transistion from workstation to fusion...Confused and need advice.Please help

[ranjb]

Dear All

I am currently using VMware workstation 7.1 and have tons of VM's created ranging from Linux desktops/servers and windows servers and a windows 7 desktop. Purely used for training purposes and testing things before I roll into production.

My PC is starting to struggle and I have decided that I want to replace it with a Macbook Pro in the future but am worried about all the VM's I have created in Workstation 7.1, I have also created teams and unsure whether this will all work seamlessly in fusion.

From reading other posts and papers on the Internet it seems like fusion isnt as comprehensive as workstation, I also tested the 30 day trial of fusion on a friends Mac book and because I had all my VM's on an external e-sata hard drive I did run into a few problems. I don't think the Mac book pro has connectivity for e-sata or even a pcmcia slot so I could have an e-sata solution. If i wrong about this please someone state this. I would be looking at a fairly new mac book pro, the one with the aluminum casing...

Looking on the Internet there are lots of usb to esata cable solutions which I could buy if I brought a mac. question is are they any good? is anyone using this type of setup? does it work well? will I be creating a bottle neck using this cable? am i better of using usb rather than esata?. For the purposes of work I do I need to have teams as I am usually testing things between servers and clients and create them so they are on the same network subnet as well as domain configuration.

Would I also be able to port my existing 7.1 workstation vm's into the latest version of fusion? I tried a few and ran into problems like it couldn't work because some of the VMs were configured as part of a team. I also got read only messages because the external disk was setup to be as an NTFS drive and macs don't like that as they use a different filing system.

The way I tried it was having Mac osx installed with fusion. Would I have more success if I installed boot camp so windows and Macosx are completely separate? will i be able to easily port my setup if I setup windows 7 on a separate partition on the Mac using boot camp or parallels? would that be a better option? I am worried about the whole usb to esata as performance is really important for me. so any pointers on this would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

[admin]

Fusion does not support teams. If you really really need teams support on Mac hardware, you'll need to install Boot Camp and run Workstation.

I also got read only messages because the external disk was setup to be as an NTFS drive and macs don't like that as they use a different filing system.

This can be worked around - copy the virtual machines to a drive that is HFS+ formatted (which is what I would recommend) or use a 3rd party driver that can write to NTFS.

Would I have more success if I installed boot camp so windows and Macosx are completely separate? will i be able to easily port my setup if I setup windows 7 on a separate partition on the Mac using boot camp or parallels?

It's not clear what setup you have in mind. Boot Camp will help your use case if you natively boot into Windows and run Workstation. Boot Camp will not help your use case if you run it as a virtual machine.

[ColoradoMarmot]

From  reading other posts and papers on the Internet it seems like fusion  isnt as comprehensive as workstation, I also tested the 30 day trial of  fusion on a friends Mac book and because I had all my VM's on an  external e-sata hard drive I did run into a few problems. I don't think  the Mac book pro has connectivity for e-sata or even a pcmcia slot so I  could have an e-sata solution. If i wrong about this please someone  state this. I would be looking at a fairly new mac book pro, the one  with the aluminum casing...

No, the new MBP's do not support eSATA.  Use FireWire 800 instead to achieve similar performance.

Looking  on the Internet there are lots of usb to esata cable solutions which I  could buy if I brought a mac. question is are they any good? is anyone  using this type of setup? does it work well? will I be creating a bottle  neck using this cable? am i better of using usb rather than esata?. For  the purposes of work I do I need to have teams as I am usually testing  things between servers and clients and create them so they are on the  same network subnet as well as domain configuration.

No, those will cripple performance - you might as well use USB directly.

Would  I also be able to port my existing 7.1 workstation vm's into the latest  version of fusion? I tried a few and ran into problems like it couldn't  work because some of the VMs were configured as part of a team. I also  got read only messages because the external disk was setup to be as an  NTFS drive and macs don't like that as they use a different filing  system.

Avoid 3rd party NTFS drivers on the Mac - I find that they hose data often.  Reconfigure the VM's to be 2GB file chunks, and reformat the external disk as FAT32 (if you want to go back and forth) or GUID/MacOS if you don't.

The  way I tried it was having Mac osx installed with fusion. Would I have  more success if I installed boot camp so windows and Macosx are  completely separate? will i be able to easily port my setup if I setup  windows 7 on a separate partition on the Mac using boot camp or  parallels? would that be a better option? I am worried about the whole  usb to esata as performance is really important for me. so any pointers  on this would be greatly appreciated.

Won't help with the external performance - that's hardware, not OS.