Fusion or Parallels for Jamf Admin

[PAC]

This could be opening a can of worms and an endless debate so im hoping this can be kept civilized as possible :)

I currently have my main macbook pro and an iMac next to me for doing composer, autodmg etc work.

I am thinking i might be better of using Fusion or parallels for snapshotting reasons and off domain testing, etc. I have to use other windows applications so having a VM of windows and of a blank OSX would work well.
We already have Vcenter and vsphere running all our VM's in the office so i'm thinking Fusion mix in their quite nicely. I can see there are different version of Fusion which makes the choice a bit more confusing

What do people recommend or use them selves?
Why should i go one over the other?
is there one that works better with Jamf Pro?

Look forward to reading the feedback.
Regards
Pete

[jimmy-swings · Accepted solution]

Fusion Pro if your also supporting your vSphere implementation. The ability to simply upload or modify a machine is awesome.

[donmontalvo · Accepted solution]

Used both. VMware is the one I'd go with if I had the infrastructure you have. Even without the infrastructure, setting up ESXi on a spare Mac Pro makes collaboration easier.

Parallels seems to have annoying, impactful bugs, usually caused by the developer putting system level stuff in the wrong place.

[blackholemac]

Honestly, I'm ambivalent about which. I've dutifully used both. If you are dealing with NetBoot at all you'll want to consider the Pro version of whichever as it has support for NetBooting your VM. For what I do here, I don't even need the pro version. Currently I use Parallels but if my boss says "You're getting VMWare Fusion" today, I wouldn't care. It may come down to pricing or other products you own in your work. For instance some VMware contracts include the ability to use Fusion/Workstation cheaply or at no cost. Same if you happen to use Virtuozzo on the Parallels side. To me in general it really doesn't matter.

[CapU]

I prefer Fusion

[jimmy-swings · Accepted solution]

Fusion Pro if your also supporting your vSphere implementation. The ability to simply upload or modify a machine is awesome.

[donmontalvo · Accepted solution]

Used both. VMware is the one I'd go with if I had the infrastructure you have. Even without the infrastructure, setting up ESXi on a spare Mac Pro makes collaboration easier.

Parallels seems to have annoying, impactful bugs, usually caused by the developer putting system level stuff in the wrong place.

[howie_isaacks]

I have been using Parallels Desktop to create all of my packages to be uploaded into the JSS for Self Service. I also use it to test policies, scripts, and other things before I make them live. I have three Mac VMs setup. One is used with Composer to create my packages. One is for testing Self Service installs, and the third one is for general testing. I make a snapshot of each one so that I can revert them back to the previous state after I finish what I am doing. I have been curious if VMware would be better. I see a lot of Mac admins using VMware, and I have seen VMware used at JNUC in demos. The only reason why I use Parallels is because when I got my first Intel Mac in June 2006, that was the best solution to use. I just kept upgrading every year. I have never had a good reason to stop using Parallels. Parallels does have some annoyances though. Sometimes my mouse control just stops all of a sudden. I then have to locate the VM in ARD, and then I get my mouse control back. That's not too big of a problem, but it's very annoying.

[sdagley · Accepted solution]

I'll add my vote for Fusion, and specifically Fusion Pro. Besides the integration to ESXi/vSphere with Fusion Pro, there are two other features of Fusion I find preferable to Parallels Desktop:

• The licensing for Fusion is much less restrictive for personal use. Parallels locks their activation code to the first Mac it's used on, no matter if it's for personal or commercial use. Fusion does not, and for personal use you can install it on any machine you own. For commercial use you still need a Fusion license for each machine, but at least moving to a new machine doesn't require contacting VMware to reset the activation code (I'm not sure if Parallels does that on request).
• Fusion Pro provides a feature called Linked Clones that I find incredibly useful when creating custom installers with Composer. It's a riff on Snapshots, but rather than simply offering a rollback point for a single VM, it creates a separate VM that's only as big as the deltas between the initial snapshot of the source VM and the linked clone. This makes it much less painful to keep multiple VMs around.

[donmontalvo]

Parallels offers linked clones. Doesn't make it suck any less.

[sdagley]

@donmontalvo Thanks, I didn't notice the addition of linked clones to Parallels Desktop 10. Not that it's enough to change my preference for Fusion Pro.

[donmontalvo]

@sdagley I hear ya, my feelings exactly.

ACHOO!!!!!

Dammit I hate when I sneeze while launching Parallels...

(And no, not installing anything...just launching it)

[blackholemac]

This one is one I honestly consider myself ambivalent on. I've used both and both seem to do what I want to do. I won't lose sleep if Parallels loses out to VMWare or whatnot. I just want to keep both around so they keep each other on their toes feature-set wise. Right now I use Parallels Version 12 and it was enough to model our JSS cluster on.