Installing OS X Server on VMWare ESXi 5.5

[MrEgo]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for some good documentation on how to do this legally. Everything I've read so far tends to skip past the part on how to obtain a bootable copy of OS X. This is for business use, so I do have to keep it compliant. When I called Apple's Enterprise Support, they did tell me that this was possible with OS X server, but since they didn't support it, they wouldn't tell me the steps I needed to take to get it done.

I'm relatively new to the Apple world, so keep that in mind. Is it as simple as downloading a "copy" of OS X Mountain Lion from the App Store (from a Mac device), and uploading an .iso or .dmg file to one of my VMWare Datastores so that I can boot my VM from it?

Thank you in advance!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It is, essentially, that simple.

Except for the part where VMWare checks to make sure you're running an Apple-manufactured ESX host before it'll let you boot OS X.

 

[MrEgo]

It is, essentially, that simple.

Except for the part where VMWare checks to make sure you're running an Apple-manufactured ESX host before it'll let you boot OS X.

Hm... so... what to do at that point?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Hm... so... what to do at that point?

Dunno. Haven't had time to experiment. Easy answer would be to buy a mac.

 

[MrEgo]

Dunno. Haven't had time to experiment. Easy answer would be to buy a mac.

Heh, yeah, it just seems asinine and just so "Apple" of them to require Apple hardware when our entire datacenter consists of 6 HP blade servers in a single chassis. Needing to buy Apple hardware would be such an inefficient use of rack space and energy for us.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What's your business use for OS X? Perhaps there are alternatives.

 

[postmortemIA]

why did you mention word legally then? osx license agreement is very known... it is legal only on apple's hardware.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If you're just trying to manage iPads or OS X workstations, JAMF Software's Casper Suite duplicates the features of Apple's Profile Manager (OS X Server) and runs on Linux.

OS X boxes can be tied to LDAP or AD for accounts/access control. But they don't pay attention to group policy so you'd need something like Casper to handle the "guests have access to these applications, these websites, etc." stuff.

And of course CIFS shares work fine.