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Can You Backup & Restore Apple Mac OS X Guests Using vSphere Data Protection (VDP)?

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It is really cool to see more and more customers show interest in running Apple Mac OS X on vSphere. Just the other day there was another interesting question that was raised from a customer asking whether vSphere Data Protection (VDP) would be able to backup and restore Mac OS X guests.  Apparently there is still an assumption that VMware Tools do not exist for Mac OS X guests? Perhaps virtualizing Mac OS X is still relatively new for some folks, but it is just like any other guest operating system that is supported on vSphere.

I think the following two statements should help clarify any confusion that may exist:

  • To virtualize an Apple Mac OS X guest, you need to be running vSphere on Apple hardware. This is due to a requirement in Apple's EULA and is also enforced within the vSphere platform. You can get more details in this article. 
  • VMware Tools does exist for Apple Mac OS X guests, take a look at this article for more details.

Now, if we take a look at VDP's evaluation guide on page 4 we will see the prerequisite for backing up a guest OS is pretty straight forward:

At least one virtual machine running a supported guest operating system (OS) with VMware Tools installed

Since Apple Mac OS X (10.8, 10.7, 10.6 and 10.5) is a supported guest operating system and we have VMware Tools for this operating system, then yes VDP can be used to backup and restore an Apple Mac OS X guest. To demonstrate that this actually works, I have a Mac OS X 10.7 VM running in my home lab (Apple Mac Mini which is not officially supported) and I have deployed the latest version of VDP.

I then setup the backup job for the Mac OS X guests using the super simple VDP backup wizard and then initiate a backup.

Now, let's say I accidentally fat fingered an operation and deleted this VM. Uh oh!? What am I to do? Well don't worry, VDP is there to the rescue!

To restore the VM, it is simply going through the VDP restore wizard and in just a few minutes, I  have now recovered my Mac OS X guest and it is up and running again!

I have said this many times, but it still amazes me on the number of guest operating systems vSphere supports! There really is no workload that vSphere can not virtualize! So if you have any use cases for Mac OS X workloads, rest assure you can safely virtualize it and back it up on vSphere.

Note: Though I showed using VMware VDP as the backup/recovery solution, you should also be able to leverage both VMware vSphere Replication as well as VMware Site Recovery Manager.

number of guest OSes the vSphere platform supports

Enable Auto Startup After Power Failure For Apple Mac Mini

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I recently came across a very useful tidbit after receiving several inquires asking how to configure an Apple Mac Mini to automatically startup after a power failure. This is extremely useful for situations where power is eventually restored and you are not physically around to press the power button. Automatically starting up after a power failure is not a new feature of the Mac Mini and it actually exists on most modern day systems and can be configured using a variety of tools.

The challenge arises when you are running ESXi, how do you go about enabling this functionality in ESXi itself? Well the answer is actually quite simple, you can enable this outside of ESXi. Normally to enable this feature you can either run a setpci command on UNIX/Linux system or configure the energy saver settings in OS X. Several folks from the VMTN community such as zippytiff and twuhabro have already confirmed having success using the latter option when booting OS X off a USB or SD card to modify the energy saving settings.

I finally got a chance to look into this a bit more for myself and with a bit of research, I found several other methods which also works and may potentially be easier.

Note: I have heard that historically the auto startup flag has not persisted in older Apple hardware, but for the new Mac Mini 5,3 and 6,2, they seem to be persisting without any issue from my testing. YMMV depending on your hardware and/or firmware.

Method 1 (Configure in OS X)

If you already have OS X install on your Mac Mini, then you just need open up the System Preferences and enable auto startup under the Energy Saver section. Once that has been enabled, you can then perform your ESXi installation.

If you already have ESXi installed, then you can use either Method 2 or 3.

Method 2 (Configure using bootable Ubuntu on USB)

We can create a bootable Ubuntu image running off of a USB device (minimal footprint) and run the following setpci command to enable auto startup:

setpci -s 0:1f.0 0xa4.b=0

If you are interested in the gory details on the above command, please refer to this great article which breaks it all down for you. After you have created your Ubuntu image using the instructions in the above link, you can boot off of the USB device (Make sure to hold down ALT/OPT key so you can select to boot off of the USB device). Once Ubuntu has booted up, you will right click on the purple icon on the upper left hand corner and type in terminal.

You will then launch the terminal application and type the following to change over to root user.

sudo su -

Finally, you will enter the above setpci command which will enable the auto startup. At this point, you can type reboot and remove the USB device.

Method 3 (Configure using bootable OS X on USB)

Another method is to create a bootable OS X image running off of a USB device and change the power management settings by using the pmset utility. To enable auto startup, run the following command in the terminal:

pmset autorestart 1

You will need the original OS X installer and if you are using either Lion or Mountain Lion, you can use Lion DiskMaker to help you create the bootable USB image (Make sure to hold down ALT/OPT key so you can select to boot off of the USB device). Once the OS X installer boots up, at the top select Utilities and click on the Terminal application.

Go ahead and run the above command to enable auto start and then type reboot and remove the USB device.

The last thing to do of course is to actually test this out on your Mac Mini. Go ahead and let the system boot up and then yank the power cord and then give it a few seconds before plugging it back in. You should see the Mac Mini automatically power back on after you plug the power back in.

References:

 

Configure Apple Mac Mini to Default Boot ESXi

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If you are running ESXi on an Apple Mac Mini and it is installed on a USB key, you probably have noticed that the Mac Mini tries to boot from disk by default and instead of using the USB device. This means when you reboot your ESXi host each time, you will need to hold down the "ALT/OPTION" key which will present you with a boot menu to select the device you wish to boot from.

This can be quite annoying if you have a headless setup for your Mac Mini and you just want it to automatically boot off of the right device containing your ESXi installation. To fix this, you can configure the default boot device which can be done by first selecting the device you wish to boot off of as shown in the screenshot above. Next, hold down on the "CONTROL" key which will turn the straight arrow into circular arrow icon as shown in the screenshot below.

Now you just need to either hit enter or if you have a mouse, click on the circular arrow icon and this will configure the default boot device the Apple Mac Mini will use going forward. It is that simple! If you want to boot off of another device after configuring the default boot device, you can still do so by holding down "ALT/OPTION" key while the Mac Mini is still booting up.

Credit goes to this site for solution.