To Lion and Fusion 4

[Paulv45]

Looking around it seems like if I want to upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion I also really need to go from Fusion 3.1.3 to 4.x.

Am I thinking correctly?

If so, do I go from Fusion 3.1.3 to 4.x first and then Snow Leopard to Lion or do I go to Lion first.

Here's what I am thinking.

1.  Backup system.

2.  Upgrade Fusion 3.1.3 to 4.x.

3.  Make sure system is stable.

4.  Backup system.

5.  Upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion.

I'm a newbie at both of these updates so am a bit nervous.

Questions:

(A)  Is there a better process?

(B)  Is Backup via Time Machine sufficient or do I need to do special backups for virtual machines?

(C)  Should virtual machines make it seamlessly through this process and run fine when done?

(D)  Have a 4 GByte system.  Am I likely to be happy or sad when I am done?

Any thoughts appreciated.

Thanks.

Paul

[wila]

Hello,

Sounds like a very plausible way of going forward.

Some side notes.

Looking around it seems like if I want to upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion I also really need to go from Fusion 3.1.3 to 4.x.

Am I thinking correctly?

Actually you can stick with Fusion 3.1.3 as it is reported to run just fine. see also this knowledge base article: http://kb.vmware.com/2003715

(B)  Is Backup via Time Machine sufficient or do I need to do special backups for virtual machines?

Umm.. no. Time Machine is about the worst method to backup your virtual machines and the VMware Fusion claim that you can use it with Fusion 4.0 by employing automatic snapshots is absolute marketing dribble. I stronly advise you to make full copies of your important VM's with the VM's properly shutdown (not suspend) and Fusion closed.

(D)  Have a 4 GByte system.  Am I likely to be happy or sad when I am done?

That's difficult to comment on as it depends on many factors. The thing you can keep in mind though is that both Lion as well as Fusion 4 need more memory and 4 GB is not a lot. If you never run more as a single machine then you might be happy, if you are already memory constrained then you might not be. Without additional information on workload and the type of VM's that you want to run this is impossible to answer.

--

Wil

[Paulv45]

Thanks for your pointers, Wil.

I think I will reverse the order of things and do Lion and then Fusion 4 more likely at some point in the future.

Confirming for the newbie, by "full copies of the important VMs" you mean the xxx.vmwarevm files is that correct?

For the 4 GB issue, appreaciate your comments.  I'm a pretty lightweight user, I think, so will go ahead with the recognition that I may need to upgrade memory if there are major performance issues.

Again, thanks for your brain cycles.

Paul

[wila]

Hello Paul,

You are most welcome.

I think I will reverse the order of things and do Lion and then Fusion 4 more likely at some point in the future.

That should be fine, as you might have read in the knowledge base article I referred to, they actually advice you to do a "fresh" install of Fusion after the upgrade to Lion. So upgrade to Lion, then rerun the install (Fusion 3.1.3). You will get asked if it is OK to uninstall, the uninstall by itself is harmless as in that it will just remove Fusion, but leave your virtual machines alone. Then install Fusion again after the install so that it is made sure that everything is OK.

When you are ready for the upgrade to Fusion 4 and if you do use the shared folder option to share files with your host, then there is a current issue with Fusion 4 and Windows 7 that causes the dock to run into high usage (or your VM to stall with the windows explorer process eating up CPU) There is a workaround for that. But as you mention "will upgrade at some point" .. it might just be resolved by that time.

I'm not sure if everyone sees the issue, but I am seeing similar issues here with Fusion 4 and Snow Leopard where the same work around with disabling the filesystem notification appears to help (I'm still testing the workaround on that part though).

Anyways..

Confirming for the newbie, by "full copies of the important VMs" you mean the xxx.vmwarevm files is that correct?

Exactly

For the 4 GB issue, appreaciate your comments.  I'm a pretty lightweight user, I think, so will go ahead with the recognition that I may need to upgrade memory if there are major performance issues.

For lighweight usage you are most likely fine. I love the 8GB in my MBP, but can't say that I'm a lightweight user :smileysilly:

PS: If you like to tinker around with new operating systems (like the latest linuxes etc..) then you might want to look into upgrading to Fusion 4, also if you want to run Lion as a VM you would need that.

--

Wil

[Paulv45]

Thanks for more brain cycles, Wil.

On further review I discovered my "lightweight" was not quite as light as I thought so have modified the plan to upgrade to 8GB as step 1 and then will proceed from there including the fresh install of 3.1.3 step.  I am using shared folders so will monitor the status of that issue before proceeding to 4.

Paul

[Paulv45]

It took a while, but here's what I actually did in case it helps others.

1. Backup system.

2. Made a separate copy of the VM I was using.

3. Upgrade from 4 GB to 8 GB.

4. Upgrade to Lion.

5. Uninstall Fusion 3.1.3.

6. Installed Fusion 3.0.0 from install disk.

7. When starting Fusion got "we really want you to upgrade" screens and said OK but they wanted to go for 4.x.x at this point and had to do an explicit search on the download page for Fusion 3.1.3 to find it.  During the subsequent install got a crash to "must restart your computer" but it worked after restart.

8. Made sure things still working.

9. Uninstall Fusion 3.1.3 (initially tried to just upgrade without this but, lots of issues)

10. Installed to Fusion 4.1.1.

So far I'm pretty happy.  Like the Snapshots tree in particular.

I likely would not have been happy had I not upgraded to 8 GB.

Anyway, that's my experience.

Paul