Installation Media
A virtual machine’s operating system (Windows, Linux, Netware etc.) can be installed by attaching the physical media CD or DVD or by using an image file (ISO). I prefer the latter method because it’s way faster and more flexible .... you don’t need to play disc jockey to mount and dismount physical medias.
Creating an image file from a physical CD or DVD is really easy with OS X. Start the
Disk Utility located in the
Application/Utilities folder and follow the next steps :

1. Put the operating system (Windows, Linux) CD or DVD into your Mac’s drive
2. Select the mounted media in Disk Utility and click the
New Image button on the toolbar.

3. Enter the name of the image file and choose
DVD/CD master as the preferred image format.

4. Click the
Save button to create the disk image. The CDR file extension can be renamed to ISO but VMware Fusion also perfectly handles CDR extensions.