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Oh I see. Would you recommend against using a KVM+VT-d macOS install as primary desktop/workstation? I'd probably put passthrough on USB and use a USB-dac for

Oh I see. Would you recommend against using a KVM+VT-d macOS install as primary desktop/workstation? I'd probably put passthrough on USB and use a USB-dac for audio and add some decent bluetooth hardware for handoff, keyboard, mouse/touchpad, etc. I'd really like to have zvols underneat passed to the macOS-machine, I suppose I would have to use a HFS-sparseimage or similar for primary OS disk, but it would be nice to mount the zvols directly via OpenZFS for additional partitions. I would love to leverage LZ4 for document storage etc.

dordoka 8y ago
I can confirm that the GTX780 works. You will need to install the nvidia web drivers after macOS installation. Tried even using it with tensorflow. Regarding your first question: I have tried virtualized and bare metal macOS (hackintosh) and I would recommend not virtualizing it if it's gonna be your primary workstation. Currently my main workstation is a hackintosh after trying first using it in a VM. Virtualizing works, but under a VM there are several minor annoyances here and there that might drive you crazy (most of them are UI related, some app crashes, etc.). It would be perfect for example for a xcode build server. thought. YMMV!
x3sphere 8y ago
You could virtualize it and use it as your main. I have not noticed any issues compared to a bare metal install, at least on High Sierra. With GPU pass through, pretty much performs the same too... I've maybe seen a 5% performance hit at most after running some benchmarks. I also passed through an NVMe drive directly to the VM which avoids having to use an emulated storage controller.
- hultner 8y ago
  I were considering that as well but it would be very nice to run the entire system from a ZVOL for snapshots, LZ4, dataintegrity, etc. Considering maybe using a passthrough block-device only for os and use attached ZVOLs for userdata. Would be cool to be able to z-send user data to a remote backup as well.

dordoka 8y ago

I can confirm that the GTX780 works. You will need to install the nvidia web drivers after macOS installation. Tried even using it with tensorflow. Regarding your first question: I have tried virtualized and bare metal macOS (hackintosh) and I would recommend not virtualizing it if it's gonna be your primary workstation. Currently my main workstation is a hackintosh after trying first using it in a VM. Virtualizing works, but under a VM there are several minor annoyances here and there that might drive you crazy (most of them are UI related, some app crashes, etc.). It would be perfect for example for a xcode build server. thought. YMMV!

x3sphere 8y ago

You could virtualize it and use it as your main. I have not noticed any issues compared to a bare metal install, at least on High Sierra. With GPU pass through, pretty much performs the same too... I've maybe seen a 5% performance hit at most after running some benchmarks. I also passed through an NVMe drive directly to the VM which avoids having to use an emulated storage controller.

hultner 8y ago
I were considering that as well but it would be very nice to run the entire system from a ZVOL for snapshots, LZ4, dataintegrity, etc. Considering maybe using a passthrough block-device only for os and use attached ZVOLs for userdata. Would be cool to be able to z-send user data to a remote backup as well.