Recommendations requested for running OpenBSD on 2011 Mac mini

[anonymouse99]

Greetings!

I'm looking for recommendations on running OpenBSD using a VM on my 2011 Mac Mini. My choices currently are VMWare 7, Parallels 10 but I'm open to others. I'm not looking for making too many tweaks/workarounds in OpenBSD ... My goal is to run DNS, squid etc. and not wanting to buy a separate machine for it.

I am also interested to know if choice of SSD matters? I have a 480Gb Crucial M500, but I can also get a different one if it really would make a significant performance difference. Currently I have 8GB RAM in it and may be looking to upgrade that to 16GB at some point.

Many thanks!

 

[maflynn]

Your only other choice AFAIK os Oracle's VirtualBox which is free.

Since Vmware and Parallels offer a trial period, try both and see what you think. Since VB is free, you can play with that as well.

I prefer Vmware because of the stability and support, but it really boils down to personal preference.

 

[anonymouse99]

Many thanks!

Does the choice of SSD matter when running a VM (MacOS, Vmware, OpenBSD) ? I'll leave my machine turned on 24 x 7 - would it be better to get a higher grade SSD or will something like a Crucial M500 work?

 

[2984839]

I don't believe the choice of SSD will matter if you're running it in a VM. The only time it might make a difference is if you installed OpenBSD natively, as it doesn't support Trim yet. In that case, a drive with good garbage collection would be preferable, but most modern SSDs will handle that pretty well.