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Should I build a Hackintosh with an EFI boot loader, Hackintosh with Ozmosis, or use only the ESXi unlocker on a non-Hackintosh hardware build?


Esus
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What I want to achieve:


 


ESXi running as a type 1 hypervisor on the physical hardware running the following guests:


 


  1. Mac OS X
    • Logic Pro 10 running in the VM (direct pass-through for firewire audio interface)
    • CS6 running in the VM (direct pass-through to video card) 

  2. Ubuntu
    • Day-to-day tasks (productivity, internet, email, etc)
    • Web server

  3. Windows 8/10
    • I was going to run vSphere on this but apparently that won’t be compatible with the latest VMs on ESXi5.5? (Perhaps I’ll use Workstation here to manage ESXi?)
    • Work stuff

  4. KVM/Hyper-V/ESXi Lab

 


Logic Pro is the reason the Mac Ecosystem must exist, I could run CS6 on Windows if it wasn’t for that. Because it must exist and I want a very powerful machine without breaking the bank, I will not be buying a Mac - but that should come as no surprise here. I’m willing to get my hands dirty of course, but I want the best performing system with the least amount of work arounds or potential instability. I’d like to not worry much about future releases and updates. Also, they must ALL be guest VMs for the obvious benefits of backups, versatility, snapshots, etc. 


 


Thoughts? Suggestions?


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What I want to achieve:

 

ESXi running as a type 1 hypervisor on the physical hardware....

Thoughts? Suggestions?

 

 

I have reason to believe that your performance oriented requirements of OS X are beyond the present offerings in virtualization. It may be worth experimentation, but if you're asking for advice for a purchase before you can experiment, I'd reconsider the plan this way:

 

Install OS X as the primary operating system, giving it primary control and unfettered access to the hardware (selected carefully for compatibility with OS X).

 

Run Linux and Windows as guests in virtual machines.

 

This approach has the least ambiguity on performance/driver/virtualization issues (remember, OS X is only supposed to be virtualized on Mac hardware, and then only OS X server). It's doubtful there is sufficient support for your intentions to be satsifactory in any hypervisor or virtualization product. It's tempting to think so, but the reality is that despite the hypervisor theory of operation, it fails to deliver full native performance and access under genuine stress conditions.

 

You're not as specific about your need of Windows, which leads me to believe you're not stressing Windows, and it seems your use of Linux is like my own, which is no stress there. This brings to mind the obvious question as to why would you choose to place OS X at even the slightest disadvantage if that is where all of your performance oriented applications reside simply in order to mix in these other two, far less demanding operating systems. Your usage pattern highly suggests they are guests in your requirements.

 

I've used CS6, and I consult for a number of professionals that use it, in various ways, to extreme demands. I know it's weaknesses and it's strengths. I admit I've not installed in OS X under a hypervisor, but I don't see how it's feasible to utilize snapshots on a system where CS6 has been used for significant work. The data requirements are generally quite large, and the performance impact of snapshots can be huge.

 

Noting that I have no idea of your particular intentions with CS6, here are two examples that come to mind:

 

A photographer I know is dependent on photoshop. Example images are taken at 36 MPixels, HDR. Stitching several images into a wide panorama, one image may end up being 24,000 pixels by 4,000 pixels, with editing and effects in multiple layers. One photoshop file may easily exceed 4 Gbytes. During editing, even in a 32 GByte machine, CS6 is pushing out so much data into scratch disks that Windows (his OS of choice) locks up for seconds, sometimes minutes, because of poor configuration of his drives. He chose to format them in default allocation blocks, and put everything on two 4 TByte WD Red Pros. They're good drives, but choking on thrashing through so much directory management that Windows freezes (even the mouse) until it settles. Disks are Windows Achilles heel. A simple reorganization, first by reformatting his drives with large allocation blocks, and then by ensuring scratch is assign to independent drives devoted to that purpose, completely transformed the behavior of his machine.

 

Now, that's where OS X has a genuine strength. Disk management is much cleaner, more robust and doesn't bring the OS to it's knees with things aren't quite perfect, but it can still freeze the application while scratch is being managed. There is no magic to OS X in this regard, simply a more robust file system and a more robust kernel. You still can push the hardware to it's performance extremes in modern usage.

 

Another case is a set of video projects that sprang up out of a hospital's encology department. Long story short, they ended up with tens of thousands of 1080p video clips which had to be weaved into some kind of one hour video, and it seemed important to the upper management. Still, there was no budget for this, so hiring a firm was out of the question. An eager 20 something volunteered under the assumption that his hacked copy of CS6 would be up to the task. Well, it is...but not the machine he was using. It's the same thing, basically...disks, GPU, RAM....space and backup. I had to jump in, volunteering to help the volunteer, with equipment sufficient for this 4 month long project which, in reality, was nearly as complicated and involved as a one hour television show.

 

You really want to keep anything out of the way of CS6 from performing, and you can do that quite well on a decked out OS X Hackintosh. Putting it inside any kind of virtualization product is a impediment to it, and one you'd regret if you actually demand CS6 perform beyond cropping 16 MPixel photos and stabilizing a few hand held clips.

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Thanks for the thoughtful response JVene.

 

I have reason to believe that your performance oriented requirements of OS X are beyond the present offerings in virtualization. It may be worth experimentation, but if you're asking for advice for a purchase before you can experiment, I'd reconsider the plan this way:

 

Install OS X as the primary operating system, giving it primary control and unfettered access to the hardware (selected carefully for compatibility with OS X).

 

Run Linux and Windows as guests in virtual machines.

 

No disagreement there. If the type 1 hypervisor idea isn't feasible this is exactly what I will do. Fortunately I will be building the same machine for either path so I can experiment with ESXi an then revert to this if necessary. I'm really just tying to understand where potential problems might come up before I experiment so I can research them more. 

 

You're not as specific about your need of Windows, which leads me to believe you're not stressing Windows, and it seems your use of Linux is like my own, which is no stress there. This brings to mind the obvious question as to why would you choose to place OS X at even the slightest disadvantage if that is where all of your performance oriented applications reside simply in order to mix in these other two, far less demanding operating systems. Your usage pattern highly suggests they are guests in your requirements.

 

I realize my initial post might have been missing some info. Making music with Logic Pro is a hobby. I don't think it is the most demanding app but I definitely would like it to run well and the firewire virtualization or pass through would be pretty important there. If I cannot get a usable outcome there then I will install OS X as the underlying OS on the hardware. As for CS6, I rarely use Photoshop. My primary concern there is Premier and I only use it a few times a year on non-professional projects. I think I could run this in a Windows VM pretty successfully (SSDs and video pass-through) if necessary so it is not a stringent requirement in my potential setup (I have experience in delivering demanding design applications in VMs to end users). Other than that possibility, Windows would do little and a VM with few resources would suffice. Running a few websites and doing typical desktop work on an Ubuntu guest is also low stress so a simple VM should suffice there as well. I agree that this all points towards OS X on bare metal and type 2 on that for Windows and Linux - but I have a few other things in mind which I write about below...

 

You really want to keep anything out of the way of CS6 from performing, and you can do that quite well on a decked out OS X Hackintosh. Putting it inside any kind of virtualization product is a impediment to it, and one you'd regret if you actually demand CS6 perform beyond cropping 16 MPixel photos and stabilizing a few hand held clips.

 

And I suppose this is the ultimate point. While I only use Premiere occasionally and not professionally, I absolutely want it to work and sometimes get involved in rather complex projects with a lot of footage. Further, Logic Pro requires the same sort of resources and is subject to the same sort of bottlenecks (disks, GPU, etc).

 

Because of this the direct install of OS X on the bare metal Hackintosh is the obvious and most logical option when considering performance of those apps. But say I can use those apps successfully in a virtualized OS with only a minimal loss of efficiency? I would sacrifice some performance (assuming it is still highly usable) in order to have the benefits of virtualization. For one management, backup, and restoration of all of my guests is easy and powerful. Also, while Logic Pro and Premiere are hobbies I very much enjoy, having a robust ESXi environment on bare metal would be very beneficial to me for what I actually do for a living. Also, I plan on moving away from system administration and towards coding and web apps so that I can work remotely more often in the future - so I want multiple operating systems and versatility for potential workload and as testing environments. So, these other considerations for the setup have made me curious as to whether I could pull it off. 

 

At the end of the day I will likely try it and if it is not usable or efficient enough revert to OS X on bare metal and use a type 2 hypervisor to achieve my other requirements. Prior to testing though, I'm trying to determine what the best way to provide the SMC to the guest will be. I don't know very much about SMC emulation. Can I trick ESXi into believing it is installed on Mac hardware and if so will it successfully virtualize the emulated SMC and deliver it to the guest OS X? Is that even the right question? I think it is but I'm all ears to those who know more and have experience (which is probably most people on this forum). :)

 

Once I have what ESXi thinks is a supported guest VM with VMware tools installed and standard configuration options open to me I'll quickly determine if running the apps I'd like to will work in a OS X guest, it's getting to that point that I'm most curious about currently. 

 

Thanks again for the detailed response. 

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FYI Logic Pro X needs direct passthrough to the video card as well - If it doesn't have qe/ci you won't be able to see the playhead. 

 

Good luck, this sounds like a cool project regardless. 

 

For specifics on ESXi, I would ask in the virtualization forum. IIRC I'm pretty sure you can either pass SMBios info from the configuration file or use a bootloader like you can with bare metal.

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Hey Esus,

 

I'm glad that promoted thought.

 

I've used Premiere in a guest VM. It works, but the UI is very sluggish even with the best video acceleration I could fashion. If I only needed a few minutes it would be ok, but for even as much as 10 clips with two transitions for a 5 minute video result I found it frustrating, though functional, since I knew what a host install would do.

 

Photoshop for standard personal work is fine in a VM, though.

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I'm getting the feeling from feedback here and elsewhere that while OS X can be virtualized and is supported by VMware that the performance of the demanding apps I require will suffer. Fortunately I'll be purchasing the same machine either way. So, I'll likely go ahead with the plan, virtualize OS X on top of the ESXi hypervisor, and then see what happens. After testing if I don't have the level of functionality I desire, I'll wipe and go with OS X as the primary and run a type 2 hypervisor in it for my other guests. Though a few months out, I'll post back here with whatever I learn. 

 

Thanks again for the comments.

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