How to migrate from Mojave with Fusion 11.5.6 to Big Sur with Fusion 12?

[Mickey63]

Hello,

I'm new to this community and I'm trying to figure out the best way to migrate from Mac OS Mojave with VMware Fusion 11.5.6 to Mac OS Big Sur with VMware Fusion 12.

What's the problem?
My current plan is to skip Mac OS Catalina completely and migrate Mac OS Mojave to Mac OS Big Sur on my iMac 5K 2019, which is perfectly supported by Apple.
But: Fusion 11.5.6 is not supported on Big Sur and Fusion 12 not on Mojave...

Do I have to completely uninstall (how?) Fusion 11.5.6 on Mojave prior to migrating to Big Sur to avoid any Mac OS migration problems (kernel extensions!) due to the fact, that Fusion 11.5.6 is not supported on Big Sur?
Unfortunately updating to Fusion 12 on Mojave prior to migrating to Big Sur isn't an option, because this isn't supported by VMware.

Yes, I could migrate with Fusion 11.5.6 installed from Mojave to Mac OS Catalina first, where Fusion 11.5.6 is supported.
Running Catalina, I could update Fusion 11.5.6 to Fusion 12.
Then I could migrate Catalina to Big Sur.

But as I said, I would like to skip Catalina completely...
Any ideas how to do this best without any harm to Mac OS and/or my Fusion installation?

Thanks in advance,

Michael

[wila]

Hello Michael,

I would perform the following steps.

Shut down all your virtual machines (not suspend, actually shut them down)
If there's snapshots open, you might want to commit those snapshots, unless you really need those, it is best/easiest to not have snapshots.

Shutdown VMware Fusion, drag it to the bin if you like.

Make a copy of all your VMs to an external disk (you can go to where your VMs are stored and copy the whole VM bundle to the external disk). This step is not absolutely required, but is strongly recommended, so that in case of problems during the upgrade you always have your VMs. Please do _not_ depend on Time Machine for virtual machine backups!

Upgrade to Big Sur

Install VMware Fusion 12

Open your VMs in VMware Fusion 12.

That's about it.

Hope this helps,
--
Wil

[Mickey63]

Hello Wil,

that's straight forward as I would have done it normally...
...but I didn't dare to do so.

This means that I don't have to care about VMware Fusion files in the following locations:
/Library/Application Support
/Library/Preferences
~/Library/Application Support
~/Library/Preferences
~/Library/Caches

Thank you very much!!

Michael

[wila]

Hi Michael,

That's correct, don't worry about any of those files.

One more note.
When you open the VM's in Fusion 12 and it asks you the question "Did you copy or move the VM" then always answer "move".
If you answer "copy" then the VM's will get new hardware identifiers and for an operating system such as Microsoft Windows that automatically means that you have to re-activate your Windows with Microsoft.
If you answer "move" then VMware Fusion will keep your existing hardware ID's and Windows activation should not complain.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

--
Wil

[Mickey63]

Hi Wil,

thank you very much for your support!

Best regards,

Michael