Powering on an Apple Mac OS X virtual machine fails with the error: The guest operating system 'darwinGuest' is not supported

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Cannot power on an Apple Mac OS X virtual machine
• Powering on an Apple Mac OS X virtual machine fails
• The Power-On virtual machine operation fails with one of these errors:

The guest operating system 'darwinGuest' is not supported.

The guest operating system 'darwin10Guest' is not supported.

The guest operating system 'darwin11Guest' is not supported.

For example:

Note: darwinGuest, darwin10Guest , and darwin11Guest refer to Apple Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8 respectively.

• If you attempt to power on the virtual machine after connecting the vSphere Client directly to the ESXi host (or via the command-line), the Power-On virtual machine operation succeeds, but the operating system panics
• If you attempt to power on the virtual machine by selecting an operating system type other than Apple Mac OS X, the operating system panics

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware ESXi 6.7.x
VMware ESXi 6.5.x

Cause

This issue occurs because Apple Mac OS X can only be run as a virtual machine when ESXi is set up on a certified Apple hardware.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, install ESXi on certified Apple hardware and then attempt to boot the virtual machine. For more information about Apple hardware supported for ESXi, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Additional Information

打开 Apple Mac OS X 虚拟机电源失败并出现错误：客户机操作系统“darwinGuest”不受支持
Apple Mac OS X 仮想マシンをパワーオンにすると次のエラーで失敗する：ゲスト OS 「darwinGuest」はサポートされていません