Notes: for starting multiple VMs using vagrant to launch vmware fusion on apple silicon.
Because: Although virtualbox finally supports apple silicon with the 7.1.x series of releases in late 2024, Vagrant 2.4.1 has a virtualbox version check that does not support higher than 7.0.x series. So we suffer the version leap-frog of dysfunction, or use vmware.
This is now available for non-commercial use w/o a license.
Go here for the download
You'll need a login with email and eventually you'll get to the version and "I agree to Terms and Conditions" checkbox to enable download of the universal binary. Presently this is the latest:
VMware-Fusion-13.6.1-24319021_universal.dmg
md5sum: 13304cbc30a0849a34cf1f7ea4065978
This might be easiest for arch and upgrade handling.
Use this
to check that this install command hasn't changed:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
brew tap hashicorp/tap
brew install hashicorp/tap/hashicorp-vagrant
The vagrant-vmware-utility install brew instructions look the same as those above.
Use these
- https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant/install
- https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant/install/vmware
to check the binary versions that
curl -kOLJ https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/2.4.1/vagrant_2.4.1_darwin_amd64.dmg
curl -kOLJ https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant-vmware-utility/1.0.23/vagrant-vmware-utility_1.0.23_darwin_amd64.dmg
curl -kOLJ https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant/2.4.1/vagrant_2.4.1_darwin_arm64.dmg
curl -kOLJ https://releases.hashicorp.com/vagrant-vmware-utility/1.0.23/vagrant-vmware-utility_1.0.23_darwin_arm64.dmg
Again, at the time of this note generation, ubuntu 24.04 was the latest well supported box, from the bento project builds.
If you can't find a box built by the distro, Chef project bento boxes are the next best thing (and sometimes even better for functional completeness).
arch: amd64 arm64
supports: vmware_desktop parallels qemu libvirt virtualbox
This is here only as reference, as it does not seem to work properly. The vagrant up command will complete, but vagrant ssh control fails to connect.
arch: arm64 amd64 unknown
supports: vmware_desktop qemu virtualbox libvirt parallels
vagrant boxes are stored in
~/.vagrant.d/boxes
Consider cleaning that space up from time to time to remove cruft.
Download the box if not present and launch the VMs
vagrant up
to launch the 4 vms
Specify the host to connect to
vagrant ssh control
to ssh to the 'control' vm
To stop the VMs - like shutdown - use
vagrant halt
To remove the cow and configured VM for rebuilding from scratch after updating the underlying box version or any other reason
vagrant destroy -f