Moving virtual machine to an M1

[sakopp]

I have a 2016 MacBook Pro at work with an Intel i7 processor running macOS Monterey (12.6.2). I use VMWare Fusion 12.2.4 with a virtual machine running Windows 10.

I also have a 2021 MacBook Pro with an Apple M1 Pro also running macOS Monterey (12.6.2).

I downloaded and installed VMware Fusion Public Tech Preview 22H2 on the new MBP hoping I could just copy my virtual machine from one MBP to the other and have it just work. Most of you are rolling your eyes at this point and as you would expect it gives me the error message, “This virtual machine cannot be powered on because it requires the X86 machine architecture…”

Now, I’m not up to date on the differences between ARM-based Apple Silicon and Intel x86 technologies and all the advances that have been made over the years. That’s not where my expertise lies. So can someone “dumb it down” for me and give me a sorta top level understanding of why it doesn’t work to just copy the vm over like that? Also, does this mean I am going to have to reinstall Windows and the apps I use in Windows? Am I right that there will be no shortcut for that?

Thank you very much for your patience with my question and your help.

[Technogeezer · Accepted solution]

Since the release of Fusion 13 the Tech Preview should be considered obsolete. There is no need to use it any longer. 

Simply stated, an Apple Silicon chip is not an Intel chip. The two are totally different and don’t execute the same hardware instructions. Apple Silicon can not run an operating system (either on bare metal or under a virtualization product like Fusion) that needs an Intel chip. That’s why you can’t move a virtual machine from you Intel Mac and expect it to work.

The only reason applications built for Intel Macs can run on Apple Silicon Macs is because Apple built a translator - Rosetta 2. Rosetta was not built to support running Intel virtual machines because that’s a much harder problem to solve with acceptable performance  

You will need to install Windows 11 ARM (the Windows version that runs on Windows ARM PCs like some Surface models) under Fusion on an Apple Silicon Mac, and reinstall all of your application - and see if they will run on Microsoft’s Intel translator built into Windows 11 (similar to Rosetta 2 on macOS).

You may wish to review the following two documents that help explain the situation and what your options are:

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Fusion-Documents/Running-Fusion-on-an-Intel-Mac-and-upgradi...

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Fusion-Documents/The-Unofficial-Fusion-13-for-Apple-Silicon...

[ColoradoMarmot]

Short answer, is you're right, you can't just copy it over.  Here's why.

Intel is like gasoline and ARM (M1/M2) is like diesel.  Both run vehicles, but they're completely different engines for completely different fuels.  Specifically Intel and ARM have completely different languages and instructions.

While there are technologies (QEMU) that let you emulate intel instructions on an ARM chip, the analogy there is that one is in english and the other in spanish - but you can only translate them by going through morse code in the middle.  That's really slow and cumbersome, to the point where the virtual machine is unusable.

The good news is that Windows 11 has an emulator inside of it that lets you run most (but not all) windows programs written for intel on a Windows ARM machine - and the performance there is pretty darn good (heavy graphics games, machine learning, or other code that really needs direct hardware access are the exceptions).  The only things that flat out don't work, are programs that don't run on Windows 11 (which is basically ones that don't run on Windows 10).

The bad news it that Windows 11 support is sort of meh at this point in Fusion.  It's good enough to get it to work, but it's missing big things like shared folders, and copy/paste between the host and guest.  Not insurmountable, but annoying.  We do expect to get much better support next year.

Technogeezer has written an excellent guide on creating a new Windows 11 VM - it's pinned in the documents section for the Fusion forum.  Highly recommended to follow it.  If at all possible, get an ISO from uuddump rather than the pre-made virtual machine, as the former won't expire.

The Intel to M1 transition is what I call a 'breaking change'.  There's a lot of things that you have to leave behind.  In my case, I dropped a lot of old windows programs and invested in new mac ones to simplify life.  Ironically though, I'm about ready to dump Banktivity for the Mac and use Quicken for windows because of constant issues and problems with it.  The mac version of quicken is really substandard, so that'd be one new thing I would put in windows.  In other words, Fusion works well enough (except those exceptions) that I don't hesitate to leverage is just as I did before...just on a new VM.

Make sense?

[sakopp]

Thank you both to Technogeezer and dlhotka. That helps a lot!

I have 2 main uses for my VM:

1. Adobe FrameMaker - which I'm guessing could be a problem in Windows 11. It seems like it's the unwanted step-child in the Adobe suite that they're hoping will go away on its own.
2. Solidworks - I'm hoping this is up to date. It's pretty slow on my current machine. I'm convinced that's because our paranoid corporate IT security constantly has updates going on in the background.

This helps me understand how to move forward.

[ColoradoMarmot]

So can't speak to Framemaker, but I'd expect solidworks to run on Windows 11, but be really really slow right now since there's no 3d acceleration for windows guests yet.