Windows – Connect to the localhost of a virtualised PC (VMWare) from Mac

I know this question does not explicitly mention Parallels, but maybe some of my settings/experience there will be transferable to settings with VMWare Fusion. I am running a MacBook Pro running on OS X 10.7.3 with an Intel Core i7 2.2GHz and 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 memory for my RAM. The version of Parallels I am using is Parallels 7.

Some important notes before I go into my configuration:

• I am a developer with MSDN access. Under my MSDN account, I have access to Office 2010 including the Mac version (I mention this as, in many cases, Office will be a necessity and therefore an important consideration - while I could install both, there's also the cost in disk space). This also meant that cost was less of a concern here as I had access to everything I needed via MSDN.

• One other thing I should note is that I would not recommend converting a VMWare virtual machine to a Parallels virtual machine as I experienced several issues with this and ended up doing a clean install.

• I am developing on both my Mac (via Eclipse and Aptana) and Windows 7 VM (via Visual Studio)

So after about 1 month of configuring my VM, I've come down to a pretty nice configuration where I am experiencing very smooth performance. I have been very happy with this configuration and it's quite convenient over the alternative of rebooting to get to my Windows machine. Below I will address the Parallels settings that I feel have made this successful in addition to the software I am using on the VM, some important items regarding Windows 7 settings and a $1 program I would suggest every Mac owner would benefit from (but really a necessity for anyone using a VM on a Mac):

VM software:

• Windows 7 Ultimate x64
• Visual Studio 2010 Premium w/ plenty of Add-ins such as ReSharper, Mindscape Workbench, NuGet, etc...
• SQL Server 2008 R2
• Expression Blend 4
• Daemon Tools
• Charles Proxy (I would highly recommend this over, or at least in addition to, Fiddler if you are going to be developing on both your Mac and PC - opt-in feature for SSL debugging is very nice - I had to install on both my VM and Mac ... 127.0.0.1 does not resolve to the same place on my Mac and VM)
• IMPORTANT - I have ensured that no services are running at startup via Start->Run-> 'msconfig' - I tend to like using databases like MongoDB and Neo4j and I usually run them as services as this is generally how I will use these databases in production so this could potentially be a bit of a pain to manage if I end up running these on my Windows box (depending on the production settings I'm trying to emulate)

VM settings:

General

• CPUs: 4 (out of 8)
• Memory: 3072 MB (out of 8 GB)

Options

    Optimization

• Performance: Faster Mac (this may not be intuitive, but I've found it has helped eliminate bottlenecks that result in a noisy system and potential overheating issues)
• Enable Adaptive Hypervisor: true
• Tune Windows for speed: true
• Power: Longer battery life (otherwise I run into overheating issues)

• Free Space: Automatically compress virtual hard disks: true (this hasn't caused any performance issues for me, so I have kept this on)

  Security
  

• All options set to false, Encryption is not on, Undo Disks is set to Disable

  Applications
  

• Pause Windows when no applications are open: true
• Web Pages: Open in mac

• Email: Open in mac

  Coherence
  

• Use Crystal Mode: true
• Show Windows notification area in menu bar: false
• Allow applications to switch to full screen: true

• Disable Windows Aero: false (you'll get better performance if you disable this, I'm just a very visual person and decided I like to keep Aero on in Coherence mode)

  Full Screen
  

• Use Mac OS X Full Screen: true

  Advanced
  

• SmartMouse: Auto

Hardware

    Video

• Video Memory: 512 MB (out of 1 GB)
• Enable 3D acceleration: true
• Enable vertical synchronization: true

Mac Software

• Free Memory Pro: Macs have been known to do a terrible job at managing unclaimed memory. At some points I am running my VM (automatically takes up 3 GB with my config so long as an application is running), two instances of Eclipse (different configurations), Aptana, several browser sessions, several terminal sessions, my VPN and my Office applications. At this point my memory may be running around 50-200 mb - I've found if I use Free Memory Pro to clear up my memory once or twice per day that my Mac still runs without ANY excessive noise or heat and stays around 1.2 GB of free memory even with all the above mentioned applications being open :) IMHO, Macs should come with this program for free, but the next time you're on a late night trip to Wendy's...just forgo one of those $1 menu 5 piece nuggets and buy this program instead - it's totally worth it

Try finding out your Mac's local IP address and accessing the webpage on your VM using that address.

You can find out your Mac's IP address under System Preferences, using the command ifconfig, or with some apps or Dashboard widgets (like iSlayer's iStat).