Mac VMs on ESXi
Mac OS X guests are supported in ESXi 5... kinda. The prerequisites make this nearly impossible.
Mac OS X guests must run on hosts that are Apple hardware.
ESXi 5 must be installed on Apple XServe hardware. Apple discontinued this server line. No other Apple hardware is supported as a host platform by VMware.
ESXi5 and ESXi 5 Update 1 installers do not recognize the Apple RAID controller that ships with Xserve 3,1. With no local disk detected, it won't install.
Anyone have any suggestions about actually running Mac VMs in an ESXi environment?
Answers (2)
I've been using a brand new Mac Mini server for testing. Thus far it's been incredibly unstable; the sata driver in 10.7.2 and 10.7.3 isn't ESXi compliant, and 10.7.2 is (I believe) a prerequisite for 10.7 server if you download it now. What service(s) are you trying to run on a Mac? The last things I had running on Mac OS was Deploystudio (replaced by a K2000) and software update server, which I replaced with an Ubuntu package that lets me host software updates for Mac OS.
If your willing to try unsupported solutions, I was somewhat successful with using this method (http://tickett.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/mac-os-x-lion-on-esxi-5/) It doesn't work great but it lets me access the Mac VM when needed.
Good Luck!!!
Comments:
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I followed that to install it on a mini - performance was *bad* - have you trusted this enough to use it in production yet? - lcadhelpdesk 12 years ago
