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:Before you get too excited...

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The reason I have been wishing for mac os x support in vm's (but not server support!) is because I hate that when I bought a new laptop it came with tiger and panther would not install on it. So if I wanted to sell a program that is validated to work on panther, I had to keep old hardware around that would run panther. Same issue now with leopard and tiger. If I could run the o/s in a vm like I do with windows 2000, xp, and vista, then I'd be able to validate the software for all the o/s's easily. Even win98 if I had to, even without an old computer that could still run it.

jeffk