge on an M$ EULA by installing windows on more than one machine.


perish the thought

 

[Darkstar]

I would never imply that a user would perform such an act.. but it would be remiss of me not to point it out

 

[Slowdown]

I run all my VMWare development on external USB2 drives. XP machines generally run with 200MB of RAM and about 2GB of file space. Obviously, the more you run on a virtual machine the more RAM and file space you need.

Currently, I've 2 windows web servers, a windows SQL database server, an XP session and a Linux router running in 2GB RAM - for development/training it's perfect! All on an external 250MB USB2 drive.

VMWare 6 is much better at paging virtual machine RAM out. The above setup ran like a dog in VMWare4, but you don't really notice the paging in 6

 

[Darkstar]

Fusion on the Mac runs very well full stop.. can't wait for their next version..

I have a 4gb host machine (macbook) and it flys!

 

[silvermog]

I use a firewire drive with all my VM images on ... and rotate the single one in use for the actual weeks training onto my hard-drive (not for performance but for convenience).
Never had any problems I can relate to this aspect ...

I don't use USB drives, preferring firewire generally (historic cases really) as the system impact is lower for high utilisation, *but* I als have a few VM images loaded onto some fast USB sticks for mucking about with.

For instance, I keep a MicroXP instance (stripped out WinXP) with the Garmin utilities and MpaSource installed, it means I can program the GPS from any of my machines and some family machines, without worrying about an external drive.

My experience is that you want a fast stick ... been delighted with the 8Mb Corsair Flash Voyagers I bought for this.

BTW, if you copy the VM image back and fore, VMware Fusion is bright enough to sort out any issues, popping up a dialog to sort it at boot!

Have fun

 

[cookie]

i've read about not using AV on these VMs, just trashing the installs and restoring from an image if any virus probs occur.

is that a good strategy?

 

[cookie]

I run all my VMWare development on external USB2 drives. XP machines generally run with 200MB of RAM and about 2GB of file space. Obviously, the more you run on a virtual machine the more RAM and file space you need.

Currently, I've 2 windows web servers, a windows SQL database server, an XP session and a Linux router running in 2GB RAM - for development/training it's perfect! All on an external 250MB USB2 drive.

VMWare 6 is much better at paging virtual machine RAM out. The above setup ran like a dog in VMWare4, but you don't really notice the paging in 6

got Vista running on a USB flash drive. need a big drive though, especially after updating: 8GBish as installed, updates add a lot even without SP1. 10.5GB with mapsource

XP is far more manageable at under 2GB, but rising to nearly 4GB with SP3