Apple to Allow Virtual Mac OS X Server Instances

Glenn Fleishman writes "Apple has changed its license for Mac OS X Server 10.5 (Leopard Server) to allow virtualized instances. VMware and Parallels are poised to offer support. This probably presages a thoroughly overhauled Xserve product with greater capability for acting as a virtual machine server, too. 'Ben Rudolph, Director of Corporate Communications for Parallels, told me, "Enabling Leopard Server to run in a virtual machine may take some time, but we're working closely with Apple on it and will make it public as quickly as possible." Pat Lee, Product Manager at VMware, concurred, saying "We applaud Apple for the exciting licensing changes implemented in Leopard Server. Apple customers can now run Mac OS X Server, Windows, Linux and other x86 operating systems simultaneously on Apple hardware so we are excited about the possibilities this change presents." Although neither company committed to specific features or timetables, it appears as though we should be seeing virtualization products from both that will enable an Xserve to run multiple copies of Leopard Server in virtual machines.'"

Comments

Re:server?

[Chirs]

It supports Apple's proprietary server protocols for serving to other Macs....

This could be good...

[BUL2294]

While AAPL wouldn't allow it, it opens the possibility of running OSX in a VM on a PC.

There's a new marketing plan that Apple should consider... Offer OSX to PC owners with a stripped-down version of Linux and an emulator, and Apple could get away with not having to support a myriad of hardware & their associated drivers...

But, alas, Stevie J. is too full of himself to consider what the consumers want...

Re:server?

[toadlife]

Much better GUI, On a server?

it is vetted as official UNIX while Linux is not Who cares?

and enterprise customers may have more faith in Apple as opposed to a much smaller company like RedHat to be able to support a massive service agreement. That statement makes no sense to me. Why would people have more faith in Apple, who has dropped the ball on (or purposely ignored) enterprise support for it's entire lifetime, over a company like Redhat who has been doing enterprise Linux for it's entire lifetime?

Furthermore Apple is also beginning to come out with integrated, enterprise level software. That makes Apple a more integrated enterprise solution going forward than Linux is. If Apple is just beginning to come out with integrated, enterprise level software, that puts them about 10-15 years behind the competition.