Support VMWare Fusion

[behrangsa]

Support VMWare Fusion as an alternative to VirtualBox on Mac OS X Lion.

[mitchellh]

Closing this since it won't be relevant until after Vagrant 1.0 (soon), and I want to keep issues to that version for now.

But: I plan on it! :D

[cicloid]

I was thinking on working on this. What exactly is this feature waiting?

[mitchellh]

It requires some pretty deep architectural changes unfortunately. Another issue is that the vmrun command line API isn't quite powerful enough so I'm going to have to learn and modify VMX files directly, and I'm not quite sure what the spec is of that since it is not an open format. If you have any knowledge on this, it would be greatly appreciated if you could share it :)

[pmenglund]

Instead of using vmrun use the VIX API with something like https://github.com/rhythmx/vixr

[mitchellh]

@pmenglund Hm, I thought I remember reading that VMWare Fusion is the only VMWare virtualization product (other than player) that doesn't support the VIX API?

[pmenglund]

Doh! Yes, Fusion doesn't have the VIX API :(

I run ESXi in Fusion so I forgot that it doesn't support it...

[janschumann]

The vmrun uses the VIX API and supports Fusion. Why do you think vmrun is not powerful enough?

I would like to give it a try to implement VMWare driver with vmrun. Can anyone give me a good starting point?

[vjanelle]

VMWare Fusion 5 has the full VIX API now, according to it's docs.

[mitchellh]

Yep. :)

[ithinkihaveacat]

Actually, I think only Fusion's "Professional" edition supports the VIX API (see the feature list). Still, here's hoping vagrant will support it!

[vjanelle]

Yeah, I think you're correct. The 4.x to 5.0 upgrade only counts towards the professional version though, interesting.

[ithinkihaveacat]

@mitchellh is apparently working on VMware Fusion support: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4547275

[dzuelke]

@ithinkihaveacat @vjanelle Reading http://www.vmware.com/support/fusion5/doc/fusion-50-release-notes.html#Hardware it seems that all editions support VIX. It's probably not highlighted on the "consumer" feature list because it's irrelevant to the average dude who just wants to play Minesweeper on Windows.

[mitchellh]

I am working on this.

[phillpafford]

Looking forward to this, is there a feed/blog/etc where we could get the status of this effort?

[robbyt]

I would pay for "Vagrant Pro" if it meant that I didn't have to use VirtualBox

[mitchellh]

No feed or blog (YET!) but watch for news in the next couple weeks.

@robbyt Heh, thanks! :)

[gardner]

I would love to be able to use vmware fusion with vagrant to test on osx vms!

[jeffweiss]

@mitchellh I know you're working on VMware support for Vagrant. As a hacksgiving project, I created vixen which provides more ruby-ish access to the VIX API (and works with Linux/VMware Workstation just the same as OSX/Fusion). It's not nearly complete, but I'm working on it in my spare cycles. I've convinced a couple fission users around the Puppet Labs office to try it out.

[wolfeidau]

Gday just wondering if there was any movement on this, really looking forward to using vagrant again.

As a fusion owner if there is any posts on the VMWare forum you want me to comment on or people to hassle please let me know.

[fringd]

want want want :) can't have this fast enough, virtualbox is a bit of a mess on linux, and it's holding me back from getting to use vagrant :(

[vrillusions]

+1

[mitchellh]

This is done:

http://vimeo.com/hashicorp/vagrant-vmware-fusion-provider-preview

Expect a release this month. VMware Fusion is coming.

[pencil]

Nice :+1:

[gardner]

AWESOME!

[dropwhile]

can't wait! :smiley:

[dcolebatch]

:+1:

:smiley:

[brandonarbini]

Hey @mitchellh, any chance of another update? I've been wrestling with virtualbox for weeks and I'm hitting walls. I'm hoping Fusion will provide a more stable environment. Thanks!

[mitchellh]

@brandonarbini http://vimeo.com/hashicorp/vagrant-vmware-fusion-provider-preview

It will be released soon.

[brandonarbini]

Heh. Message received.

[logicminds]

I have been using VIX and the JAVA API for a while ping me if you need help with coding or general questions.

[vjanelle]

Judging from the state of the mac VIX api, I suspect we're waiting more for a new version of vmware fusion to come out.

[Kentzo]

@vjanelle basic functions for managing local VM appears to work. what's wrong with them?

[vjanelle]

Can't configure networking.

On Feb 27, 2013, at 02:38 AM, Ilya Kulakov notifications@github.com wrote:

@vjanelle basic functions for managing local VM appears to work. what's wrong with them?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[Kentzo]

but VIX API does not provide such functions. Instead you're supposed to run scripts/programs that will configure network on guest-side. Do you mean that functions (VixVM_RunScriptInGuest, VixVM_RunProgramInGuest) do not work for you?

[mitchellh]

VMware fusion 5 support will be released around March 12.

It supports everything Vagrant currently supports, including networking.

[logicminds]

Fusion 5 has been out for a few months already. Currently running 5.02. There are a quite a few tools to control almost any aspect of fusion now.

If you do use vmrun to run a program in the guest I would change the pam configuration file for vmtoolsd otherwise it won't work. cp /etc/pam.d/sshd /etc/pam.d/vmtoolsd

Look under /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library

A few of the basic tools: vmrun vmnet-bridge vmnet-cfgcli vmnet-cli vmnet-dhcpd vmnet-natd vmnet-netifup vmnet-sniffer vmware-authd vmware-cloneBootCamp vmware-licenseTool vmware-ntfs vmware-rawdiskAuthTool vmware-rawdiskCreator vmware-usbarbitrator vmware-vdiskmanager vmware-vmdkserver vmware-vmx vmware-vmx-debug vmware-vmx-stats

./vmnet-cfgcli Error: wrong number of arguments :vmnetcfg Usage: setloglevel getloglevel setdefaultloglevel getdefaultloglevel servicestart servicestatus servicestop getvmnetfeatures gethostadapterlist getbridge movebridge getdhcpusage setdhcpusage updatedhcpfromconfig getdhcpparam setdhcpparam setdhcpmac2ip getdhcpmac2ip enumdhcpmac2ip getnatusage setnatusage updatenatfromconfig getnatparam setnatparam getnatportfwd setnatportfwd enumportfwd deletevnet disablehostonlyadap enablehostonlyadap updateadapterfromconfig assignsubnet addadapter removeadapter getadapterstatus getvmnetcount getvnetwithfeatures setsubnetaddr setsubnetmask vnetcfgget vnetcfgadd vnetcfgremove getdefaultbridge setdefaultbridge exportconfig importconfig createdb getunusedsubnet getunusedvnet

[mitchellh]

http://www.vagrantup.com/vmware

[Kentzo]

Do I have to buy the provider even if I already bought vmware fusion?

[mitchellh]

You do, yes.

[pencil]

$79?! Does this include a VMware Fusion license?

[parndt]

Man, that's a really good deal for the power this gives and the amount of time this would have taken to build. Well done, @mitchellh! :+1:

[Kentzo]

I'm sorry, but the command line interface cannot cost as much as the virtualization software itself.

[marsmensch]

Kentzo, seriously? A command line interface? This is so much more! If it saves you more than one hour of work (or even more on a regular basis), you should buy it. Thanks @mitchellh!

[gaige]

VMWare Fusion support works great @mitchellh .

For those who haven't done it before, pricing software is hard. The purpose is to make sure the developer is able to continue developing, which I think we all want. It's great when a corporate sponsor can step in and make a large investment, but when you are targeting the market as a whole, you have to determine how many people are going to be willing to pay and how much.

In this case, I think many of us who use Vagrant and have been wanting to take advantage of our existing VMWare Fusion licenses find $79 for 2 nodes to be a reasonable trade-off for the value that is provided. If you had already spent the money on Fusion, you value having a commercially supported option in the first place.

You've always got the opportunity to:

1. Create a similar provider yourself, investing of your own time and effort, which is likely to be more than $79 worth
2. Use VirtualBox and Vagrant for free

Time will tell if @mitchellh has priced himself out of the market, and I'm sure if there's not enough revenue, then he'll either consider changing the price (possibly up, maybe down) or abandoning the project due to lack of interest.

I think it's a good value for the money and wish the best of success.

[Kentzo]

@marsmensch @gaige I think he should rather get a deal with vmware so that the provider is available for free for Fusion Pro users.

[Kentzo]

anyway, @mitchellh have done amazing work.

May I ask how do you communication is done? VIX api, command line tools or specifically created box with some preinstalled server that does the job on the guest machine?

[mitchellh]

@Kentzo I worked very closely with VMware, and we discussed such a deal but it was impossible due to legal reasons. Well, it MAY be possible, but it would've taken months of cutting through red tape and legal to get anywhere.

Communication is done through vmrun and lots and lots of internal VMware Fusion mucking around. vmrun on its own can only start, stop machines really so that wasn't useful at all.

There is also a custom C binary that ships with the provider to do some additional utilities, and a custom class that parses routing tables for collision detection of networks.

All-in-all, a lot of work. :)

[Kentzo]

@mitchellh by lots of internal VMware Fusion and C binary do you mean some internal libs which interfaces are not exposed to public?

[mitchellh]

@Kentzo Undocumented interfaces, yes. That makes up a majority of the interaction.