Running Workstation in a Virtual Machine using Fusion

[brenko]

It appears that the Fusion product is clearly geared at the consumer market, but the team and multiple snap shot funtionality is essential. That being said, would it be possible on a Mac running fusion, to create a Windows XP virtual Machine and then run Workstation 6 on that? Would it be a "dog" performance wise or could you utilize enough resources to be able to make it worth while?

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

VMware Installers would detect that your trying to install within a Virtual Machine and stop the install.

[brenko]

Thanks

[admin]

You can get around this check with a .vmx option, but nested virtual environments don't work well - for a guest's guest of any appreciable complexity, performance will be poor.

[WoodyZ]

Would the be the option?

monitor_control.disable_reloc = "true"

[admin]

No, I meant

monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "TRUE"
monitor_control.vt32 = "TRUE"

The first one disables the check mechanism that Workstation/Player/Server/etc. use (this also works for other combinations, e.g. Player-on-Workstation or ESX-on-Fusion). The second one tells Fusion to use hardware assist for 32-bit mode (normally we only use it for 64-bit mode) and is necessary for even mediocre performance in the guest's guest.

[WoodyZ]

Thanks Eric. Would VM in VM preform better with 4 or 8 Cores vs 2?

[admin]

Would VM in VM preform better with 4 or 8 Cores vs 2?

I don't think it's any different than normal. You don't really want to run a vSMP guest on a two-core host; running a guest in that guest just increases the load from the host's point of view.

[WoodyZ]

I wasn't refering to a vSMP VM in a vSMP VM on 4/8 cores, just a using a single core VM in a single core VM on a system that had more than 2 cores.