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Useful Links - Installing Mac OS X in a VM & P2V'ing Mac OS X

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A couple of weeks back I received an interesting email regarding a couple of topics related to Apple Mac OS X and vSphere. The first one was related to the steps required for installing Mac OS X in a Virtual Machine. Though the process for installing Mac OS X in a Virtual Machine is pretty straight forward, there is an additional step that you must preform before you can get started. This was actually something I ran into when I first tried to install Mac OS X in a Virtual Machine. I found this handy online resource by VMware called Guest Operating System Installation Guide that provides the exact steps required and you will find a link for each of the supported Mac OS X systems as shown in the list below.

  • Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)
  • Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)
  • Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
  • Mac OS X Server 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
  • Mac OS X Server 10.5 (Leopard)

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Quick Tip - Connecting to multiple View Brokers using Horizion View Client on Mac OS X

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On a regular basis, I will remote into at least 3 to 4 different lab environments where desktops are serviced through different Horizon View brokers. Being within VMware R&D, I get to work on a variety of projects and that means I need to jump in and out of an environment for development, troubleshooting, reproduction, etc. I recently upgraded my View Client 1.3 (before the name change) to the latest Horizon View Client which is now 2.1 and to my surprise I found that I could no longer simultaneously connect to multiple desktops from different View brokers. I have been using this feature for quite some time and I was just surprised to see it gone.

For those of you who have not used this before, you used to be able to create "New Connection" while being connected to a desktop as seen in the screenshot below.

In the latest Horizon View Client, this option is now grayed out.

One new feature that was added in the latest version of the Horizon View Client is the ability to connect to multiple desktops from the same View broker which can come handy. However, for my particular use case this is a set back and disconnecting/reconnecting is just not ideal, especially when I know I need to context switch between two desktops.

A workaround that would allow you to connect to different desktops from different View brokers is to launch the first instance of Horizion View Client from the launch pad. Once the first instance is running, you will then need to open a terminal and run the following command which will launch additional instances of the Horizon View Client:

"/Applications/VMware Horizon View Client.app/Contents/MacOS/vmware-view"

I have been told this feature was removed in the 1.4 release of View Client due to some performance issues found in Mac OS X RDP sessions. I hope this will eventually be fixed as it was a really nice feature to have. For now, you will need to use the work around if you need to connect to multiple View brokers. For myself personally, I have decided to downgrade back to version 1.3 release, unfortunately this build is no longer available for public download.

How to change hardware serial number for Mac OS X Guest?

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There was an interesting question that was asked the other day about changing the hardware serial number for an Apple Mac OS X guest as the generated serial number is not compatible with services such as Apple Caching Service or iMessage. I recall seeing this question get asked awhile back, but I could not immediately find the answer but thanks to Darius Davis (VMware Engineer) who provided the quick answer.

We have a facility to generate a "short" serial number which should be suitable for recent Apple software.  The option is enabled by default for OS X 10.9 guests.  To enable it for earlier guest OS versions, you'll need to power off your virtual machine and edit its configuration to add the following option:

SMBIOS.use12CharSerialNumber = "TRUE"

As mentioned by Darius, if you are running Mac OS X VM prior to 10.9 (Mavericks) you will need to add the following advanced VM setting by first powering it off and then add the above setting. There are two recommended ways of performing this change using either the vSphere C# Client or vSphere Web Client and instructions are listed below.

Note: Though you can also edit the VMX configuration file by hand, for those that are not familiar on how to reload the configuration file, it is best you use the UI.

vSphere C# Client:
Edit Settings -> VM Options -> Advanced -> Edit Configurations

vSphere Web Client:
Edit Settings -> Options -> Advanced -> General -> Configuration Parameters

Once you have added the advanced setting, you can now power back on your Mac OS X VM and when you click on the "About this Mac" option on the upper left hand side of the Apple icon you should see the Mac OS X version string. Click on the version string twice and you should now see the serial number that is generated which should not be longer than 12 characters.

As of writing this article the latest Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) is not yet officially on the VMware HCL for latest release of ESXi 5.5 as the OS just came out recently, however it is still possible to create the a Mac OS X 10.9 guest using the new vSphere Web Client. Be sure to keep your eyes on the VMware HCL for support of Mac OS X 10.9 on ESXi 5.5 here.