Virtualization... How 'Bout Them Apples?

Apple relaxes licensing language on Leopard Server to permit virtualized instances, VMware Fusion seems to run just fine on Leopard server and client, and the venerable MS Virtual PC still seems to work for those unfortunate souls still running PowerPC hardware. Does this mean everyone is coming to the virtualization party now? I just wrapped up a blitzkrieg review of Apple's new server OS. Stop with the snide comments already; yes, Apple does have a new server OS. Named after a cat. And it is not CatOS, so old-school Cisco admins can stop snickering now, too.

My Leopard DVD arrived by FedEx Monday morning from Apple PR, I lost 30-odd hours of my life lab testing, final copy due to iWeek end of day Tuesday in hopes of making the Nov. 5th issue... and I'm still grimacing over the working title of the review, which actually includes the word "sexy." We'll see how that plays out come print time.

But to heck with the limitations of print. The wonder and beauty of blogging lets me delve into the tiniest niche in the virtualization market. Today that niche is "Leopard Virtualization." Now that I've come down from a post-review-caffeine run and a post-Halloween-sugar crash, we can talk Apples and cats.

What works now: I have had success with VMware Fusion on top of a dual Xeon Xserve running OS X 10.5 with 2 Gbytes of memory; client instances included XP SP2, W2K3, and RedHat + BSD Linux without a hitch. For those counting, yes, that was 5 exes in the last sentence. While Leopard wouldn't be my enterprise hosting platform of choice, Fusion makes a good show of hosting 32- and 64-bit guests on Apple hardware. Subjective performance was decent, and I know a few Mac-only shops that have been hosting a W2K3 box or two on Apple's previous server OS, Tiger, without incident for the past year.

Running an all mac-shop and need a light-duty Windows host? Take a look at Leopard + Fusion. I didn't have time to run through a thorough Parallels test, but I'm shooting for a basic performance comparison between the two Mac virtualization players sometime in the future. (I did not test Wine-based CrossOver for Mac, which has been updated to v6.2 in support of Leopard.)Leopard client + Fusion ran without a hitch on a test dual 32-bit Intel based MacBook running a gig of RAM. XP SP2 and Debian went through their paces with no problem. You have Intel Mac clients that need to run Outlook or Visio? I'd look at Fusion vs. Apple's BootCamp, which requires those annoying restarts.

PowerPC Macs (including dual and quad G5s) are left out of the Fusion and Parallels fun. For folks that absolutely need to run a Windows client on an older Mac, Microsoft's Virtual PC 2005 (actually an x86 emulator) seems to work just fine under Leopard. As expected, you will not get native hardware performance.

I fired up an XP instance on top of a dual 2.3 GHz G5 with 2 Gbytes. Windows reported emulated machine specs as a 533-MHz 686 processor. You will not want to run an Exchange server on a PowerPC Mac, but you can use your older Mac gear to pinch hit for the occasional Windows app. If you have patience.

The big news for Mac shops:TidBITS, a Mac-focused news site, was I believe the first to report a change in Leopard's SW license agreement, which I learned via Ars Technica's excellent Mac coverage:

This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Mac OS X Server software (the "Mac OS X Server Software") on a single Apple-labeled computer. You may also install and use other copies of Mac OS X Server Software on the same Apple-labeled computer, provided that you acquire an individual and valid license from Apple for each of these other copies of Mac OS X Server Software.So... hello, virtualization possibilities.

In the past, Apple licensing has flat-out forbidden the virtualization of the Apple OS. Apple's client OS is still one-cat-per-box, but the doors have been opened for Parallels or VMware to produce a true hypervisor-based virt platform for Mac servers on Apple hardware.

For those folks running mission-critical apps on Mac and Windows/Linux servers, the long-term benefits of consolidation, cost reduction, reduced power consumption, design flexibility, etc., are finally on the horizon.

Will Macs finally make a (small) dent in the enterprise? Let's check back in three years to see if the server OS crew in Cupertino is more than an afterthought behind the desktop OS and iPhone teams.