vSphere meets iCylinder in new VMware update VMware has emitted a small update to ESXi that, among other things, adds support for the Mac Pro. ESXi 5.5 patch 3 offers a collection of updates that address security and stability issues. VMware's not mentioning it on the download page, but staffer William Lam has helpfully let us know that the update also means ESXi can …
When I was working on a project that was exclusively Mac and iOS, we were using VMware a lot. Apparently, Mac OS licensing insists that you can only run OS X on Apple hardware, regardless of whether or not you own a legal license that you bought sepcially for your VMware setup.
That said, it is possible to trick Windows VMware into running OS X as a guest OS.
Bingo. We run ESXi on Mac Pros in order to run OSX instances, because it's the only way they can be legally licensed. (Well, you could use Mac Minis, but you won't get much in the way of density.) It may sound sub optimal...but Microsoft's VDI licensing is appalling to the point of offensive. And quite frankly the continued move away from Windows as a desktop OS necessitates setups such as this to meet the growing demand for remotely accessed OSX setups for an increasingly mobile (or teleworking) workforce.
No trick required, this is a fully supported configuration.
Although Apple's bizarre licensing also says you can only run two virtualized instances of OS X on said hardware as well, which makes the MacPro a real expensive platform to virtualize if one would be following such licensing restrictions.
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