VMware Fusion beta 2 is now available for download. Why would you want to download it? Well, if you’re into running VMs of Mac OS X Server then this is really a great product. You can setup Mac OS X Server as a guest OS in VMware Fusion beta 2.
For those looking to obtain access to specific Windows applications, VMware Beta 2 also supports the new Unity 2.0 feature that allows you to run a Windows application like you would run any Mac application. This means you can open Windows applications without running them inside the VMware window , put them in the dock, minimize each one on its own and it integrates with Expose. Beta 2 also mirrors files to your Windows VM so your applications can access them seamlessly, supports keyboard shortcuts and shortcut mapping and supports multiple-snapshots allowing you to automatically protect your VM from those gotcha’s that can cause it (or it’s OS more likely) to become corrupt.
Fusion Beta 2 is also faster and easier to use. Fusion Beta 2 will use less memory resources and run faster with new code enhancements. The vide drivers have been updated to handle HD and DirectX9 better than before. As for ease of use, when we inserted a Mac OS X Server DVD into one machine, VMware immediately opened a new VM creation wizard. VMware was very slow to install the OS. But once we got the Server installed, we created a snapshot of it, promoted the first VM to an OD Master and then changed the IP and promoted the second VM to a Replica. All-in-all it took about 10 minutes. We then brought a Windows Server 2008 VM up and built a triangle out of the 3.
We’ve also been taking advantage of the new scripting interface to enhance automation for Fusion. There have been reports about OS X Server VMs quitting if you leave them running all night, but we’ve been unable to reproduce this error across MacBooks, MacPros and Mac Minis. We’ll let you know if we figure out what is going on with those reports…
