To ensure customers have the best possible support experience, VMware has published KB71142 which customers should review prior to calling VMware Support.
APPLE MAC SERVER HARDWARE UPDATE
However, one request that we frequently hear from our customers is when can VMware officially support the Mac Mini and have it listed on the HCL? Today, I am happy to announce that the Apple Mac Mini 6,2 (Late 2012) and the Apple Mac Mini 7,1 (Late 2014) is now officially supported by VMware and has been listed on the VMware HCL for latest release of ESXi 6.7 Update 2! One important thing to note is that the Apple Mac Mini is not an Enterprise-class hardware platform and as such, the hardware may be less reliable than what you are normally used to. UPDATE (08/27/20) - Apple 2018 Mac Mini 8,1 has been added to VMware HCL which supports both ESXi 6.7 Update 3 (Patch 03) & ESXi 7.0b
APPLE MAC SERVER HARDWARE PRO
Mac Pro with Snow Leopard Server Mac Pro systems deliver performance and expandability equal to or surpassing Xserve, and offer an excellent server solution for customers looking for the highest levels of performance, storage, and expandability. It runs amazing well for our customers, especially for a consumer device, who have deployed them in their datacenters ranging from a couple hundred to several thousands for some of our larger Enterprise customers, one such example is MacStadium, the largest Apple Infrastructure-as-a-service provider which many of the Fortune 100/500 companies are leveraging to provide them with a platform to build and develop for the Apple eco-system. existing Xserve systems with new Apple hardware have the following two server solutions to choose from. Today, ESXi installs on the Mac Mini just like any other x86 platform. I still recall in the early days where it took several "hacks" to get ESXi to successfully boot and install.
APPLE MAC SERVER HARDWARE SOFTWARE
With that said, VMware has historically only supported two Apple hardware platforms: Xserve (now EOL'd) and the Mac Pro (6,1) which is officially listed on VMware's Hardware Compatibility list and this has been officially supported by VMware since 2012 when we first introduced support for MacOS Virtualization with the vSphere 5.0 release.Īs many of you know, I have been a huge advocate of this platform for a number of years now and I have been working with various Engineers over the years to ensure that we have the exact same user experience when working with ESXi on the Mac Mini as you do with the Mac Pro. A quiet post on Apple’s support site last month revealed that the company is significantly dialing back the capabilities of its macOS Server package, the 20 add-on software that turns your Mac. With instant activation, unlimited usage, and 24x7 remote hands support, bare metal Macs from MacStadium are the perfect solution for your Mac compute needs.
For the past 6 years, the Apple Mac Mini has been one of the most popular hardware platforms for Virtualizing MacOS running on VMware vSphere enabling our customers to develop and build iOS and MacOS applications. Whether you need a Mac desktop for individual, corporate, or educational use, MacStadium has a cloud-hosted solution for remote access to macOS on dedicated Mac hardware.