Compatibility considerations for Arm guest operating systems in Fusion VMs on Apple silicon
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Compatibility considerations for Arm guest operating systems in Fusion VMs on Apple silicon

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Article ID: 315602

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Updated On: 03-18-2025

Products

VMware Desktop Hypervisor VMware Fusion

Issue/Introduction

This article provides detailed compatibility considerations for guest operating systems in a VMware Fusion VM on Apple silicon Mac systems.

Environment

VMware Fusion 13.0 and later versions

Resolution

VMware Fusion 13.0 was the first version to support Apple Silicon Mac systems.

Only 64-bit guest operating systems based on the Arm CPU architecture (i.e. 'arm64' or 'aarch64') will run in VMware Fusion VMs on Apple Silicon Mac systems. It is not possible to run x86 operating systems in VMware Fusion VMs on Apple Silicon Mac systems. However, some Arm guest operating system, such as Windows 11 Arm, are capable of running x86 user-mode applications. See the OS vendor's documentation for x86 application compatibility.

Note that the Broadcom Compatibility Guide is the authority regarding the support status of particular guest operating system releases on Fusion releases. The Arm operating systems can be distinguished in the Broadcom Compatibility Guide with the OS Arch value of "Arm(64-bit)". Refer to the following KB Understanding guest operating system support levels for the definition of support levels used in the Broadcom Compatibility Guide.
 

1. Generic requirements and limitations for all Arm Guest Operating Systems

64-bit guest operating systems based on the Arm CPU architecture is required.

Firmware:
UEFI firmware is required

  • BIOS firmware is not supported

CDROM:

  • CDROMs are supported when attached to either SCSI or SATA controllers
  • IDE controller is not available for IDE CDROMs

Storage:

  • Virtual NVMe Disks are the recommended storage for all operating systems
  • SATA Disks are supported
  • SCSI Disks are not recommended due to the lack of availability of drivers for operating systems
  • IDE controller is not available for IDE Disks
  • The floppy device is not available

Networking:

  • vmxnet3 is the recommended virtual NIC for all operating systems

Other virtual devices:

  • The virtual USB mouse connected to the XHCI controller is recommended.  The vmmouse device is not available. 
  • XHCI is fully supported
  • EHCI and UHCI are not fully supported at this time
  • The virtual TPM 2.0 device is available

2. Windows

Windows 11 or later

  • The recommended storage is NVMe with inbox Microsoft driver
  • The recommended networking adapter is VMware's vmxnet3
  • VMware Tools for Windows Arm is limited to providing:
    • A vmxnet3 networking driver that provides full networking support.
    • A basic 2D display driver that provides the ability to change the resolution of the VM Window from within the Windows Settings panel.
  • Other functionalities enabled by VMware Tools are not available at this time, including:
    • Window resolution auto-fit, 3D hardware accelerated graphics, and unity mode are not available at this time
    • Drivers: PVSCSI, VMCI, VSOCK, VMMEMCTL, VMMOUSE
    • All advanced functionality that requires the vmtoold user-space application: time sync, shared folders, drag-drop, copy-paste, soft-power operations, vmrun commands.
  • The following virtual devices are not supported:
    • Floppy, IDE storage
  • All Windows features that require nested virtualization will not function in VMs on Apple silicon Macs, these features include:
    • Virtualization Based Security (VBS), Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG), Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2), Windows Sandbox, and Azure IoT Edge for Linux on Windows (EFLOW).

Windows 10 and earlier

  • No plans to support

3. Generic requirements and limitations affecting all Linux Arm distributions

The following virtual devices are not supported yet:

  • vmw_pvscsi, vmw_balloon, vmw_pvrdma, ptp_vmw

The best graphics experience is available in Linux distributions based on the 5.19 kernel or later. For more information, refer to KB Fusion ARM: Rhel 9, Fedora 36 and Ubuntu 22.04 VM installation is failing.

Accelerated graphics requires the Linux distribution to include:

  • The vmwgfx driver from the kernel 5.19 or later versions
  • Mesa3D 22.1.1 or later versions

Non-accelerated 2D graphics requires

  • The vmwgfx driver from the latest official stable tree for kernel 5.15

EFI graphics

  • The EFI graphics driver from the 5.14 kernel version is not operational. The problem was resolved in the latest 5.15 stable, 5.19, or later versions.
  • The EFI graphics driver in kernels 5.13 or earlier is also operational.

4. Ubuntu

Ubuntu 22.10 and later:

  • Includes the vmxnet3 driver for networking support.
  • Includes a newer vmwgfx driver and Mesa3D packages that provide accelerated 3D graphics and auto-fit guest window resolution
  • Introduces the vmci and vsock drivers
  • Includes option to install open-vm-tools packages from vendor repository

Ubuntu 22.04

  • Includes the vmxnet3 driver for networking support.
  • Includes the vmwgfx driver that provides basic 2D graphics support starting in the 22.04.1 update.  Note: Update 22.04.1 or later is required, otherwise graphics will not function
  • The vmci and vsock drivers are available starting in the 22.04.1 update
  • Includes option to install open-vm-tools packages from vendor repository

Ubuntu 21.10 and earlier versions

  • Not recommended due to incomplete functionality
  • Some releases include vmxnet3 driver for networking support

5. Debian

Debian 12 ("Bookworm") and later

  • Includes the vmxnet3 driver for networking support.
  • Includes a newer vmwgfx driver and Mesa3D packages that provides 3D hardware accelerated graphics and auto-fit guest window resolution
  • Introduces the vmci and vsock drivers
  • Includes option to install open-vm-tools packages from the default package repository

Debian 11 ("bullseye")

  • Includes the vmxnet3 driver for networking support
  • Includes the vmwgfx driver that provides basic 2D graphics support, may require update to the latest packages.
  • open-vm-tools packages are not available

Debian 10 ("Buster")

  • Includes the vmxnet3 driver for networking support
  • Graphics is limited through EFI video driver, the desktop display is limited to 1024x768
  • open-vm-tools packages are not available

6. Red Hat Enterprise Linux

CentOS Stream

  • CentOS Stream is a continuous development environment leading to future RHEL 9.x release. CentOS Stream is expected to work, but is not officially supported for production use. Please seek assistance from the CentOS community forums if there are any issues (https://forums.centos.org/) or Fusion community forums.

RHEL 9 or later

  • Includes the vmxnet3 driver for networking support
  • Includes the vmwgfx driver that provides basic 2D graphics support
  • The vmci and vsock drivers are available starting in the 9.1 update
  • Includes option to install open-vm-tools packages from the default package repository 

RHEL 8 and earlier

  • No plans to support

7. Fedora

Fedora 37 or later

  • Includes the vmxnet3 driver for networking support
  • Includes the vmwgfx driver and Mesa3D packages that provides 3D hardware accelerated graphics  
  • Includes the vmci and vsock drivers
  • Includes open-vm-tools packages

Fedora 36 and earlier

  • Not recommended due to incomplete functionality

8. FreeBSD

VMware paravirtual drivers, vmci, vsock and xf86-video-vmware are not yet available.

FreeBSD 12 or later

  • Includes open-vm-tools packages in the official "pkg" repository.

9. macOS

The Arm variants of the macOS operating system is not supported in a Fusion VM.

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