Virtual Mac Leopard server?

[#1]

Is anyone using Vmware or something that creates virtual OSX servers on
Macs? If so what? How do you like it? What do you use it for testing?

Neal Smith | MAC Systems Engineer | Perrigo IT
| 269.686.1888 F - 269.673.7552| neal.smith at perrigo.com

[donmontalvo]

Hi Nate,

Thank you for editing out all those lines of quoted text...you truly are a Tech Superpower! :)

We're using VMWare to host Mac OS X server but *ONLY* in our LAB environment. Parallels...not interested, their support is virtually nonexistent. VMWare has better support, but really, for production if you're not running on ESX, not really very bullet proof. Hoping vSphere 5 supports Mac OS X Server (and as well hoping Apple releases grip on EULA to allow it). See my previous thread about a leak we found on this...

Don

[ernstcs]

I have a development JSS in Parallels Server, all current OS release.
Works a treat!

Craig E

[#4]

I am using Fusion on a Mac Pro tower running 10.6.7 as a test/production OD server. The server does ok but would rather have the hardware. Thankfully summer is right around the corner.

Thanks,

Shannon L Rico
Sr. Network Engineer
GISD
d: 972-487-3663
c: 214-882-3621

[rockpapergoat]

for testing, i use virtualbox or vmware fusion, though any casper/jss testing i've done recently is served via centos or ubuntu server, not os x server.

[Matt]

I wouldn't recommend this. VMware does not offer you important aspects of Virtual Serving such as high availability and incremental snapshotting as it does on the Windows side. It works good in testing but in the real world it seems very very very amateur to run. I wish VMware would make a VMWare Server for OSX Server.

--
Matt Lee
FNG Sr. IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group
matthew.lee at fox.com<mailto:matthew.lee at fox.com>

Need Help? Call the Help Desk at (310) 969-HELP (ext 24357) or online at http://itteam<http://itteam/>
Help Desk Hours: Mon-Fri, 6AM-6PM PST

[#7]

What about if it was running Parallels Server for Mac 4.0?

Neal Smith | MAC Systems Engineer | Perrigo IT

[Matt]

I'm not much of a Parallels fan.

--
Matt Lee
FNG Sr. IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group
matthew.lee at fox.com<mailto:matthew.lee at fox.com>

Need Help? Call the Help Desk at (310) 969-HELP (ext 24357) or online at http://itteam<http://itteam/>
Help Desk Hours: Mon-Fri, 6AM-6PM PST

[rockpapergoat]

I use virtualbox and vmware for testing, not production. how's that irresponsible?

If it's ending up in production, the vm will be hosted by esx or the like or migrated to real hardware.

[Matt]

Its not I was talking about production just in general.

--
Matt Lee
FNG Sr. IT Analyst / Desktop Architecture Team / Apple S.M.E / JAMF Casper Administrator
Fox Networks Group
matthew.lee at fox.com<mailto:matthew.lee at fox.com>

Need Help? Call the Help Desk at (310) 969-HELP (ext 24357) or online at http://itteam<http://itteam/>
Help Desk Hours: Mon-Fri, 6AM-6PM PST

[rockpapergoat]

what, it's not good practice to run production systems from parallels desktop on some random mac mini in the corner?!

(har, har… friday jokes…)

[RobertHammen]

I don't think the current SLA for SL Server allows that - rumor was it would be changed for Lion and/or vSphere 5 but there's been no official announcement yet - maybe at WWDC.

--Robert

[rockpapergoat]

true for os x server but not true for anything else.

i have at least one client using os x server hosted on parallels bare metal server, which does legally allow it. performance isn't great, though.

[rtrouton]

There's no barrier in the current EULA to running OS X Server in ESX or a similar solution (like Parallels' bare metal solution.) As long as ESX can run on Apple hardware, running a virtual OS X Server is already legally sanctioned by Apple. You just can't do it on non-Apple hardware, which is what's so frustrating to a number of admins (myself included.)

Thanks,
Rich