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Category Archives: Release

VMware Fusion 11.5 Available Now!

It’s with great pleasure that we announce the immediate availability of VMware Fusion 11.5!

Still on Fusion 10 or 8.5? Upgrade here with 20% off!!

This release comes as a free upgrade to existing Fusion 11 users, with Fusion 8.5 and v10 customers being still eligible for discount upgrade pricing. This release also extends support for v11 customers until December 2020.

Added to that we’re also running a 20% off sale right now! We wanted to make sure that folks who are still using older releases can get support for macOS Catalina without having to pay full price for the upgrade.

So what’s new?

First up, Dark Mode.

When Dark Mode is enabled onl our Mac, Fusion transforms into a darker and more nighttime-friendly version of itself.

Fusion not only detects when Dark Mode is enabled and adjusts the user interface accordingly, but it also can synchronize the mode with Windows and macOS Guests who support the feature. This is a per-vm preference, and can be enabled in the VM Settings > Advanced window.

Next up: Sidecar

macOS Catalina introduces an incredible new feature called Sidecar that lets your Mac use your iPad as an external display.

With Fusion’s support of this feature, users can deploy a VM and drive it completely from your iPad, including support for the Apple Pencil and Bluetooth Keyboard. Works Wired or Wirelessly.

Also featuring: Jumbo Frames

Professionals oftentimes use Fusion and Workstation to deploy virtual lab environments, but when using some more advanced networking tools and techniques unfortunately some things didn’t work. One reason is because a larger MTU size was required for their virtual networks, but previously this wasn’t something users could configure.

Now with this support, savvy IT Pros and VI Admins can run a full vSphere, with NSX, virtual lab environment on Workstation with overlay support. (Given sufficient hardware resources, of course!)

There are a number of other reasons to use Jumbo Frames, including network performance advantages in enterprises and universities with supporting network infrastructure.

And More!

We’ve squashed bugs, improved performance and closed security holes, while adding support for the latest OS’s from Microsoft, Linux, BSD and Apple.

Get it now!

Still on Fusion 10 or 8.5? Upgrade here with 20% off!

Release notes

We hope you enjoy, and please share your feedback in our community forums!

VMworld 2019: Fusion and Workstation Announcements

At VMworld 2019, Zongmin Li and I took to the stage to present our annual ‘What’s new in Fusion and Workstation’ session, where we share what we’ve been working on and and look ahead on our roadmap a bit.

In this session we made some exciting announcements:

Fusion 11.5 and Workstation 15.5: Free Updates Coming in September

The biggest announcement is about our annual product release. We have a lot of great new features that we’ll be issuing as a free update to existing users, and extending the period for Fusion 8 and Workstation 12 customers to upgrade without having to buy a full ‘new’ license.

So what’s in the releases? Let’s take a look…

Fusion and Workstation Shared Features

Jumbo Frame Support
- Configure the MTU size of your virtual networks (Pro products only)
New pvscsi device support
- More compatibility with vSphere virtual hardware
New OS support
- Windows 10 19H2, Ubuntu 1910, Debian 10.0, RHEL 7.7
Local Kubernetes Clusters
- Supported through minikube and docker-machine-driver-vmware
Performance and Security Bugfixes

Fusion Only Features

macOS 10.15 Catalina
- Host and Guest support
Dark Mode and Dark Mode Sync
- Fusion now goes dark when Dark Mode is enabled on your Mac, and can optionally synchronize this setting with Windows 10 and macOS 10.14+ guest VMs.
Sidecar (requires Catalina host)
- Use Windows on your iPad, wirelessly, with hardware keyboard and Apple Pencil support!

Workstation Only Features

Network Config Preservation
- When upgrading Workstation between major versions, your custom network settings are preserved
Network Config Export
- Export complex network configurations with an easily shareable text file.
Multi-Mon Shortcut Key
- Quickly adjust the layout of your virtual displays.
  - ctrl+shift+m brings up the topology chooser where you then key the number of the corresponding layout you want

And finally, we had one more thing to share…

VMware and Microsoft Hypervisor Platform Collaboration

Closing out the presentation we had “One More Thing” to share, and we brought our friend Ben Armstrong, Product Manager for the Microsoft Windows Hypervisor Platform, on stage to join us in announcing something we’ve been working on for quite some time now.

For the past year we’ve been collaborating closely with Microsoft on the Windows Hypervisor Platform engineering team so that Workstation can co-exist with Hyper-V enabled hosts.

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

Biggest sale of the year is almost here!

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 8.5 Released and Available Now!

Lots of stuff in this announcement, so read on!

Fusion 8.5 Now Available!

Start your upgrade engines, Fusion 8.5 is here!

We’re very proud of our team for achieving this milestone release, which is available as a free update for Fusion 8 customers!

New features include:

Support for Windows 10 Anniversary Guests
Support for macOS Sierra Host and Guest
Ready for Windows Server 2016
Tabbed View Support
Siri Support
Bug Fixes
Free for 8.0 Customers!

Grab the bits here: vmware.com/go/getfusion or use the built-in Software Update feature.

We chose to make this a free release for current customers for a few reasons, but largely: “We hear from our users year on year that having to pay for something as small as a minor operating system release gets a little long in the tooth” . Theres a lot going on at VMware this year giving us an opportunity to pause and focus, (but we’re not dead!) so we extended that opportunity to our users with a free upgrade that supports the latest from Apple and Microsoft, while still managing to squeeze in support for a couple of interesting features largely with the help of Apple: Tabs and Siri.

Buy:

Upgrade:

Upgrade Pricing

We also want everyone on the current version, so we’ve extended our upgrade price eligibility going back as far as Fusion 4.0… So, if you’re on Fusion 4, 5 or 6 you can qualify for a huge discount on the price of Fusion. (Oh, and we’re also giving you an additional 15% off Fusion 8 upgrades for 2 days only, and and 33% off Fusion 8 Pro upgrades!! We must be crazy… Or we love our users… you decide!)

Virtual Reality Contest

Oh, and while we’re here, did you hear about our Virtual Reality giveaway? All you have to do is tell us in 30 seconds to a minute ‘Why you love Fusion or Workstation’ and an interesting tale that is unique to you. All the details are available here: store.vmware.com/oculus

VMworld 2016: We Love Fusion and Workstation!

We did a session at VMworld which you can check out here and spoke with some of our fans afterward, here what they have to say about Fusion and Workstation!

Release Notes

Full Release Notes can be found here

Bug fixes in this release include:

MS Office applications in Windows virtual machine would sometimes not open the attachment in the mail application on Mac. This issue is resolved.
After you import a Parallels 11 virtual machine into VMware Fusion, attempting to power on the virtual machine would fail with the error “Inaccessible Boot Device.”. This issue is resolved.
When the Full Screen Minibar was hidden at the edge of the screen, hovering the cursor over it would not make it appear. This issue is resolved.
Fusion could crash when you attempt to create a remote virtual machine on vCenter Server 5.5. This issue is resolved.
On the Ubuntu 15.10 and later versions guest OS, when you replace open-vm-tools with the VMware Tools version bundled with VMware Fusion, VMware Tools may not work as expected. After you reboot the system, an Ubuntu crash report might appear and one of the services in VMware Tools might stop working. This issue is resolved.
Attempts to drag and drop files between the host and a Mac OS virtual machine occasionally fail. This issue is resolved.

We will be issuing point releases to address any issues that may come up after macOS Sierra reaches General Availability later this month.

Hope you enjoy!

VMware Fusion 8.5 Announced!

We’ve been holding in the surprise for some time now but on the keynote stage today at VMworld, Sanjay Poonan, EVP of our End user Computing business unit where Fusion and Workstation are situated, pulled the covers back and revealed the details about our big annual release.

This year we are delivering Fusion 8.5 and Fusion 8.5 Pro, and the big surprise is this: It’s a free upgrade for all current-version customers. So, if you’re on Fusion 8.1.1, you’re going to be able to upgrade to the latest Fusion with full support for macOS Sierra and Windows 10 Anniversary edition, for free. We’ll also be adding Windows Server 2016 support when it comes available.

The release includes support for some interesting macOS Sierra features, including Tabs and Siri support.

This is an exciting release for us because it marks the first time that we have provided a yearly update for no additional cost to current-version customers. We’ve been holding the surprise in for some time, so we’re very excited to finally share this with the world.

We’ve also changed how users can upgrade to the latest release. Users are eligible for upgrade pricing going back to Fusion 4. So, if you have an old Fusion license and haven’t upgraded in a few years, there’s never been a better time.

Tabs! With macOS Sierra, you can now bring all those VM’s into a single window

Hey Siri, Open Microsoft Edge

This also marks the release of VMware Workstation 12.5 Pro and Player editions, which you can read more about here. We expect all 4 products (Fusion, Fusion Pro, Workstation Pro and Workstation Player) to release mid-September.

So if you’re still on Fusion 7 or older, you can upgrade to 8.1.1 today and know that we’ve got your back by making sure you’ll be able to run the latest and greatest from Microsoft and Apple!

VMware Fusion 8 & Fusion 8 Pro Now Available Worldwide

Today we are pleased to announce the worldwide availability of the VMware Fusion 8 and VMware Fusion 8 Pro.

These releases mark a milestone achievement for our team within VMware, with fantastic new features and improvements in several areas including:

Windows 10
– Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro provide full support for Windows 10. Use all the exciting new features like the Microsoft Edge browser, or Cortana the always-on digital assistant. Cortana even works when Fusion is in the background

Ready for OS X El Capitan
– Test the latest OS X release in a virtual machine to see what’s coming around the corner, or jump in with both feet and install OS X El Capitan on your Mac with the confidence that VMware Fusion 8 will still deliver the ultimate Windows on Mac experience.

All New Enhanced Graphics Engine with DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3

Everyday applications are smoother and more fluid, with new DirectX 10 only applications now supported.

65% OpenGL Performance improvement and 15% DirectX 9 Performance improvement

Built for the latest Macs including the iMac Retina 5K

Drive 14 million pixels with VMware Fusion 8 on the most powerful and beautiful iMac to date.

Building upon this great release, Fusion 8 Pro additionally delivers:

Native vCloud Air integration

Use vCloud Air, the public cloud service by VMware, to upload workloads to the cloud for public consumption. Build an app or web server locally and push it to the cloud with a simple drag and drop. Use it to connect with remote virtual machines running in vCloud Air, or even upload an existing virtual machine from Fusion for backup to the cloud.

$600 in free vCloud Air service credit

To help users get started, we’re happy to provide more then enough service credit to get users exploring what they can do with a compatible cloud.

Improved vSphere integration

With deeper integration into VMware vSphere, Fusion 8 Pro now provides more detail than every before, and can even create remote virtual machines on ESXi or vCenter Server instances.

vsphere-fusion8

VMware Fusion 8 and VMware Fusion 8 Pro are available immediately for download and purchase from vmware.com for $79.99 and $199.99 respectively. VMware Fusion 8 Pro is also available from VMware partners and distributors.

Customers who have purchased VMware Fusion 7 or VMware Fusion 7 Pro between July 29, 2015 and August 25, 2015 are eligible for an electronic upgrade to VMware Fusion 8 or VMware Fusion 8 Pro at no additional cost. Qualifying customers will automatically receive an email advising how to upgrade their license keys.

VMware Fusion 6 and 7 customers can upgrade to VMware Fusion 8 for only $49.99 and to VMware Fusion 8 Pro for $119.99 at the VMware online store.

Parallels Desktop customers can upgrade to VMware Fusion 8 or VMware Fusion 8 Pro and save 40%! Learn more here.

Download a free trial at the VMware Fusion trial page.