I know I could have searched the answer to this question, but I'm hoping to find a user experience from users who had/have a similar use case that I have. I know I'm not the only system admin/analyst/engineer who has moved on to a Mac from Windows, so hopefully someone can help me out!
I have a 2017 MacBook Pro 15 (16GB/512GB variant). I normally use my desktop (4C/8T i7, 16GB RAM) for virtual machine work but this time around I'll be doing it all on the MBP. I normally run three (some cases four) virtual machines at once. One is a domain controller that runs Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT), System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Windows Update Services (WSUS). The other 2-3 VMs are clients; Windows 7/10 and/or CentOS/Red Hat.
The reason I run all these VMs is to test my PowerShell scripts and Bash scripts on a Windows Domain, Active Directory ran environment. On the linux side I test things like ADCLI and Centrify authentication, misc. cron and Python scripts. On the Windows side I use PowerShell to configure my MDT structure and then I create and deploy customized images to the Windows clients (this is I/O intensive, in bursts, as images are deployed and captured). I also use Cygwin and subversion editing tools to work with the Linux clients (the linux clients I use as the subversion repository host and of course to do linux things that client users typically do). I do all this on a 4 Core / 8 Thread i7 on Windows 10 Pro, using Hyper-V. This all runs off a single NVME M2 and things run mostly great (can be a little sluggish when images are deploying and capturing but that is to be expected, that process dominates the I/O bandwidth).
Now that my needs are explained, what is the best virtualization host software on Mac? Virtual Box, albeit free, is just... its not very good. I know its good for a couple VMs and for most situations, but I need host software that runs smooth and properly utilizes the I/O capability of the NVME M.2 drive on the MBP. Basically, I need it to run as smooth as possible, just like my Hyper-V hosting software does (think VMWare Tools and how much better that makes VMs run, thats what I'm going for).
Between VMWare and Parallels, what is the best VM host software for my needs?
If I can't get things to run as smoothly as I'm used to with Hyper-V, I may have to give the Surface Book 2 or XPS 15 a try. Luckily I'm doing this on a personal owned laptop, not a company provided one so I other options available to me. I'd rather stay with Mac because Macbook's are awesome, but having access to Hyper-V (free of charge) thanks to Windows 10 Pro is hard to ignore. Hyper-V is really good.
I have a 2017 MacBook Pro 15 (16GB/512GB variant). I normally use my desktop (4C/8T i7, 16GB RAM) for virtual machine work but this time around I'll be doing it all on the MBP. I normally run three (some cases four) virtual machines at once. One is a domain controller that runs Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT), System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Windows Update Services (WSUS). The other 2-3 VMs are clients; Windows 7/10 and/or CentOS/Red Hat.
The reason I run all these VMs is to test my PowerShell scripts and Bash scripts on a Windows Domain, Active Directory ran environment. On the linux side I test things like ADCLI and Centrify authentication, misc. cron and Python scripts. On the Windows side I use PowerShell to configure my MDT structure and then I create and deploy customized images to the Windows clients (this is I/O intensive, in bursts, as images are deployed and captured). I also use Cygwin and subversion editing tools to work with the Linux clients (the linux clients I use as the subversion repository host and of course to do linux things that client users typically do). I do all this on a 4 Core / 8 Thread i7 on Windows 10 Pro, using Hyper-V. This all runs off a single NVME M2 and things run mostly great (can be a little sluggish when images are deploying and capturing but that is to be expected, that process dominates the I/O bandwidth).
Now that my needs are explained, what is the best virtualization host software on Mac? Virtual Box, albeit free, is just... its not very good. I know its good for a couple VMs and for most situations, but I need host software that runs smooth and properly utilizes the I/O capability of the NVME M.2 drive on the MBP. Basically, I need it to run as smooth as possible, just like my Hyper-V hosting software does (think VMWare Tools and how much better that makes VMs run, thats what I'm going for).
Between VMWare and Parallels, what is the best VM host software for my needs?
If I can't get things to run as smoothly as I'm used to with Hyper-V, I may have to give the Surface Book 2 or XPS 15 a try. Luckily I'm doing this on a personal owned laptop, not a company provided one so I other options available to me. I'd rather stay with Mac because Macbook's are awesome, but having access to Hyper-V (free of charge) thanks to Windows 10 Pro is hard to ignore. Hyper-V is really good.
