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Fusion Tech Preview 2018 Available for Testing

Fusion Tech Preview 2018

The VMware Fusion team is very excited to announce the VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2018 release! We would love to hear your feedback about the exciting new features we have been working on.

Cut to the chase and download the latest bits from our Tech Preview Community:
VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2018.

Or from MyVMware directly:

https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/get-download?downloadGroup=FUS-TP-2018

What’s New

DirectX 10.1 – We are excited to introduce DirectX 10.1 support with Fusion 2018 Tech Preview. Using Apple’s Metal technology to render 3D accelerated graphics, support for DirectX 10.1 in Guest VMs introduces several subtle differences over 10.0

DirectX 10.1 delivers the following graphics improvements:

Full MSAA (Multisample anti-aliasing) support
Shader Model 4.1 support
Cubemap array support

This enhancement allows users to run games that require DirectX 10.1, and improves performance for DX10.0 games and apps. Test it out and let us know how what you think about the graphics quality and performance.

DirectX 10.1 requires macOS 10.13.0 or above.

macOS Mojave Beta Experimental Support – Fusion Tech Preview 2018 can run on latest macOS 10.14 Mojave beta as Host and a guest OS. Users can run Fusion on a Mac with 10.14 Beta installed, or test out 10.14 by running it in a virtual machine. We currently only support installing using the .app from the Mac App Store. We do not currently support upgrading existing macOS VMs, nor do we support creating a new VM from a 10.14 recovery partition. We know there is some work to be done to support Apple’s latest and greatest, so please share your feedback with us in the Community.

ESXi Host/cluster view when connecting to vCenter – We’ve add a new Hosts and Clusters view when using Workstation to connect to a vCenter Server from Workstation. Users now have visibility to navigate to non-VM objects (ESXi hosts, Resource Pool and vApp) and their respective relationship hierarchy (i.e. Datacenter > Cluster > Resource Pool > vApp). Users can also switch back to the ‘flat’ VM view with a single click.

The all new Application Menu

New Application Menu – This tech preview showcases a new Application Menu that we’ve been testing. This App Menu uses our own REST API to create a whole new experience. The new app menu aims to do what the existing Library Window does. Beyond quickly launching applications within guest, the new Menu Bar App supports:

New VM creation
Virtual Machine Power Operations
Switching from different Views (Unity, Full Screen, Windowed)
New contextual search feature for VMs and Windows Apps
Display IP, MAC and VM resource allocation (CPU, RAM)
Taking Snapshots
Opening VM settings

Customize Fusion shortcuts on your touch bar

Customizable Touch Bar Support – Users can now customize the Mac Touch Bar (on supported hardware) to tweak what to appears on your Touch Bar Display. Touch Bar is customizable with new controls for following scenarios:

Library Window
VM Window

SSH login to Linux VM – Users can now SSH login to Linux VM with a single click. The SSH user/password can be securely remembered so you can easily SSH to the VM without entering password, or configure it to forget and require a password each time.

Once SSH is running in your VM and accessible by username and password, you can quickly open up a terminal session

Resolved Issues:

Bluetooth devices on Mac host get disconnected when you quit Fusion

When you quit Fusion, Bluetooth devices like keyboard, mouse may temporary get disconnected from Mac host.

This issue is resolved.

High battery consumption on Windows 8 and Windows 10 VM

For Window 8 and Window 10 VM, when you toggle following display options: “Use High Performance Graphics” and “Always use High Performance Graphics”, battery consumption is unexpectedly high.

This issue is resolved.

VM does not work with NAT after High Sierra 10.13.x Update

macOS High Sierra 10.13 may cause VM network connection issues under NAT networking mode.

This issue is resolved.

Known Issues:

Unable to use App Store to upgrade macOS 10.13 or 10.14 VM

Attempting to upgrade macOS to 10.13 or 10.14 via the App Store may fail.

We are working on fix for this issue. Workaround is to manually download latest macOS 10.13 or 10.14 installer .app on the Host, transfer to the VM and upgrade using the image.

We really appreciate your help testing this software. Please share your feedback in our VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2018 community. We will try to answer any questions that you may have, and we’ll investigate any issues that are raised. We also encourage users to also share other thoughts about how we can improve or enhancements that you would like to see in future releases.

Thank you!

The VMware Fusion Team

Brand-new Apple MacBook Pro: $3K. VMware Fusion: $160. Running got-to-have-them Windows Apps on my Sweet Setup: Priceless.

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Donn Bullock

by Donn Bullock, Director of End-User Computing Channel Sales for the Americas.

With over 20 years of high-tech sales & marketing experience, Donn has worked at every level of the IT channel including 3 resellers, 2 manufacturers (Compaq & IBM) and a distributor. He started one of the first (he was told by VMware the actual first) business partner VDI practices focused on VMware in 2006. He joined VMware in July 2012 as the first external hire for the new Commercial Field Sales team and today serves as a channel sales executive for VMware’s $500M EUC business in the Americas.

Donn has a BA from Wake Forest University and an MBA in Finance and Marketing from Vanderbilt University and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

TruAudio

No matter how millennial you might be (or think you are), sometimes you just can’t escape Windows. That’s what Bryan Garner, CEO of home audio company TruAudio, and his executive team discovered, much to their collective chagrin. Following the setup of their all-new Apple MacBook Pros, the excitement of having joined the Apple ecosystem was abruptly replaced with the reality of a recently installed, Windows-based financial system. As new Mac converts, Bryan and team immediately set out to rescue their newly acquired IT tools from the setback of Windows non-compatibility.

As a fast-growing, small business, TruAudio had been running their financials from Quickbooks Enterprise for many years. In an office exclusively comprised of Windows PCs and Servers, upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics seemed like a natural fit given the IT history of the firm, the application’s ability to scale with the fast pace of their company’s growth, and the recommendation of their trusted IT consultant. That is until the trending younger executive team decided that Macs were their platform of choice for personal productivity. It was only after setting up their crisp new hardware that the discovery of no MacOS interface within Dynamics was discovered.

After an unfulfilling foray into Oracle’s VirtualBox, Bryan and team took the advice of yours truly and had a go with Fusion Pro. The firm has not looked back since. First, VMware’s Fusion Pro satisfied their Dynamics needs, allowing each of the users to create a dual-screen desktop environment of both MacOS and Windows, running applications simultaneously on either desktop OS (and indeed running Microsoft Office on both).

TruAudio’s Desktop

Along the way, the team also discovered that Fusion resolved the unsuspecting issue of printing to their respective locally attached Konica Minolta bizhub printers, which also lacked a native MacOS driver. Printing through Windows on Fusion was now all they needed. As the firm has continued to grow rapidly, Fusion has resolved other unforeseen issues and found its way into other critical parts of the business. For example, the team also discovered that Crestron, the leader in commercial and home automation, lacks a MacOS driver for its products, an easy resolution found once again with Fusion-empowered MacBooks. By connecting the Crestron automation tools into Windows within Fusion, TruAudio has been able to provide the sound testing studio with flexibility for anyone wanting to test out new solutions on TruAudio gear.

In today’s IT environment, not every user wants to be locked into a single OS. For many users, application choice dictates platform, not the other way around. And while users seek choice in their BYOD demands, corporate IT departments insist upon control and standardization. VMware Fusion reconciles this potential conflict of end-user choice with control, creating an environment in which both Windows and Mac can not only work together, but empower new options and use cases not available to users before.

Don’t believe that Fusion can’t make a difference in your company? Just ask Bryan as he runs to his next meeting with MacBook Pro in hand. Try it yourself today, for free.

Security Matters: Mac Hypervisor Edition

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securely-vmware

As I’m sure you noticed, we’ve delivered a flurry of patch-releases for Fusion and Workstation in the last few weeks. Want to know why? Because security matters.

More visibility

The Pwn2Own competition at the CanSecWest conference put a huge bounty on ‘vmescape‘. They’re not the first to do this, and they won’t be the last. And I want to be clear up front, we’re delighted that they helped us make our products more robust, and more secure.

For those not following this closely, ‘vmescape’ is the challenge of executing code on a host machine, that originated on a virtual machine. In other words, you have to execute something on a virtual computer, that tricks the hypervisor, such as Fusion, Workstation, ESXi, etc, in to passing that code through to the host computer, effectively breaking out of the guest with the intent of controlling or damaging the host.

While the successful exploits themselves are interesting to note, the likelihood of this causing actual damage to you, in the real world is pretty small. Partly because of the nature and complexity of the technology involved, and partly because of the bevy of unknowables of a real production system. Mike Foley, one of our foremost security gurus, notes:

“VM Escape is not the threat your security guy thinks it is. It’s really, really hard to do.”

Hard to do, but still imperative that we fix. And so we have. With an abundance of gratitude to our incredibly talented security team, working directly with our multi-discipline engineering teams, we think we’ve been on top of things.

Platform security is critically important

Virtualization technology today is used more widely, and in more critical systems than ever. With VMware having such a prominent footprint both on the desktop and in the data center, we take our role and responsibility in this very seriously.

While many of our Fusion & Workstation customers are considered ‘consumers’, (i.e. they have a single copy installed on their own personal machine), the majority of our customers are business, both small and large. Security for the end-user is important, but when we’re talking about corporate systems and virtual desktops that connect to those systems, the need for an air-tight virtualization stack becomes an imperative.

To that end, we’ve delivered 3 critical patches for both Fusion and Workstation (both Pro and Player), each addressing different security issues documented in our Security Advisory announcements (which can be found here), all within the past 3 weeks.

We understand that this makes it tricky for you. Updating software is never fun – even if it’s fully automated – and we appreciate the anxiety we may have caused you, but I hope you agree, it was worth it

Collaboration is Key

We’re very proud of our engineering teams. Cross collaboration between them is critical when addressing complex issues, made more difficult by the need for rapid delivery. And of course while patching is critical, maintaining a high level of product quality is something we refuse to compromise on.

We work directly with security researchers who demonstrate some pretty slick exploits at several security shows, and we’re keen to see that trend continue. In this day-and-age, when breaches and data privacy issues are making mainstream headlines, we couldn’t do this without the collaboration we get from the community. We are immensely grateful to you.

Now, Secure yourself

It’s always important to stay up to date with security patches for all software you own/use/control. If your software hasn’t auto-updated already, get the latest patches [here]. And while we have your security attention, we recently came up with a nice little way to use Fusion and Workstation to help increase both your own security and privacy when dealing with online threats.

For this use case, we have a nice summary infographic and video, with more detailed writeups for safely surfing the Internet with Fusion and Workstation [linked respectively].

Using Fusion to securely browse the Internet

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Hey everyone =)

Did you know that today’s Internet is more than just web pages? Shocker, right?

Well… did you know that VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation can help protect you when browsing the wide-open Internet?

How so, you might ask?

When you surf online you are being tracked in a number of ways. Tracking “Cookies”, IP Addresses, Geo Location and Language, Browsing History, Invisible tracking pixels/images and more. All working in concert to build a profile of you and your online habits.

In addition to just standard browsing being tracked, there’s also ‘the bad guys’ out there:

Click Jacking
Compromised Ad Networks (“Malvertising”)
Malware

Using VMware Fusion (or VMware Workstation) on your desktop to run a different operating system and web browser in a virtual sandbox keeps your main operating system safe, anonymous and protected from online threats.

Check out the Infographic here!

Fusion 8.5.3 Released, addresses macOS 10.12 issues

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Using macOS 10.12 Sierra and VMware Fusion 8.5? It’s time to update!

And with the biggest sale of the year going on right now, there’s never been a better time to get up to date if you’re on Fusion 7 or older.

Today we’ve released an update to our favourite Mac virtualization product to address some critical stability issues on certain configurations of macOS 10.12. Users would get an ‘internal error’ message and Fusion would quit unexpectedly. This release fixes that issue.

Users can download the update from within the product by clicking ‘Check for Updates’, or you can grab the raw bits right from vmware.com/go/getfusion

It’s also the perfect time to update to the latest supported version of our most popular products with our Cyber Monday sale going on all week.

There’s still a couple of days to get 35% off our already discounted Fusion 8.5 Pro and our flagship Windows and Linux virtualization product, VMware Workstation 12.5 Pro.

Every Day Is Thanksgiving

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Yes, I know that’s a cheesy title, but in the office where we control Fusion and Workstation every day starts with a conversation about you. We talk about things that are trending on Twitter & Facebook, what’s happening on our community forums, and what people are asking us in our inboxes.

Some days it’s all good news, others it bad. Often it’s a mixture, but every day we’re grateful that you’re engaged with us, so that together we can build a better product.

Back in the summer we ran a competition to see what you’d say about us on YouTube. The results surprised us. I can honestly say that we were not expecting the volume of entries that our little give-away generated.

We are truly thankful that you are our customer.

Please stay engaged. Negative or positive, we want to hear your thoughts on the current product, and where you think it should go next.

In the meanwhile, in no order, here’s my favorite top 10 videos from the competition

The one with the cute kid

The one about a zoo

The product demo we should have made ourselves

The one about a whole career

The one that scared us a bit

The other one with cute kids

The one with the gamer

The one with the dog

And finally, the third one with a cute kid

Thank you

Black Friday sale is now live!

It’s that time of year again! Our biggest sale of the year is now live on store.vmware.com!

Biggest sale of the year is almost here!

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It’s nearly that time again… Black Friday and Cyber Monday are quickly approaching!

We’re going to have our award winning virtualization products on sale at huge discounts just in time for the holidays.

If you had been holding off upgrading to Fusion 8.5, our Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are the biggest discounts we offer all year, it’s the perfect time to get supported under macOS Sierra and Windows 10 Anniversary (which has been called ‘the most secure Windows to date‘.

In other news, we also just released a security patch to address a vulnerability demonstrated at this year’s PwnFest festival in Seoul, Korea last week. We patched the vulnerability in hours and pushed the release on Sunday to protect our users.

You can read the release notes for 8.5.2 here

Fusion for Business

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Did you know that VMware Fusion makes it easy to manage a fleet of Bring Your Own Device users? By adding VMware Horizon FLEX, businesses have more control over local virtual desktops than ever before. Use Fusion or Workstation to create your ‘Gold Master’ templates and then share those with end users. The templates can be restricted and even encrypted, and managed from a central console: Horizon FLEX.

Even when used un-namaged, Fusion allows Macs to live in the enterprise like never before. Users can run the corporate desktop, complete with custom windows-only application developed in-house, right from their Mac.

Want to learn more? Check out our video and come visit our VMware Fusion and Horizon FLEX product pages!

Fusion for Developers

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Build the next big thing with Fusion

Did you know that thousands of developers use VMware Fusion every day for all kinds of development and testing?

Build and test apps for any platform, cloud or desktop, or work with the latest in container technology by deploying VMware’s own PhotonOS. Purpose built for running Docker, Garden and rat applications, PhotonOS is there to help you build applications locally in a cloud-ready environment.

To learn more about what developers and IT professionals consider ‘the most stable Mac virtualization platform’, check out our video below and then visit our product page!

vmware.com/go/fusion