Ok so the point i was making about the bios date is this, load linux
into one of these virtualization apps (NOT XEN, the others) then look
at the hardware specs that are being provided to the virtual
session... not even close to sufficient.
For OSX Sessions the graphics would kill ya.
For OSX Server you are in a lil better shape but you have to contend
with older IDE technology in the virtual session which makes booting
painful, if you choose scsi its a lil better.
Desktop and Server virtualization both use the same underlying
technologies, the big difference is the management tools, and in
memory movement of virtual sessions from host to host for redundancy,
and capacity planning.
There is no EFI support in the current virtualization technologies,
though some folks in the XEN community have made some efforts in this
regard with openbios.
The licensing is definitely an issue.. what i am saying is its not
the only nor the biggest issue to tackle you have hardware emulation
issues as well and that will keep it from being a viable alternative
longer than the licensing which can be addressed quickly (if apple so
desired) like microsoft did.
On Oct 8, 2007, at 10/8 12:14 PM, Dave Schroeder wrote:
On Oct 8, 2007, at 11:01 AM, Michele (Mike) Hjorleifsson wrote:
The Licensing questions are moot, i have run OSX and OSX server in
a virtual machine and it is horrible... why ? Not OSX's fault
if you look at vmware fusion, parallels or even zen.. take a look
at the bios date, the video bios that is reported etc.etc.. the
virtualized
session is not beefy enough (from the perspective of what hardware
is being provided by the session) to run and make OSX look/feel
proper (snappy).
Fusion and Parallels have just, in their latest releases, provided
facilities for more advanced graphics like DirectX or OpenGL, so i
think
it will be a lil while till these VM machines are in a place where
they could really run OSX properly, or well enough, for the community
to like it.
No, it has a LOT to do with licensing. If you think the only reason
we don't have virtualized Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server is because of
performance, you're very wrong. It has everything to do with the
licensing...any technical issues would be very easily addressed,
and have nothing to do with the "bios date".
There are a lot more issues here. First, if you're virtualizing a
server environment, the video performance at the console and
whether or not you have Quartz Extreme is utterly meaningless.
Desktop virtualization and server virtualization are two very
different markets with very different needs. The requirements for
Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server in this context are not significantly
different from Windows, Linux, or any other UNIX. Sure, if you
don't have accelerated graphics, it's unpleasant as a desktop
environment. That same fact is meaningless for use as a server
environment. For example, I care approximately zero about local
video performance for Mac OS X Server used as a virtual server.
Further, to run Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server in any virtual
environment (e.g., the non-Mac OS X versions of VMware), you must
use a (badly) hacked and completely unsupported version of Mac OS X
that has broader issues than simply being used in virtualization.
And you inadvertently made this point with the talk of "BIOS"...Mac
OS X (Intel), post-10.4.3 betas, doesn't even use BIOS. EFI support
(and Apple's blessing), for example, would be required in any
virtualization solution that officially supported Mac OS X/Mac OS X
Server without modification.
