VMware Workstation / Player / Fusion hypervisors driver

The libvirt VMware driver should be able to manage any Workstation, Player, Fusion version supported by the VMware VIX API. See the compatibility list here.

This driver uses the "vmrun" utility which is distributed with the VMware VIX API. You can download the VIX API from here.

Connections to VMware driver

The libvirt VMware driver provides per-user drivers (the "session" instance). Three uris are available:

  • "vmwareplayer" for VMware Player

  • "vmwarews" for VMware Workstation

  • "vmwarefusion" for VMware Fusion

Some example connection URIs for the driver are:

vmwareplayer:///session                  (local access to VMware Player per-user instance)
vmwarews:///session                      (local access to VMware Workstation per-user instance)
vmwarefusion:///session                  (local access to VMware Fusion per-user instance)
vmwarews+tcp://user@example.com/session  (remote access to VMware Workstation, SASl/Kerberos)
vmwarews+ssh://user@example.com/session  (remote access to VMware Workstation, SSH tunnelled)

Example domain XML config

<domain type='vmware'>
  <name>vmware</name>
  <uuid>bea92244-8885-4562-828b-3b086731c5b1</uuid>

  <os>
    <type>hvm</type>
  </os>

  <memory>524288</memory>
  <vcpu>1</vcpu>

  <features>
    <pae/>
    <acpi/>
  </features>

  <devices>
    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
      <source file='/home/user/tmp/disk.vmdk'/>
      <target bus='ide' dev='hda'/>
    </disk>

    <interface type='bridge'>
      <target dev='/dev/vmnet1'/>
      <source bridge=''/>
      <mac address='00:16:3e:5d:c7:9e'/>
    </interface>
  </devices>
</domain>