{"id":1450,"date":"2014-06-19T13:15:22","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T20:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=1450"},"modified":"2014-06-19T16:49:54","modified_gmt":"2014-06-19T23:49:54","slug":"qa-why-virtualize-os-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/19\/qa-why-virtualize-os-x\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&#038;A: why virtualize OS X?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The question of why one would virtualize OS X came up on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macenterprise.org\/mailing-list\">Mac Enterprise mailing list<\/a> this week. \u00a0I got asked that question elsewhere this week too, so it seems like it&#8217;s time for a blog post on the topic.<\/p>\n<p>Given that the OS X EULA requires that you virtualize OS X on Apple hardware, and given that the only Apple hardware that is fully supported by VMware isn&#8217;t the most current Mac Pro<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-1450-1' id='fnref-1450-1' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(1450)'>1<\/a><\/sup>, what are the benefits of virtualizing OS X?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>More efficient use of resources. Even if you\u2019re just running two VMs on a Mini, that\u2019s half the capex of needing two Minis for the same purpose.<\/li>\n<li>The ability to add new servers quickly, without needing to buy new hardware.\n<ul>\n<li>You can add services that you would never be able to justify the hardware spend.<\/li>\n<li>If you get an idea for something that might work in your environment, it&#8217;s pretty quick and easy to try it out. \u00a0You can create a new VM or clone an existing one and try it out. \u00a0It lets you <a title=\"the sysadmin as tinkerer\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/19\/the-sysadmin-as-tinkerer\/\">tinker<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Easy creation of test environments. For those of us who are developing Apple apps (either Mac or iOS), virtualization makes running different test environments a whole lot easier. I\u2019ve heard from a lot of iOS dev shops that have thousands of OS X VMs that run Xcode for dev and test purposes.<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019ve got That One App that only runs on Snow Leopard, you don\u2019t have to have dedicated hardware for it.<\/li>\n<li>If you upgrade something in a VM and it doesn&#8217;t go well, you can roll back to an earlier snapshot quickly and easily.<\/li>\n<li>In a disaster recovery scenario, you can replicate VMs off-site so that you don&#8217;t lose anything.<\/li>\n<li>High availability increases your uptime.<\/li>\n<li>Storing a VM on external storage allows you to bring up that VM on another host (that&#8217;s running Apple hardware, of course).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class='footnotes' id='footnotes-1450'>\n<div class='footnotedivider'><\/div>\n<ol>\n<li id='fn-1450-1'> You can successfully run vSphere on a Mac Mini, it&#8217;s just not a supported configuration. \u00a0Here&#8217;s a recent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.newrelic.com\/2014\/06\/12\/turning-mac-minis-agile-mac-os-x-esxi-hosts-getting-baremetal\/\">blog post<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newrelic.com\">New Relic<\/a> about doing so. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-1450-1'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The question of why one would virtualize OS X came up on the Mac Enterprise mailing list this week. \u00a0I got asked that question elsewhere this week too, so it seems like it&#8217;s time for a blog post on the topic. Given that the OS X EULA requires that you virtualize OS X on Apple &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/19\/qa-why-virtualize-os-x\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Q&#038;A: why virtualize OS X?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-vmware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1450"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1454,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}