VMWare Fusion and Snow Leopard Server

[mattspace]

A nice quality of life note for anyone thinking of trying to virtualise an old macOS version:

I picked up an unused, unlimited client Snow Leopard Server install disk recently for ~US$50. When you set up in VMWare to Create New and choose custom, then MacOS X, Snow Leopard Server 64 bit, and hit create - if the physical disc is in the host computer's drive, it automatically starts the install process.

Very smooth - I was actually looking for a manual option to direct it to look at the optical drive for the install media, and hit Create thinking I'd get an error about not having an iso, or similar.

 

[subzento]

It's always nice when things work out better than expected.

 

[mattspace]

Oh and as an update, It installed perfectly, and while Safari doesn't work out of the box for HTTPS because a lot of security certificates have expired, Apple software update works a treat, took a couple of rounds of downloads and restarts of the VM to update everything fully, but at the end I have a 10.6 Server VM instance, with Rosetta for PowerPC and Quicktime installed.

Next up, Adobe CS5 in a contemporary OS version.

 

[gilby101]

I picked up an unused, unlimited client Snow Leopard Server install disk recently for ~US$50.

Good one. Certainly easier than going through the contortions to get Snow Leopard (not Server) running under Parallels or Fusion. For interest, this long thread https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-into-parallels-on-modern-intel-macs.1365439/ has instructions for Fusion as well as Parallels. That is how I build my SL VM for Fusion. When I did it, Apple had not started selling SL Server DVDs (US$20 I think) without the server hardware.

 

[mattspace]

Good one. Certainly easier than going through the contortions to get Snow Leopard (not Server) running under Parallels or Fusion. For interest, this long thread https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-into-parallels-on-modern-intel-macs.1365439/ has instructions for Fusion as well as Parallels. That is how I build my SL VM for Fusion. When I did it, Apple had not started selling SL Server DVDs (US$20 I think) without the server hardware.

Yeah it was a failure of the normal version that had me looking around for a server edition, just wanted it to be as supported and turnkey as possible.