Fusion in MacBook Pro with Big Sur running on M1

[NunoFranca]

Hello

Trying to power up my VM (Windows) in Fusion 12.1 in my MacBook Pro running Big Sur on M1 silicon but I'ma getting

"Failed to power up...."

Any ideas on what might be causing this?

Many thanks

[scott28tt]

Search this forum area for M1, you'll soon discover that Fusion doesn't currently have the ability to power on VMs on a non-Intel CPU.

[NunoFranca]

Hi, 

Thanks for your feedback. Any idea of when Fusion will be able to power on VM from Apple Intel hardware? Or, if there will be a procedure to convert those VMs?

Thanks again!!

[Technogeezer]

From what VMware has posted in a recent blog, Fusion on Apple Silicon will not emulate the Intel architecture. It will allow you to run VMs whose guest operating systems are  ARM architecture. The initial focus will be on Linux ARM guest operating systems. Windows 10 on ARM might be an option in th future should Microsoft decide to release it for sale to other than OEMs. 

VMwae does not comment on ship dates for future software versions. It looks like they might be planning a tech preview but have not said when that will happen. 

Which means that you will not be able to run your existing X86/x86_64 VMs ( Windows, Linux or macOS) on Fusion on Apple Silicon. And Parallels on Apple Silicon won’t either.

Your short term options to run your existing Windows VM are to keep an Intel based Mac or some other Intel-based system that runs a VMware product. 

Others may say switch to Parallels which does run on Apple,Silicon and run the Windows 10 on ARM developers previews. But remember if you do this:

• you would have to create a new VM with a beta version of Windows. Your existing VM will not run.
• you would have to transfer your data and reinstall your application on the new VM. . 
• your existing application would be running in the VM using Microsoft’s x86 to ARM translation that is similar to macOS’s Rosetta 2. That capability is still a work in progress. 
• there is no indication yet that Microsoft will license Windows 10 for ARM to non-OEMs. They could remove the developers preview at any time and leave you with no way to get a licensed, supported operating system.