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MacsRule
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Fusion 8.5 has been released

The Fusion 8.5 installer has just been released and is available for download. It's a 386 MB file. The Release Notes have also been posted.

It isn't showing up as an update to an existing installation yet.

Update: the update to an existing installation has now been made available using Check for Updates... in the VMware Fusion menu.

11 Replies
wila
Immortal
Immortal

The announcement is here:

http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2016/09/fusion-8-5-available-now.html

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
MacsRule
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

A quick test of Fusion 8.5 requires a VMware Tools update on a Windows VM (specifically Win 😎 as expected, and the update occurs automatically.

However, on OS X VM's including  Snow Leopard, El Capitan, and macOS Sierra GM, the Fusion menu item is Reinstall Tools rather than Update. While the VM's seem to operate properly, the Disk Cleanup command run in terminal is agonizingly slow but seems to be somewhat quicker after I ran the Reinstall option.

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rossco_au
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

In the release notes it states for a known issue:

VMs running on  macOS 10.12 sometimes crash

A VM running on macOS 10.12 might crash when it tries to grab keyboard or mouse input from the host.

Is there more information available about this issue? - Basically trying to find out, before I upgrade to Sierra, if this is likely to happen?  Or is it a rare event?  As I work full time across a number of VMs this would be a major issue for me if was not a rare occurrence.

Thanks

rossco

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MacsRule
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Since users are still having trouble with El Capitan (the lastest Security Update is causing serious trouble for many users), I'm still running Yosemite, which handled the latest Security Update without issue, so I can't speak for how Sierra treats Fusion 8.5.

Consider, however, that having just reached Golden Master, Sierra is still a moving target when it comes to third party software compatibility, including Fusion. And what works now might be broken by the first update of Sierra, so if reliability is more important than having the latest features in Sierra, I'd advise waiting until Sierra matures a bit before upgrading.

AKA, if it works, leave it alone...

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manman13
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

Welcome to VMware Fusion forum.

Actually, this crash issue is a quite rare event in Sierra.

Thx.

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rossco_au
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks to you both for the reply.

@MacsRule - Yep, agreed.  The decision to upgrade is a consideration of risk vs features.  I can always roll back to a backup - was just checking whether that may be likely.

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atakacs
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

FWIW I am pleasantly surprised that this is offered as a free upgrade to all 8 owners - definitely a marked change from previous releases, and a welcome one :smileycool:. I have complained quite a bit in the past not to express my satisfaction this time !

Ink_Global
Contributor
Contributor

Definitely not a rare event for me. My BootCamp VM crashes 2 out of 3 launches. It occurs when Windows 10 Pro is booting, when running Sierra GM#2.

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MacsRule
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Since Fusion 8.5 has been available for a full five days now, has anyone not using pre-release Sierra as the host seen any benefit from upgrading from an earlier version of Fusion 8?

With Yosemite as the host on my test system, everything tested seems to work except for the very slow disk cleanup on OS X guests. But Fusion 8.1 works too and cleans up faster on OS X.

I ask since, as mentioned above, "if it works, leave it alone..."

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rossco_au
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

‌I'm still on El Capitan and have upgraded to 8.5.

Shared folders on Win 10 guests are now much faster.  They were extremely slow until until now.

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MacsRule
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Thanks for the feedback. I don't use Shared folders that often so I just tried transfers using Fusion 8.1 between Win 10 and the 10.10.5 host and they seemed pretty fast so I'll leave it alone, at least for now.

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