Upgrading to Mavericks and Fusion 6 - which to do first?

[kgdarch]

I am thinking to upgrade OS X 10.8.5 to Mavericks, and Fusion 5.0.3 to 6 to run Windows 7 SP1 installed on its own partition.

Which should I install first? Mavericks, or Fusion 6? Does it matter?

If I don't want to pay for Fusion 6 upgrade now, will Fusion 5.0.3 run with Mavericks?

[AnoopVmx]

First make sure your virtual machines are shut down , then quit vmware Fusion.

If you have a time machine back up which includes your virtual machine , then you may simply upgrade the Mac OS X 10.8.5 to Mavericks.

I did this way, Fusion 5.0.3 should still work fine. However i ended up upgrading to Fusion 6

[Coach300]

Not to conflict, but I opted to go back to Fusion 5 after trying 6. I did my upgrade to Mavericks first. It may not matter which you do first, but back up the VM.

I got sluggish response in a 2010 MacBook Pro, so I opted to go back to 5 (see my separate thread on how I did this). Your machine may be newer and may run Fusion 6 just fine.

It will take considerable time, but you will want to do a backup of your virtual machine by copying it to an external drive when it is shut down. They suggest excluding it from a Time Machine backup for multiple reasons (of the forefront - T M would do a backup of a running VM while it is open and would be impossible to restore properly unless the most recent backup occurred while the VM Was shut down, plus including it would seriously lengthen the time of a T M backup). Best to simply shut down the VM, then copy it. You would want to have your VM shut down before upgrading Mavericks AND/OR Fusion.

[kgdarch]

By backing up the virtual machine, do you mean the VMWare Fusion app?

[WoodyZ]

AnoopVmx wrote: If you have a time machine back up which includes your virtual machine , then you may simply upgrade the Mac OS X 10.8.5 to Mavericks.

Time Machine is not consider a proper* way to backup Virtual Machines!

* It is a known fact that Time Machine is not 100% reliable backing up/restoring Virtual Machines under all circumstances/conditions.  Also backing up Virtual Machines via Time Machine is disk/time intensive and wastes a tremendous amount of space for something that may be corrupt and worthless come time to restore it.  At a minimum I would exclude Virtual Machines from Time Machine and with the Virtual Machines shutdown, not suspended, and VMware Fusion closed then manually copy the Virtual Machines Package(s) to an alternate location, preferably on to a different physical hard disk.  Then keep the User Data that is stored within the Virtual Machine backed up off of the Virtual Machine on a regular basis so as to always have a current User Data Backup.  If you have to restore a properly backed up Virtual Machine that is not as current at least you'll have a working Virtual Machine and current User Data to go forward with when you find out your Time Machine Backup of the Virtual Machine fails.

Also have a look at: Best Practices for virtual machine backup (programs and data) in VMware Fusion (1013628)

[WoodyZ]

kgdarch wrote: By backing up the virtual machine, do you mean the VMWare Fusion app?

No!   See my reply: Re: Upgrading to Mavericks and Fusion 6 - which to do first?

[kgdarch]

Thank you all for your answers.

My Macbook Pro is partitioned with OSX 10.8.5 running as host to Fusion 5.0.3 in one, and Win7 (and all PC data) on the other.

Boot Camp is also installed.

The OSX and data is backed up with Time Machine on a Time Capsule drive, and the Windows and PC data is backed up with Synology Data Replicator software on a separate external drive.

So my guess from your answers is that I should back up both the Mac and Win partitions, and I can upgrade to Mavericks and still continue to use Fusion 5 and Win 7.

Agree?

[WoodyZ]

kgdarch wrote: So my guess from your answers is that I should back up both the Mac and Win partitions, and I can upgrade to Mavericks and still continue to use Fusion 5 and Win 7.

Agree?

At the present time OS X 10.9 Mavericks is only officially supported as a Guest OS under VMware Fusion 6 and it is the only version officially supported on a OS X 10.9 Mavericks Host.   If you want to use an unsupported version of VMware Fusion under OS X 10.9 Mavericks then you'll need to try for yourself to find out what does and does not work under your use case and whether or not you can live with any issues you might encounter!

My normal paradigm is to not upgrade until at least the 10.x.2 release and before doing so have a current Time Machine backup that never ever under any circumstances whatsoever contains any Virtual Machines!  I also make a separate disk image of the Macintosh HD using one of the following, Dish Utility, Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! and also make a separate disk image of my Home Folder.  All these to external drives.  My Virtual Machines are on a different Volume and external drives and backed up to a Raid Array.  For Boot Camp I use WinClone to image the volume.

I then do a clean install of the OS and install the Apps I want then make a Recover Disk Image and then restore User Data.  I never do in place upgrades and always prefer to do clean installs!   This lets me review ahead of time what software I'm not going to reinstall and get rig of all traces of things I no longer want apart of my current build.

[kgdarch]

Thank you for the clarification and what sounds like experienced advice.

I'm glad I didn't start the upgrade process. Sounds like a good idea to wait for 10.9.2.

[WoodyZ]

I've been running the Developer releases of OS X 10.9 and now the GA GM in Virtual Machines however I'm never in any rush to upgrade the Host system and like to keep a eye on what's being posted to the Internet letting other Users deal with the issues of a new release.    By the time the .2 release is available then much software has be made and tested to be fully compatible thus avoiding any of the pitfalls that happen to the early adopters!   I will do a physical install of the GA GM release on a non production system to check it out natively but my primary MacBook Pro will not see Mavericks until 10.9.2.   I waited to iOS 7.0.3 before upgrading my iPhone and not before downloading the full 6.1.3_10B329_Restore.ipsw file in case I wanted to restore if I didn't like iOS 7.  I'm on the fence with iOS 7, I'll give it another week but at this point I'm leaning on restoring the previous version.