Useful Links – Installing Mac OS X in a VM & P2V’ing Mac OS X

A couple of weeks back I received an interesting email regarding a couple of topics related to Apple Mac OS X and vSphere. The first one was related to the steps required for installing Mac OS X in a Virtual Machine. Though the process for installing Mac OS X in a Virtual Machine is pretty straight forward, there is an additional step that you must preform before you can get started. This was actually something I ran into when I first tried to install Mac OS X in a Virtual Machine. I found this handy online resource by VMware called Guest Operating System Installation Guide that provides the exact steps required and you will find a link for each of the supported Mac OS X systems as shown in the list below.

• Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)
• Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)
• Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
• Mac OS X Server 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
• Mac OS X Server 10.5 (Leopard)

The second topic was related to P2V'ing (Physical-to-Virtual) an existing physical Mac OS X system to a Virtual Machine. I have never managed physical Mac OS X systems before nor converting one into a Virtual Machine, so unfortunately I do not have any tips in that area. I did speak with some folks and it looks like most customers either use Apple's Migration Assistance program to migrate their data from their physical system onto a newly provisioned Mac OS X Virtual Machine or use imaging software such as Carbon Copy. I also found a couple of recent blog articles from customers who have gone through this process that may also come in handy. I especially recommend checking out Rich Trouton blog who has some fantastic content relating to Mac OS X and VMware.

• http://fortysomethinggeek.blogspot.com/2013/03/convert-physical-mac-into-vm-guest.html
• http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/migrating-os-x-vms-to-a-vmware-esxi-server/
• http://bmspeak.businessmann.dk/2014/03/10/virtualize-os-x-using-vsphere-on-mac-hardware/