Virtualization software for New Macbook Pro

[dyn]

This is what I do: I have a 2016 MacBook Pro 15" which is my daily driver...
Then there is a cheap VM box (I use Virtual Box on Windows 10) with 32GB RAM I built for ~$350 (you can build it for much cheaper) which has atleast 8 VMs running at a time, one of it being Windows 10. This is 24x7 running and all I need to do is SSH (if Linux OS) or RDP (if Windows) from my MBP.

That is another way of doing it but I'd use Hyper-V which comes for free in Windows 10 Pro instead. You just have to enable it and it will do a better job. Another option would be to use KVM if you fancy Linux or use VMware ESXi (also free). The latter might be a bit more picky when it comes to hardware though.

Intel NUCs are great machines for this btw.

When I'm out of my home, I connect using VPN (one of the VM runs OpenVPN).

Although the VPN makes it more secure it comes at a cost: it has a big impact on performance, your ISP has to support it (some block it) as well as the network you are on (again, quite a few will block VPN). Not to mention the dependency on a working internet connection.

These kind of dedicated setups are nice if you want to run machines 24/7 for whatever reason. They suck when you need to be doing these kind of things on the go due to the dependency on a working internet connection (many students and people attending conferences will know what I mean by this). For me that's the reason why I use virtualisation on a dedicated box as well as my notebook. And yes, I went for VMware products on both due to matureness of their hypervisor, it being the most used and the integration of all of their virtualisation products but you can use whatever combination you want, that's the fun part

This setup ensures that my MBP runs without its fans spinning like Jet and the VM box is easily and cheapily upgradeable with more RAM and SSD.

That's because you've moved the workload from your notebook to a separate machine so instead of the notebook going bananas it's now the other machine that will go bananas. The only way to prevent the setup from going bananas is to spec it correctly and use sane settings for both hypervisor and vm's.

 

[jerryk]

Yeah I use VMware with VMs for Windows 10, OS X El Capitan and Ubuntu.

Ubuntu as a guest has the fastest performance, because it's a super efficient OS. Feels like natively using the machine.

OS X is very, very fast except that it has no 3D emulation. That's a limitation from Apple, because they don't let any VM developers create virtual 3rd party graphics drivers. They don't want VMs to run as nicely as a real Mac.

Windows 10 is a bloated OS and is slow to start (1.5 minutes), and once it's running the complex start menu is quite slow. But other than that, the Windows 10 performance in actual applications is good. I'm gonna try @ZapNZs tip of turning off all Windows 10 UI animations, actually!

My 7 year old dual-core MacBook Pro is definitely to blame. I'm going to upgrade as soon as Apple releases a touchscreen desktop device.

Edit: Windows 10 runs great when I set it to "Adjust for best performance" (in Windows 10 System Properties > Advanced > Performance Options). No more syrupy animations.

Interesting. The Windows 10 VM starts up from cold in 10 seconds my 2015 15" rmbp under Parallels with Windows 10 default settings.

If you close Parallels without shutting down the OS it freeze the state of the VM and will restart you are back right where you left off. I just tried it and it relaunched me in the midst of VS 2015 in 6 seconds.

 

[RockstarSR]

That is another way of doing it but I'd use Hyper-V which comes for free in Windows 10 Pro instead. You just have to enable it and it will do a better job. Another option would be to use KVM if you fancy Linux or use VMware ESXi (also free). The latter might be a bit more picky when it comes to hardware though.

Intel NUCs are great machines for this btw.


Although the VPN makes it more secure it comes at a cost: it has a big impact on performance, your ISP has to support it (some block it) as well as the network you are on (again, quite a few will block VPN). Not to mention the dependency on a working internet connection.

These kind of dedicated setups are nice if you want to run machines 24/7 for whatever reason. They suck when you need to be doing these kind of things on the go due to the dependency on a working internet connection (many students and people attending conferences will know what I mean by this). For me that's the reason why I use virtualisation on a dedicated box as well as my notebook. And yes, I went for VMware products on both due to matureness of their hypervisor, it being the most used and the integration of all of their virtualisation products but you can use whatever combination you want, that's the fun part


That's because you've moved the workload from your notebook to a separate machine so instead of the notebook going bananas it's now the other machine that will go bananas. The only way to prevent the setup from going bananas is to spec it correctly and use sane settings for both hypervisor and vm's.

I have been using this setup over last several years (started from the days of 2011 MBP) and I never encountered an ISP which blocks VPN! I use it regularly with At&t hotspot, airports wifis, Comcast, RCN and they all work fine. As you said there may be some ISPs though..fortunately I never encountered them.

My usage is mostly 70% at home, 20% at conferences with decent connectivity and 10% on road (At&t hotspots - crap connection) and I never faced any issues. SSH is so light weight that it works fine even on super crap connections.

I'm not hard selling this idea nor saying this is the best approach, but just saying that this is better if you want to run multiple VMs simultaneously. Even if you spec out and get the top end MBP for 5K, it still cant come close to even a $400 dedicated VM machine. + Imagine the impact on the battery life on your MBP when running all those VMs.

Like you mentioned, taking a hybrid approach of running one or two VMs on your MBP with rest running on your home server may be a great idea, depending on your needs.

 

[ciemunio]

I have been using this setup over last several years (started from the days of 2011 MBP) and I never encountered an ISP which blocks VPN! I use it regularly with At&t hotspot, airports wifis, Comcast, RCN and they all work fine. As you said there may be some ISPs though..fortunately I never encountered them.

My usage is mostly 70% at home, 20% at conferences with decent connectivity and 10% on road (At&t hotspots - crap connection) and I never faced any issues. SSH is so light weight that it works fine even on super crap connections.

I had problems with vpn connections sometimes, on some hotels, and restaurants etc. Sometimes it helps when you have VPN on 443 port with simple blocks.
And I had one situation, when I realized that at customers office is no wifi and 3g connection...

So, for presentations I like to get vmwares on my laptop as backup to VPN. For bigger environments, I use servers. But for some tests, I prefer to have it on my laptop, check what I need and turn it off.

 

[SteveJobzniak]

Interesting. The Windows 10 VM starts up from cold in 10 seconds my 2015 15" rmbp under Parallels with Windows 10 default settings.

If you close Parallels without shutting down the OS it freeze the state of the VM and will restart you are back right where you left off. I just tried it and it relaunched me in the midst of VS 2015 in 6 seconds.

1. My old MacBook Pro 2010 dual core vs your 2015 Retina MacBook Pro is not fair.

2. I mean a full startup and letting the full desktop load including everything in the whole notification area (that part takes ages). I do not mean just to the login screen. A cold start until Windows 10 login screen takes 15 seconds (I just timed it) on my slow computer.

3. If I close VMware without shutting down the OS it suspends it and the suspend is super fast (a few seconds to save a state). Resuming took 4.5 seconds.

 

[jerryk]

1. My old MacBook Pro 2010 dual core vs your 2015 Retina MacBook Pro is not fair.

2. I mean a full startup and letting the full desktop load including everything in the whole notification area (that part takes ages). I do not mean just to the login screen. A cold start until Windows 10 login screen takes 15 seconds (I just timed it) on my slow computer.

3. If I close VMware without shutting down the OS it suspends it and the suspend is super fast (a few seconds to save a state). Resuming took 4.5 seconds.

I think the OP was looking at the 2016 13" or 2015 15" so I wanted to give them some numbers they can expect.

The 10 seconds startup includes the login. Windows 10 is fast under the VM.

 

[SteveJobzniak]

The 10 seconds startup includes the login. Windows 10 is fast under the VM.

The difference is in our computer hardware. My old CPU, a HD instead of SSD, etc. My laptop is half a decade older than yours.

Virtualization (Parallels and VMware) both use Intel VT-x hardware-based virtualization built into our CPUs. There's no software-emulation of a CPU. The OS code runs natively on our CPUs. So number crunching performance (such as starting up Windows) is the same in both Parallels and VMware, thanks to both using VT-x: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization

 

[dyn]

SSH is so light weight that it works fine even on super crap connections.

And if you do then you can always switch to Mosh which is designed with mobile devices and crappy connections in mind.

I'm not hard selling this idea nor saying this is the best approach, but just saying that this is better if you want to run multiple VMs simultaneously. Even if you spec out and get the top end MBP for 5K, it still cant come close to even a $400 dedicated VM machine.

That is nonsense. It depends on the hardware as much as the software used. If you run Windows 10 with Virtualbox you already have a higher resource usage than a vm running in Veertu on OS X on hardware with similar specs (things would have been different when using Hyper-V on Win10). Also, if you are going to run 4 small and simple Linux vm's you don't really need a lot of power so just about anything will do, even the MacBook. When we take the average Intel NUC that costs you about $400 you'll have specs that are not close to the 13" MBP 2016, let alone, the 15" version.

+ Imagine the impact on the battery life on your MBP when running all those VMs.

Imagine the impact on the power draw of that $400 machine when running all those vm's! In other words, running vm's on ANY machine is going to draw power. In case of a notebook that simply means using your power adapter more often (or just keep it connected when you do things like this).

The disadvantage to the dedicated box is the fact that it is yet another machine. You have the extra cost in hardware, maybe software but most definitely for the power that it draws. You are running 2 machines instead of 1 and one of them is, in your case and mine, running 24/7 which is a lot more than you'd run a notebook. In the end running 2 machines is actually more costly in terms of money and power but it is the only option if you want to run something 24/7. If you are not using vm's this way I do not recommend the dedicated box approach. Just use your notebook because it is simpler to manage and cheaper.

 

[zarathu]

1. No sound, because they screwed up their Core Audio driver. Not sure if they've fixed that yet but it was like that for several months and several releases in 2016. The reason they didn't fix it? Because (according to their forums) they don't have many active Mac developers. They then tried fixing it but kept re-introducing the bug. Again because "we don't have many active Mac developers" so they didn't notice they broke it again.

2. Try running an OpenGL desktop like Ubuntu, and open a video player like VLC. Now play a video. Now place another window on top of the video window. The video will still play through the window that's supposed to be on top of it. Graphics compositing issues galore.

And the performance of VirtualBox is super slow. Disk I/O is terrible. Graphics performance is laughable and cripplingly slow. I spoke to one of the VirtualBox developers (he's officially employed by Oracle) on IRC about it one day and he agreed that VirtualBox is pretty terrible but that it's the only free choice.

As far as I'm concerned, if you need heavy lifting on a windows program you need a windows pc not a Mac. Using windows programs on Macs is for the might and medium duty stuff. If you have job critical light and medium duty stuff then you need a real program such as VM Ware or Parallels, if you want both at the same time.

In the Tiger and Snow Leopard Days(remember them) Virtual Box didn't exist, and I used a copy of VM Ware.

If you are not time critical, are not job critical, and you have a couple of programs that you need to run in windows, then Virtual box works great. Using Virtual Box to run a full fledged windows environment in a Mac, like thre or four programs open, multiple windows and composting graphics is not what you use a free program for. For that you must have either a real PC with a lot of RAM or a high powered VM WARE program.

Virtual Box is wonderful for what it should be used for. Its not used for some of the things have been suggested. NO FREE program can be expected to do that, nor should it.

 

[duervo]

I will very likely be using a new 15" Pro soon and will be using 2 VMs or possibly 3 depending on how smoothly I can get 2 to run. I do security work and want to experiment with tools in different OSes. Root OS being MacOS, then possibly 2 flavors of Linux (Kali & undecided) and probably Windows 10 as VMs. I want to be able to switch between OSes and provide the ability to move files between them or isolate them entirely in case I am sand-boxing a potential ransom-ware situation. I may be blowing away VMs and recreating them after I crater or royally screw one up. I dont want to risk integrity of the root OS (MacOS), or the Windows VM in the process of operating the rest.

I know there are a few different flavors of VM software out there; Bootcamp, Parallels, VM Ware, etc. When I go to the bucket I want to get whats best for this use case without asking for a Lamborghini needlessly. As a IT engineer, which would you chose and why?


Thanks for the help!

VMware Fusion Pro for IT "engineering" that you suggest.

Being able to create your own virtual networks in a simple fashion (one of the added features of Fusion Pro) is a significant time saver. That would be a boon to any type of work where learning various network security tools is needed (this is inferred by your reference to Kali.)

 

[SteveJobzniak]

@zarathu I agree completely. VirtualBox is wonderful for light usage, starting some small utility app you can't use on a Mac and so on.

Another option that you should check out is Wineskin. It runs the Windows apps natively on Mac, by recreating all Windows APIs.

 

[zarathu]

Sounds more and more like I need VM Ware Fusion. How much can I expect that to run me if i want ~4 VMs. And will the i7 500GB SSD on the 15" Mac be sufficient for this? What is the max number of VMs you should run without wanting to donkey punch your machine?

Last time I looked it was about $200. The max VM's is dependent on whether you need long battery life, and how much RAM you have.

 

[mcomp112]

I use Windows 10 ~50% of the time on my MacBook and I've used both Parallels and VMware extensively. My personal preference is VMware. It just feels snappier when running Windows and my laptop seems to runs a bit cooler with it on. (I've never actually run benchmarks or tested thoroughly for comparison though). I'm currently using Parallels 12 though because I can get a good discount on it.

 

[SteveJobzniak]

VMware Fusion Pro for IT "engineering" that you suggest.

The difference between VMware Fusion 8 and VMware Fusion Pro 8 is here:
https://www.vmware.com/us/products/fusion-pro.html#compare

Open the header that says "Compare VMware Fusion 8 to VMware Fusion 8 Pro". Keep in mind that Pro is about $200. So it's more than twice as expensive as regular Fusion.

I doubt that the original poster needs any of those features. But only he can answer that.

Here's the list of added Pro features (I combined all Pro features both from that table above, and from the table on the regular Fusion page):

Create linked clones
Create full clone
Virtual network editor
Secure VM encryption
Access virtual machines hosted on VMware vSphere, vCloud Air, ESXi or Workstation Pro
Upload or download virtual machines to vSphere, ESXi or Workstation Pro
Upload virtual machine to vCloud Air
Updated Resource Chart for multiple ESXi hosts
OVF Export (for creating compressed "VM appliances" that other people can easily import)
Create per virtual machine hot keys
Create restricted virtual machines
Create expiring virtual machines
Single virtual machine mode for managed environments
Eligible for VMware Basic and Production Support

As for Pro's Network editor, it's available in Preferences - Network, and it allows you to add MORE virtual networks:

Everything you see above is the default set of networks that exist in VMware Fusion 8 too. So your Fusion 8 license can use "Private to my Mac" for all of your VMs which puts them all on a virtual network that can speak to each other but cannot see your Mac or your external network or the internet!

VMs can have multiple network adapters. So one VM could have one connected to the internet and one connected to "Private to my Mac". A second VM could have only "Private to my Mac". Then the 2nd VM could use a proxy running on the 1st VM so that all outgoing connections must be routed through the 1st VM. Good for isolating the VMs and perfectly controlling what traffic gets out.

With Pro, you can press the Plus sign and add MORE of those virtual networks, so that some VMs could have one virtual network and another pair of VMs could have another virtual network. But that is overkill. If you are just testing threats and don't want internet connectivity, or the occasional VM-to-VM-only networking, then non-Pro Fusion is all you need!

 

[zarathu]

@zarathu I agree completely. VirtualBox is wonderful for light usage, starting some small utility app you can't use on a Mac and so on.

Another option that you should check out is Wineskin. It runs the Windows apps natively on Mac, by recreating all Windows APIs.

I have two pieces of software that I used to use in virtual on my Powerbook 800 back about 17 years ago. It ran an aceptable Windows ME. I then moved up to Windows 2000. And the software ran on that too. Then I upgraded the windows software to run XP, which ran inin emulation of Mac in windows on the power PC. The software is essential for some things I do, but nowhere powerful at all. Its below light duty. Virtual Box works great for me in my two Macs, and it worked great running Ubuntu 14.04, which ran XP in a cage(I mean a window).

Wine would not run the two programs I need.

 

[jerryk]

The difference is in our computer hardware. My old CPU, a HD instead of SSD, etc. My laptop is half a decade older than yours.

Virtualization (Parallels and VMware) both use Intel VT-x hardware-based virtualization built into our CPUs. There's no software-emulation of a CPU. The OS code runs natively on our CPUs. So number crunching performance (such as starting up Windows) is the same in both Parallels and VMware, thanks to both using VT-x: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization

I sure hope a 2015 system would be faster. And oh my HD instead of SSD. Best money I every spent on my 2011 mbp was a SSD. Night and day difference.

Thanks for the info on VT-x. The only time I worried about that before was to run HAXM so I could run the native x86 Android Emulator.

Frankly I worry about all these companies longenvity. I think Parallels switched to the subscription model for cash flow reasons, and last year VMware fired the Fusion dev team (thanks Dell) out here.

 

[SteveJobzniak]

@jerryk I'm not upgrading anything. I'm waiting for a touchscreen Mac - either a next MacBook Pro or an upcoming iMac. ;-) I'd be surprised if they don't add touch to at least the iMac. To catch up with the Microsoft Surface Studio. That's the one to beat now.

 

[dyn]

Frankly I worry about all these companies longenvity. I think Parallels switched to the subscription model for cash flow reasons, and last year VMware fired the Fusion dev team (thanks Dell) out here.

They only fired the team that did the frontend work of Fusion and did so in the beginning of 2016 (today almost exactly 1 year ago). The main component is the hypervisor which is used among all their virtualisation products (ESXi, Workstation, Fusion). They did state that they were still working on Fusion and actually released a major update that was free (they haven't been for quite some time!): 8.5. The changelog did mention some nice things which made me upgrade from 7 to 8.5 so it seems that VMware is still putting money where their mouth is.

However, with Apple having its own hypervisor in OS X you really not need worry. There also still is Virtualbox, the open source project that has been surviving Oracle ownership for years now.

 

[SteveJobzniak]

@dyn Actually, Fusion still has developers. They just fired the American ones and moved to Russian developers, or something like that. And that's just for the Fusion GUI / front-end.

The actual VMware hypervisor core is used in all their products and is in full development with its long-time, experienced team. They'd be crazy to drop that team and their decades of VMware experience, since VMware is the gold standard in virtualization. Their longevity as a company is guaranteed.

The Fusion GUI for Macs gets updates whenever it needs it. Most recently November 29th, 2016.

They also listen to their customers. Originally they followed Parallel's model of charging for every update that added OS compatibility (such as Windows 7, Windows 10, etc). Customers didn't want to pay for "major" versions that just add OS compatibility, so they told us they would break that pattern and they released "Fusion 8.5" (with Windows 10 compatibility) for free instead of calling it "Fusion 9".

Major upgrades to VMware Fusion are major: Improved performance, new features, etc.

In short, they don't extort money from you, unlike Parallels. I hated my time with Parallels. They were nickel-and-diming like crazy.

 

[jerryk]

@jerryk I'm not upgrading anything. I'm waiting for a touchscreen Mac, either a next MacBook Pro or upcoming iMac. ;-) I'd be surprised if they don't add touch to at least the iMac. Like the Microsoft Surface Studio. That's the one to beat now.

I am with you. Could have upgraded to the 2016 MBP, but did not see the need coming from the 2015, and I think the 2017 will be more stable and there will be more USB-C peripherals by end of year.

Not sure about touch for Macs. Some people have suggested a pencil that will use the new touchpad. But, I have a iPad Pro 9.7 and a pencil that I love, so I would have a prefer to draw right on the screen. I am going to take a hard look at the Surface Pro 5 when it comes out.

 

[SteveJobzniak]

@jerryk The USB-C ports were the major issue with the new MBP for me. Such a big step forward and big step backwards.

 

[dyn]

@dyn Actually, Fusion still has developers. They just fired the American ones and moved to Russian developers, or something like that. And that's just for the Fusion GUI / front-end.

Yes, some of the laid off VMware employees hinted that development will move to China.

The actual VMware hypervisor core is used in all their products and is in full development with its long-time, experienced team. They'd be crazy to drop that team and their decades of VMware experience, since VMware is the gold standard in virtualization. Their longevity as a company is guaranteed.

The hypervisor is what makes VMware. Without that, VMware does not exist.

They also listen to their customers. Originally they followed Parallel's model of charging for every update that added OS compatibility (such as Windows 7, Windows 10, etc). Customers didn't want to pay for "major" versions that just add OS compatibility, so they released "Fusion 8.5" for free instead of calling it "Fusion 9".

They haven't been listening to their customers since Fusion 3.0 which caused a lot of debates on their forums. After that release the only thing you had were major releases that followed the x.0 scheme. Before that release you had x.0 and something like x.5 which were treated equal. Most paid for VMware Fusion 1.0 and simply upgraded all their way until the release of 3.0 without any costs. As of 3.0 they adopted the same model as Parallels had where you had to pay for each release. The very minor bugfix releases were still free. As of 8.5 they went back to the pre-3.0 era. No idea why they reversed course but imho it is a necessity because they were turning into Parallels. Not very smart considering a lot of their users left Parallels due to the price model and bad support. I sure don't hope this was a one off.

 

[Marshall73]

That is another way of doing it but I'd use Hyper-V which comes for free in Windows 10 Pro instead. You just have to enable it and it will do a better job. Another option would be to use KVM if you fancy Linux or use VMware ESXi (also free). The latter might be a bit more picky when it comes to hardware though.

Intel NUCs are great machines for this btw.


Although the VPN makes it more secure it comes at a cost: it has a big impact on performance, your ISP has to support it (some block it) as well as the network you are on (again, quite a few will block VPN). Not to mention the dependency on a working internet connection.

These kind of dedicated setups are nice if you want to run machines 24/7 for whatever reason. They suck when you need to be doing these kind of things on the go due to the dependency on a working internet connection (many students and people attending conferences will know what I mean by this). For me that's the reason why I use virtualisation on a dedicated box as well as my notebook. And yes, I went for VMware products on both due to matureness of their hypervisor, it being the most used and the integration of all of their virtualisation products but you can use whatever combination you want, that's the fun part


That's because you've moved the workload from your notebook to a separate machine so instead of the notebook going bananas it's now the other machine that will go bananas. The only way to prevent the setup from going bananas is to spec it correctly and use sane settings for both hypervisor and vm's.

Outside of a dictatorship which countries have ISP's which block VPN's???? Who would go with an ISP which did something like that, utterly bananas, blocks all remote workers.

 

[SteveJobzniak]

@dyn Don't worry. The VMware Fusion layoff worries are "fake news" from someone who was angry that they were fired. ;-)

This is from Michael Roy, VMware's product line manager for Fusion, Fusion Pro, Workstation Pro and Workstation Player, in a comment he wrote on September 15th 2016:

I don’t know how much more committed we could be… We issued a free update which everyone has asked us to do year after year to support the new OS’s, we have a new development team working round the clock on a very aggressive roadmap for 2017, we promoted many from the old development team to work on the underlying platform that we share with vSphere and Horizon (View), we are increasing our budgets, we are doing more marketing activities then ever…

If that’s not commitment, I just don’t know what else I can do. This is my life and has been since version 2, and I’m not slowing down one bit. BTW, we’ve had plenty of changes in the development teams over the years, so this isn’t new, it’s just the first time the press picked it up because a former employee wrote a blog about it, and it happened to coincide with other Dell/EMC merger news.

Question it all you like (and you’re right to keep us honest), in the mean time we’re going to keep shipping updates and new releases of Fusion and Workstation.

He also said something interesting about Fusion:

Ultimately we’re working towards feature parity with Workstation, but we can’t do everything at once, as much as we’d like to.

Meaning that their goal is that all Workstation features will one day be in Fusion.

As for paid upgrades, he said:

VMware has heard the complaints from customers about the yearly paid upgrades. Customers say, “ah, geez, you’re going to charge me to upgrade every year because you added OS support," according to VMware Product Line Marketing Manager Michael Roy. “We hear that loud and clear,” Roy told Ars.

They didn't want to keep leeching us like Parallels. ;-)

 

[duervo]

I sure hope a 2015 system would be faster. And oh my HD instead of SSD. Best money I every spent on my 2011 mbp was a SSD. Night and day difference.

Thanks for the info on VT-x. The only time I worried about that before was to run HAXM so I could run the native x86 Android Emulator.

Frankly I worry about all these companies longenvity. I think Parallels switched to the subscription model for cash flow reasons, and last year VMware fired the Fusion dev team (thanks Dell) out here.

Word is that the development of VMware Workstation and Fusion are done out of a division/dept in Asia now (they let go of the supposedly "more expensive" North American team.) Take that with a grain of salt though, as I didn't bother to look any deeper into that to see if it was true or not.