4 ms·

I believe Apple's licensing only allows OSX to be virtualized using OSX as the host system. So you still have a hardware roadblock.

• jws 14y ago
  Maybe a hardware speed bump. I generally find the hardware cost is not dominant with respect to bandwidth and physical placement costs. So even if you pay almost twice as much per compute cycle[1] it is still buried in the other deployment costs. The bit that keeps me from using Mac Minis (and I have a huge software reason to do it) on my server end is that I don't trust that I can manage them remotely. If I can't get to a console and reboot with remote media I'm not willing to commit to it in production. If you are big enough to have 24x7 staff colocated with your hardware then things are a little different. Then they'll just cuss at you for making them drive a little cart with a monitor and keyboard around the place. EOM [1] It isn't that high for one unit, compared to reasonable quality commodity gear, but when you look to comparing, say 16 Core i5 processors of power there are some nice commodity solutions that are much cheaper than 16 minis.
  • mikeash 14y ago
    There must be remote management systems that will capture DVI output and provide mouse/keyboard commands over USB. Modern Macs all do netboot so that takes care of the remote media. Probably isn't cheap, though.
• koko775 14y ago
  Nope, OS X can only be virtualized on Apple hardware. ESXi (baremetal hypervisor) supports OS X on Apple hardware