Hide VM

[bennoo]

Many of the Virtual Appliances require minimal access to the front end,

and are accessed/configured via a web interface.

It would be great to be able to hide an VM.

I believe this is not possible on Fusion.

I have sent a Feature request to https://www.vmware.com/contact/contactus.html?department=prod_request

Anyone else have any more info?

Thanks.

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

It would be great to be able to hide an VM.

I believe this is not possible on Fusion.

Running a Virtual Machine Headless (no GUI) is possible with VMware Fusion however its never been officially supported via the VMware Fusion GUI and VMware is aware that some users would like it to be supported via the GUI.

To run a Virtual Machine Headless...

1. Run the Virtual Machine normally to make sure everything is configured as needed and in a manner that can be controlled via ssh, VNC or RDP, Web Browser, etc.

2. Shutdown the Virtual Machine a then remove its entry from the Virtual Machine Library and close VMware Fusion.

3. Use vmrun to start the Virtual machine with the nogui parameter. Have a look at: Using <tt>vmrun</tt> to Control Virtual Machines

If you then run VMware Fusion the running Virtual Machine will remain headless since it was removed from the Virtual Machine library. Note that you can drag and drop the target Virtual Machine Package onto the Virtual Machine Library while it's running headless in order to attach it to the GUI however understand that this can cause the Black Screen of Death in that the Virtual Machine Display will be Black and possibly not interactive and will probably stay that way until it is shutdown via the earlier preconfigurations made to control the Virtual Machine while running headless and then closing VMware Fusion and reopening VMware Fusion. Note that this condition does not always occur however it can and does happen so it's imperative that you have a way to preform a controlled shutdown of the Guest OS via ssh or other remote access type methods.

NOTE: While running headless understand that if you shutdown the Mac without first gracefully shutting down or suspending any Virtual Machines running headless (or normally for that matter) you can corrupt them to a point beyond repair so it is imperative that you remain cognizant of this and take appropriate measures to always suspend or shutdown all Virtual Machines running headless or normally before rebooting or shutting down the Mac. Virtual Machines running in headless mode require direct user action and will not suspend automatically like a normal running Virtual Machines when closing VMware Fusion.

[bennoo]

Awesome Thanks

[WoodyZ]

Okay, having given some thought to my previous statement written in bold in my originl reply in the thread I really didn't want to discourage someone from running Virtual Machines headless and while a fair warning was certainly appropriate nonetheless I figured I should also provide information on how to do a controlled shutdown/suspend of the headless Virtual Machine upon a normal reboot/shutdown of the Host, Mac OS X.

Have a look at:

Message was edited by: WoodyZ