How I run x86 Virtual Machines on the go on M1 MBP

[Thysanoptera]

The only thing I can't do on M1 is x86 VMs, and sometimes I need to spin one, configure and load on customer site, check somebody's backup etc. For a regular work I can do just fine in ARM VMs. I travel a lot, so pulling 30-100GB from my server is not an option on hotel wifi.

Here is my solution - miniPC. I got one of those from Amazon, for like $250, quad core Celeron, passive cooled, 8GB RAM, 256 eMMC + open nvme m.2 slot in which I have 4TB SSD. It is about the size of 2.5'' external SSD enclosure. Surprisingly snappy, spinning Fedora 34 on it in VMware Workstation from DVD iso took 13 minutes. My M1 MBP does the same in VMWare fusion with same fedora but ARM version in about 6 minutes. I mean, it is doable. Once created it boots VM in less than a minute and I can do my stuff without really noticing any slowdowns. Mind you, my VMs are not loaded, thats pre-deployment. I'm ok with 2GB RAM and 2 cores.

No battery, needs 12V power supply, USB-C but no PD. I can fix this with a dongle I think. Have it set as wifi access point (2.4 only) and just remote into it from Mac. Plus a handy, although slow, wireless data storage. A picture, with M1 MBP for size reference, weight like 200 grams, don't even feel it in the bag.

 

[SegNerd]

These are nice, but it is worth noting that MS abandoned a lot of low-end CPUs with Windows 11. If you are hoping to upgrade Windows 10, I would recommend checking the CPU carefully before purchase.

 

[Thysanoptera]

These are nice, but it is worth noting that MS abandoned a lot of low-end CPUs with Windows 11. If you are hoping to upgrade Windows 10, I would recommend checking the CPU carefully before purchase.

Celeron J4125 J4215 , from 2019. Works fine with W11, board has TPM.

 

[SegNerd]

It was a general comment for people looking at mini PCs. You didn’t post a specific model so I had no way of knowing whether your particular unit would have an issue.

Also, I can’t find any processor called J4215. Maybe you meant J4125?

 

[Thysanoptera]

It was a general comment for people looking at mini PCs. You didn’t post a specific model so I had no way of knowing whether your particular unit would have an issue.

Also, I can’t find any processor called J4215. Maybe you meant J4125?

Yes, sorry, J4125. And I got this particular one:

Amazon.com: MeLE Fanless Mini PC Quieter2 Celeron J4125 8GB DDR4 256GB eMMC Windows 10 Pro Desktop Mini Computers 4K 2xHDMI2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, 2.4G 5G Dual-Band WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, VESA Mount : Electronics

 

[bobcomer]

The only thing I can't do on M1 is x86 VMs, and sometimes I need to spin one, configure and load on customer site, check somebody's backup etc. For a regular work I can do just fine in ARM VMs. I travel a lot, so pulling 30-100GB from my server is not an option on hotel wifi.

Here is my solution - miniPC. I got one of those from Amazon, for like $250, quad core Celeron, passive cooled, 8GB RAM, 256 eMMC + open nvme m.2 slot in which I have 4TB SSD. It is about the size of 2.5'' external SSD enclosure. Surprisingly snappy, spinning Fedora 34 on it in VMware Workstation from DVD iso took 13 minutes. My M1 MBP does the same in VMWare fusion with same fedora but ARM version in about 6 minutes. I mean, it is doable. Once created it boots VM in less than a minute and I can do my stuff without really noticing any slowdowns. Mind you, my VMs are not loaded, thats pre-deployment. I'm ok with 2GB RAM and 2 cores.

No battery, needs 12V power supply, USB-C but no PD. I can fix this with a dongle I think. Have it set as wifi access point (2.4 only) and just remote into it from Mac. Plus a handy, although slow, wireless data storage. A picture, with M1 MBP for size reference, weight like 200 grams, don't even feel it in the bag.

View attachment 1899969

I never thought of using one of these as an access point, that gets rid of the connection problems on the go, though I think I'd need a bit higher spec'd machine.

What I really want is to be able to plug that box into my laptop via USB and the usage be shared that way! But this is doable if you can connect both to the box and the LAN at the same time.

 

[jaqob]

So, the solution for running x86 VM:s on an extremely powerful and rather expensive Macbook pro is to buy and carry around an x86 PC? I'm entirely satisfied with that solution

 

[bobcomer]

So, the solution for running x86 VM:s on an extremely powerful and rather expensive Macbook pro is to buy and carry around an x86 PC? I'm entirely satisfied with that solution

Don't blame the OP, blame Apple and Microsoft. But yes, his way is the best way, at least until something better comes along.

 

[bobcomer]

That is unless you want to leave your Macbook home and bring a Windows laptop instead!

 

[michalm]

The only change I'd propose is to dump ESXi on the thing and connect to it via Fusion Almost native-like experience!

 

[dugbug]

you could try this:

Windows running on M1 with QEMU x86 emulation

I came across this on twitter, by the looks of it, it may not be too long before we can run productivity type apps (like Outlook 365) also on the new apple silicon

forums.macrumors.com

anyone give it a shot yet?

 

[bobcomer]

you could try this:

Windows running on M1 with QEMU x86 emulation

I came across this on twitter, by the looks of it, it may not be too long before we can run productivity type apps (like Outlook 365) also on the new apple silicon

forums.macrumors.com

anyone give it a shot yet?

I did. Slow doesn't cover just how glacial it is.

 

[5425642]

This is really a non-issue.
Why? You can have VDIs in the cloud or on prem servers.

Simply use azure, Amazon etc or your own hardware.
I have uninstalled parallels etc. even docker.

 

[bobcomer]

This is really a non-issue.
Why? You can have VDIs in the cloud or on prem servers.

Simply use azure, Amazon etc or your own hardware.
I have uninstalled parallels etc. even docker.

VDI's aren't nearly as versatile, or even accessible all the time. Not to mention it costs quite a bit more and the latency.

 

[5425642]

VDI's aren't nearly as versatile, or even accessible all the time. Not to mention it costs quite a bit more and the latency.

I see, that I can understand then this solution is great. Portable hypervisor!

 

[bobcomer]

I see, that I can understand then this solution is great. Portable hypervisor!

Yep, you could do that. Not quite with this particular PC, you could get something almost as small that's capable of it for way less than $1000. A personal VDI server could do too, but that's not that cheap.

I'd probably just use Win10 Pro on it with Hyper-V.

 

[Thysanoptera]

Yep, you could do that. Not quite with this particular PC, you could get something almost as small that's capable of it for way less than $1000. A personal VDI server could do too, but that's not that cheap.

I'd probably just use Win10 Pro on it with Hyper-V.

This one comes with 10 Pro, legit. I can't use VDI for my tasks, it's not to work in VM, but to prepare VM and load it on customer machine, or to make a backup of customer's one and take it with me. I need to have a hypervisor physically with me.

Why was it moved to newcomers forum? This applies literally only to Apple silicon.

 

[jaqob]

Don't blame the OP, blame Apple and Microsoft. But yes, his way is the best way, at least until something better comes along.

No, I didn't intend to blame the OP, sorry if it was understood like that. This is absolutley one way of solving it, and if you need it you need it. It is just a shame that it should be needed in the first place. I just hope that there will be a good way of emulating x86 Windows eventually. The processing power should be enough, and there are use cases where it will be needed for yet a while.

 

[EmotionalSnow]

I did. Slow doesn't cover just how glacial it is.

What exactly do you expect Apple and Microsoft to do? They can't magically make QEMU run faster and there simply is no good alternative to emulation - if you need to run a x86 VM on ARM - which QEMU is pretty good at.

 

[Glenny2lappies]

This seems like an excellent way of getting the best of both worlds in the absence of being able to run a WinDOS VM on an M1.

My issue is I'd like to run a Visual Studio development environment on an M1. This simply isn't possible unless running Win10/11 which is not acceptable (bloat doesn't go half way to describing why not).

For the past 16 years I've run MacBook Pros (and even PowerPC Macs) and virtualised a load of Windows instances ranging from Win3.1 and Win95 (just for a laugh, not serious use) through XP which works exceedingly well running some old applications, through various Windows server builds including Windows Server 2012 which is used for running the Visual Studio environment for dot net development (supporting and developing old but still current dotnet applications).

I'm very happy with this; keep the damn Microsoft rubbish to a minimum and not need any of this anti-virus guff as the VMs are isolated. All other work is done on the Mac.

The M1 processors stop this particular workflow. It's possible to run VMWare & Parallels but only if WinDos10/11 ARM is installed. This means all the phone-home licensing crap and goodness knows what else. Whilst there's the chance that QEMU might work in the future, it'll be like going back to the PowerPC Mac days where the Win-DOS VM's ran like a snail.

I think there's no chance of this every improving; Apple couldn't care and MS aren't going to put in any effort.

This "pocket PC" thing looks very promising indeed. What I'd like is to be able to plug one into the MacBook Pro using USB-C for power and also get it to share the 'disc' from the mac to the miniPC, i.e. stashing the data on the Mac for backups and being able to have some form of generic Windows OS on the miniPC (preferably Window Server 2012). This would mean that I could buy a couple of these miniPC devices (one as a spare backup), but all the data and applications stored on a "share" in the Mac.


Is this the sort of thing that you're doing?

 

[Glenny2lappies]

These are nice, but it is worth noting that MS abandoned a lot of low-end CPUs with Windows 11. If you are hoping to upgrade Windows 10, I would recommend checking the CPU carefully before purchase.

Not all of us care about Windows10/11. In any case both of those come in ARM installs.

 

[Thysanoptera]

This "pocket PC" thing looks very promising indeed. What I'd like is to be able to plug one into the MacBook Pro using USB-C for power and also get it to share the 'disc' from the mac to the miniPC, i.e. stashing the data on the Mac for backups and being able to have some form of generic Windows OS on the miniPC (preferably Window Server 2012). This would mean that I could buy a couple of these miniPC devices (one as a spare backup), but all the data and applications stored on a "share" in the Mac.


Is this the sort of thing that you're doing?

Not quite. It has USB-C but it is only for power, and it doesn't support PD protocol. Essentially USB-C shaped 12V only power plug. I got a power trigger from ebay to be able to use PD chargers, but that's it.

My understanding is that you need Thunderbolt to set up network over USB-C cable.

I'm (or actually was) using this minipc as WiFi access point, connect to it from Mac and remote into it.

Since I made this post I upgraded to MBP 14, 32 cores, 64GB/8TB. And just two weeks ago I got Surface Pro 7 plus. I gave up on minipc mostly because of wonky wifi access point functionality in Windows, Microsoft killed it and you need to do some hacking to make it work. Plus if for whatever reason it didn't boot, or you can't connect to it, I needed a screen. So I added HDMI cable to my bag, to connect to hotel TVs. But some places have custom remotes that don't allow you to change TV input source, so I added a universal remote to my bag. And at some point it just got too cumbersome. I was like screw it, I'll just add Surface tablet to my bag instead.

Maybe there are devices that can do what you want, it would be pretty sweet to power and share data with one USB-C cable.

 

[Glenny2lappies]

Not quite. It has USB-C but it is only for power, and it doesn't support PD protocol. Essentially USB-C shaped 12V only power plug. I got a power trigger from ebay to be able to use PD chargers, but that's it.

My understanding is that you need Thunderbolt to set up network over USB-C cable.

I'm (or actually was) using this minipc as WiFi access point, connect to it from Mac and remote into it.

Since I made this post I upgraded to MBP 14, 32 cores, 64GB/8TB. And just two weeks ago I got Surface Pro 7 plus. I gave up on minipc mostly because of wonky wifi access point functionality in Windows, Microsoft killed it and you need to do some hacking to make it work. Plus if for whatever reason it didn't boot, or you can't connect to it, I needed a screen. So I added HDMI cable to my bag, to connect to hotel TVs. But some places have custom remotes that don't allow you to change TV input source, so I added a universal remote to my bag. And at some point it just got too cumbersome. I was like screw it, I'll just add Surface tablet to my bag instead.

Maybe there are devices that can do what you want, it would be pretty sweet to power and share data with one USB-C cable.

Thanks for that.

It's somewhat frustrating that those of us who make heavy use of virtualisation on Macs have been set adrift by Apple.

Welcome to Nobody Cares, population 7bn!

 

[vicmarconi]

I just registered because I'm looking for a solution to this problem.
What do you guys think about Windows 365? (That windows VM that MS sells a monthly subscription).

I think it's a better solution than carrying another hardware around.

(I just rather Parallels could do some wizardry to allow x86 VM)

 

[5425642]

I just registered because I'm looking for a solution to this problem.
What do you guys think about Windows 365? (That windows VM that MS sells a monthly subscription).

I think it's a better solution than carrying another hardware around.

(I just rather Parallels could do some wizardry to allow x86 VM)

Sure it’s a server in azure new rds kind of.
Should work with some delay