iOS 26: Waiting on Technogeezer...

[Yoda Mann]

The waiting is the hardest part - Tom Petty 🤣

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[Yoda Mann]

Meant to say OS 26, but y'all get the idea.

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[Technogeezer]

Be patient. I'm already running toward the glass door. I'm downloading and installing Tahoe as I write this reply. Will update this thread as soon as I have something to share...

I can say at this point that I expect Fusion 13.6.4 to install on Tahoe. At least that's what I saw on the beta releases running in a VM on my M1 Mac mini. But I was not able to test any VMs because nested virtualization doesn't work. 

In the mean time, before anyone asks, I checked Sequoia 15.7 before making the leap to Tahoe. - there was no issues that I saw there. My Windows 11 ARM and Fedora 42 VMs worked without issue. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
vExpert 2025
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[Yoda Mann]

I knew I could count on you! 😊

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[Technogeezer]

First update:

In extremely curory testing, Tahoe doesn't seem to have broken anything (yet) with Fusion and my Windows 11 ARM and Fedora 42 VMs. More in-depth testing to come but signs are encouraging.

As Dr. Rummock said in the film Airplane! - "Good luck. We're all counting on you."

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- Paul (technogeezer)
vExpert 2025
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[Yoda Mann]

That was good enough for me to rush headlong through the glass door.

Tahoe 26.0
Apple M3 Max

VMware Fusion 13.6.4
Windows 11 Pro 24H2 ARM

All appears well this morning, cursory testing as well. I only use 3 Windows programs, and all are working as expected.

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[KOAFAR WU]

I am a new VM Fusion user on Mac here. **** question: When I update/upgrade from Sequoia to Tahoe, what will happen to my Fusion VM/Win 11? Do I need to reinstall Fusion?

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[Technogeezer]

I did not have to do anything with Fusion 13.6.4 when I upgraded from Sequoia to Tahoe. I did not have  to reinstall Fusion or rebuild my VMs. So far, everything is running fine for me after the upgrade.

Note, though, that I've not tested the upgrade on an Intel Mac  I only have an Apple Silicon Mac  

My standard advice still applies for any upgrade to a new operating system release.

• Make sure you have a backup of both your system and all virtual machines before attempting an upgrade.
• Your VMs should not be backed up with Time Machine. A common way to back up VMs is to shut down Fusion and copy them using the Finder to an external disk.
• Make sure your backup disks can be used in the recovery process. (Verify your backups!).
• Be prepared to reinstall Sequoia and recover from your backups. You may not need to do this, but it's not a bad idea to know how in case of the unlikely event that something goes horribly wrong. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
vExpert 2025
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[KOAFAR WU]

Hi Paul, You mentioned "... A common way to back up VMs is to shut down Fusion and copy them using the Finder to an external disk." My Fusion/VM is on an external disk. Do I still need to copy it to another external disk for backup? Thanks

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[Technogeezer]

My intent for the recommendation is to make sure you have a second copy of the VM in the event that something catastrophic happens to your working VM. (Not just for upgrades, but in general day to day operation). In your case, I'd feel more comfortable with that second copy on another external disk that is disconnected from the Mac while you upgrade it. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
vExpert 2025
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[KOAFAR WU]

Thank you for your advice, Paul. I have managed to back up the external disk my Fusion VM resides with Time Machine. Will it help if VM fails when the OS is upgraded?

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[Technogeezer]

As long as the virtual machine was shut down and you have exited the Fusion GUI, then the Time Machine backup should be OK.

I don't normally recommend use of Time Machine for regular backups of virtual machines, though. Because of how Time Machine is built and the way that Fusion stores its virtual disks, any change to a virtual disk results in the entire virtual disk being written to the Time Machine disk. That will quickly fill up your Time Machine disk. Also, it's not a good idea to take any kind of backup of a virtual machine while the virtual machine is running (except with a utility such as Vimalin that knows how to back up VMs that are running). 

If you have one backup of the VM with Time Machine, then stop using TIme Machine to take further backups. A better idea is to use another disk and copy the VM with the Finder. Or investigate something like Vimalin - which is designed specifically for Fusion backups. 

Having that backup will give you a safety net in case something horrible happens to your VM when you run it under Tahoe. You can recover it under Tahoe, or even recover it back to Sequoia if you have to reinstall Sequoia because you find a bug in Tahoe that you can't work around. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
vExpert 2025
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[KOAFAR WU]

Thanks again, Paul. I tinkered with this a little more and realized your comments and advice are probably valuable and helpful for many other users. For me, who only needs to use VM because an app only runs on Windows, and I have no Windows machine to run it, the use of the Fusion VM is thus limited to one task: running the app (and gathering no important data that could have a serious impact). So if the VM fails or collapses when OS is upgraded, I should be able to just rebuild the VM  afterward. A new start, so to speak.

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