Licensing, VMware Fusion, and Bootcamp

I have run into a situation that I am confused about. I am thinking about calling my company's MS licensing rep to work it out but I wanted to run it through here first. It could also lead to more clarity for licensing virtual machines.

I have an iMac at home with VMware Fusion. I bought a license of Windows 7 Home Premium for it and that works fine. I want to use Bootcamp to be able to have a native Windows session. Sometimes it helps with consulting to be able to have more than a virtual machine.

Do I need to buy another copy of Windows 7 to do this? I don't fully understand how virtual licensing vs physical licensing works. To me it's running on the same machine so one license should do it but I want to stay in compliance as much as possible, even if the MS Police probably won't bust down my door.

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Comments

RTmarc

What I would do is blow away your virtual 7 machine, load 7 on a bootcamp partition, and you're done. From within OSX, using VMware Fusion, you can mount and utilize the bootcamp partition. It will load up like a typical virtual machine. When you want to run Windows natively, restart the machine and boot into the bootcamp partition.

I do this on my own MBP.

tbgree00

I guess from a licensing standpoint that would be legal. I didn't know that function existed in VMware. I assume it keeps your VM and bootcamp partition in sync too which would be nice.

Hyper-Me

Ah yes. Making Mac's into decent computers, one Windows 7 installation at a time.

RTmarc

tbgree00 wrote: »

I guess from a licensing standpoint that would be legal. I didn't know that function existed in VMware. I assume it keeps your VM and bootcamp partition in sync too which would be nice.

It actually uses the bootcamp partition. So, when you are booted into OS X and fire up Fusion it will be actually accessing that partition. Any changes you make while in Fusion would be the same as having booted natively into Win7.

jamesstill

Be careful with the dual access to VMs. MS Software has a nasty habit of requiring reactivation when you launch it via the other method, Boot Camp or VMWare / Parallels access.

It's because the physical hardware appears to have changed.

my personal suggestion - get an old XP licence to use in a VM - lower memory footprint and it will do everything you need (probably) - and Boot Camp Windows 7.
If the software licence says you can only install it on one computer, technically that's still true

James

tiersten

I'm not a lawyer but I believe you'd be okay...

What James said anyway. Windows will be deeply unhappy with you changing the hardware like that and will require reactivation which generally means a phone call.

RTmarc

Occasionally it will ask you to reactivate when you boot to the bootcamp partition but it has never failed to go straight through.