Ugh… I just upgraded to El Capitan, rebooted and tried to fire up my Fusion 7 VMs to make sure everything was ok. I can see the Bootcamp partition from Finder, but when I try to start it in Fusion I get an "Operation not permitted. Cannot create the disk '/users/…/Boot Camp.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Module Disk power on failed."
I tried this VMWare KB article without luck: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1003483
Basically close Fusion and delete the Book Camp VM directory, then re-import it from the Boot Camp partition. (like you would have done the first time you created a Boot Camp VM)
Same error.
Anyone else having this problem? I can't boot into my Windows development VM now. Nice.
Update
I re-enabled the boot recovery partition in OSX then tried rebooting into it so I can attempt disable "System Integrity Protection". There is no "Security Configuration" setting under the Utilities menu. It's completely gone. I have no clue how to disable this feature and use Fusion 7 with Boot camp.
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/513029
What a mess. Why would Apple enable so many major security features that would break a number of the largest and most popular applications on its platform? I can't upgrade to VMWare Fusion 8 Pro without paying $120 USD. Great timing.
Best Answer
I encountered the exact same problem after updating to El Capitan. You should take a look at the "csrutil" command. Boot recovery partition, fire up a terminal (from the Utilities menu) and enter the command to see how to use it. Executing "csrutil disable" and rebooting the machine afterwards fixed the problem for me. In addition to that I created a new VM for Bootcamp to be on the safe side. I am using VMware Fusion version 7.1.2 Pro, Windows 8.1 is installed on Bootcamp partition.
Disable System Integrity Protection (Apple Developer Forum)