VMware Player is a free desktop application that lets you run a virtual machine on a Windows or Linux PC. Wondering about VMware download for Mac? We’ll cover that later in this post! Before we look at ways to download and install VMware, we’ll cover some basics about virtualization. Cars fast as lightning game. Because running a virtual machine without. VMware Fusion: Powerfully Simple Virtual Machines for Mac. VMware Fusion gives Mac users the power to run Windows on Mac along with hundreds of other operating systems side by side with Mac applications, without rebooting. Fusion is simple enough for home users and powerful enough for IT professionals, developers and businesses.
If you’re a developer you will eventually come into a situation where you need to test your software. I recently had to test a web application in an environment which comes as close as possible to the server which it’ll finally run on.
Usually nobody has a piece of server hardware at hand, so the logical solution was to work with what I already ‘ve got. It’s possible via virtualization software, such as Oracle VirtualBox or VMware Player. There are a few programs out there that can achieve our goal, but as my mid-spec laptop, from which I’m currently writing this, had the least issues with VMware (I had several driver issues with Oracle VirtualBox before), I chose it to simulate a fresh linux server environment.
Another important aspect beside the performance with your hardware is the ability to run without the UI open, so one can SSH onto the virtual server. VirtualBox has a pretty extensive command line utility included by default: VBoxManage. VMware Player does not have such a tool included because VMware decided to go for a more general API: VIX. You need to download and install it separately, with the advantage that it’s compatible with nearly all VMware virtualization solutions components.
You can download VMware Player from here and VIX from here. Make sure you have virtualization enabled in your BIOS settings (here is how).
As a the server OS I chose linux (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS minimal install (mini.iso), *), since most servers today run linux.
Start by creating a normal VM, the specs don’t have to be hight, as the machine won’t need much RAM or CPU cores, and install ubuntu using the mini.iso file (select “Command-line install” from the installer boot menu). Restart the VM after the installation and log in. As long as you don’t set up any kind of desktop environment, which isn’t usually done on a server installation, you have to use the terminal.
After that shut down the VM using the following command:
The next step is to enable the virtual network manager for your VMware Player installation (here is how).
Open it and set up port forwarding for the host port 2222 to the guest port 22 (the default SSH port) in the NAT adapter settings (“vmnet8”). You can find a detailed explanation of how to configure NAT using the virtual network manager on this kb site.
Vmware Player Mac Os X
In most cases you’ll need a new rule for your firewall to allow external access through port 2222 (here is how).
If you haven’t installed a SSH client yet, you should do now: Windows, Mac, Linux.
Vmware Player For Mac Download
Now, to start your VM in headless mode, navigate a command-line to the installation directory of VIX and run this command:
In case you have to stop the VM without SSH, you can run this command:
Now, if you’re using SSH over cygwin, like me, you can open a terminal and connect to the now running VM using the following command:
This should successfully connect you to the VM and prompt you to log in to your user account.
In case you experience any issues or face problems, feel free to ask in the comments.
I hope I could help you. Feel free to have a look around, the might be something else interesting on my blog 🙂