Run Mac desktops virtually on PC servers

Oct 09, '08 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

I'm the administrator for a group of creative artists and have a number of Macs (of most all flavors) running on our network. While I love OS X Server, it remains (for me) too hard and complex to do what I need. I want an easy path to manage all my Mac users on a central server farm (preferably HP servers, since that is what our IT department has in our data center). I've heard about Mac OS X server running virtually, but only on Xserve.

My quest for running OS X virtually only led to more frustration:

  1. I don't really want to virtualize OS X Server.
  2. I don't need or want to manage two licenses (one on the server and one on the client).
  3. We don't have Xserves and probably never will.
Then Bingo! I found DiscCloud -- and it works perfectly, with the help of this hint, of course! Here are some tips to help get it running: That did the trick. I was able to follow the video instructions (with the exception of the VMware installation bit, as mine is for Windows), and create a MacBook Air user having a one terbayte home directory! I can back up the MacBook as a virtual machine running on our HPs -- I love it!

[robg adds: To download the trial, you'll need to register for a free account. I haven't tested this one beyond verifying the download works.]

Comments (23)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20081007065012185