Virtualizing Apple Mac OS X

Products

• VMware
• VMware Desktop Hypervisor
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information about running Apple Mac OS X operating systems in a virtual machine.

Resolution

According to Apple's licensing policies, VMware only supports the virtualization of Apple Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) client or server, Apple Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) client or server, Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) client or server, Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) client or server, Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) client or server, 10.6 (Snow Leopard) server and 10.5 (Leopard) server.

 

The End User License Agreement (EULA) for Apple Mac OS X legally and explicitly binds the installation and running of the operating system to Apple-labeled computers only. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Server, 10.6 Snow Leopard Server, 10.7 Lion client or server, 10.8 Mountain Lion client or server and 10.9 Mavericks client or server are fully supported on VMware Fusion while running on supported Apple hardware.

 

For additional information, refer to your Apple product's license agreement and documentation.

 

For more information, see:

• Creating a virtual machine running Mac OS X Server (2005793)
• Installing Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) as a virtual machine in Fusion 4 and later (2005334)
• Installing Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) as a guest operating system in VMware Fusion (2033778)
• Installing OS X 10.9 Mavericks as a guest operating system in VMware Fusion 6.0 (2056603)
• Installing OS X 10.10 Yosemite as a guest operating system in VMware Fusion (2082109)
• Installing OS X 10.11 El Capitan as a guest operating system in VMware Fusion 8.x and VMware Fusion Pro 8.x (2129534)

Additional Information

For translated versions of this article, see:

• 日本語: Apple Mac OS X の仮想化 (2080710)
• 简体中文: 虚拟化 Apple Mac OS X (2086061)