VMware FUS3-ENG-M-10-CP MAC User Guide - Page 3

Getting Started with VMware Fusion Getting Started with VMware Fusion Introduction VMware Fusion™ allows you to run your favorite PC applications on your Intel‐based Mac. Designed from the ground up for the Mac user, VMware Fusion makes it easy to take advantage of the security, flexibility, and portability of virtual machines to run Windows and other x86 operating systems side‐by‐side with Mac OS X. What Is a Virtual Machine? A virtual machine is software that behaves just as a physical computer does. A virtual machine contains a display, a hard disk, one or more processors, memory, a CD/DVD drive, a network adapter, and a USB controller-all virtualized. That is, these elements of a virtual machine are all created by software and stored in files on your Mac. The virtual machine runs in a window on your Intel‐based Mac. You install an operating system and applications in the virtual machine and operate it as you would a physical computer. The Mac that you run a virtual machine on is sometimes referred to as the host. In this context, the virtual machine is referred to as a guest. What You Can Do with VMware Fusion With VMware Fusion, Intel‐based Mac users can: „ Run your favorite applications on an Intel‐based Mac-With VMware Fusion, you can run virtual machines with a wide range of Windows and Linux operating systems, so you can run your favorite applications on your Intel‐based Mac. „ Create virtual machines - VMware Fusion provides a New Virtual Machine Assistant to guide you through the process of creating a virtual machine. „ Protect the integrity of your host machine - VMware Fusion lets you safely run virtual machines isolated from the host machine by making use of the hardware‐level security and fault isolation of virtualization solutions. „ Evaluate and use prebuilt applications easily - With VMware Fusion, you can download and safely run prebuilt application designed to solve specific problems in virtual machines that are available from the growing library of virtual appliances. See the Virtual Appliance Marketplace at http://vam.vmware.com/. The Virtual Appliance Marketplace includes virtual machines from various software vendors, as well as virtual machines that are preconfigured with popular open source software. With VMware Fusion you can download and try a completely configured Linux virtual machine without having to be a Linux expert or you can try preconfigured business appliances with applications from leading software vendors, including Oracle, Red Hat, Novell, BEA, SpikeSource, IBM, and MySQL. VMware, Inc. 3