Mac OS Virtualization on MacOS AArch64

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Hey guys,
Just wanted to know what virtualization software you're using on your M series Macs. I tried using Multipass, Lima, UTM. I run headless Ubuntu, so I've found Multipass the easiest to use. What's your experience on running any of the other softwares and what advantages and disadvantages do you see on those softwares.

My main usecase is I run test Kubernetes clusters (k3s) on top of ubuntu.
Multipass:
Advantages:
  1. Easy to use
  2. Assigns IP and you can also use bridged mode for network
  3. Support for cloud-init
  4. There's also a terraform provider but I haven't tested it out yet.
  5. Currently comes with a basic UI but I don't use UI
  6. Single command spinning and deleting of VMs
Disadvantages:
  1. There's no command autocomplete
  2. UI is very basic when compared to UTM
  3. Mostly only supports Ubuntu based images
  4. Occupies port 50051 for some reason (have to change it in startup script) and interferes with my tests
  5. API documentation is not openly available to develop on top of it
  6. Terraform implementation is 3rd party and does not cover all features.
 
Don't know whether this will work:
blogs.vmware.com

VMware Fusion Pro: Now Available Free for Personal Use

VMware Desktop Hypervisor products Fusion and Workstation are used by millions of people every day to run virtual machines on their Windows, Linux and Mac computers. They give users the ability to quickly and easily build “local virtual” environments to install other operating systems, learn...
blogs.vmware.com blogs.vmware.com

Otherwise, it's parallels.com tend have these kind of s/w.
 
Multipass is Canonical product, right?

Are the multipass "VMs" running locally on the hardware or remotely in some cloud instance?
TEUser2K1 said:
Don't know whether this will work:
blogs.vmware.com

VMware Fusion Pro: Now Available Free for Personal Use

VMware Desktop Hypervisor products Fusion and Workstation are used by millions of people every day to run virtual machines on their Windows, Linux and Mac computers. They give users the ability to quickly and easily build “local virtual” environments to install other operating systems, learn...
blogs.vmware.com blogs.vmware.com

Otherwise, it's parallels.com tend have these kind of s/w.
Click to expand...

Workstation is also free now IINM...
 
vishalrao said:
Multipass is Canonical product, right?
Click to expand...
Yes

vishalrao said:
Are the multipass "VMs" running locally on the hardware or remotely in some cloud instance?
Click to expand...
It runs locally on on the machine.
TEUser2K1 said:
parallels.com
Click to expand...
I'm assuming parallels is best for running Windows VMs.

Also heard about VMware Fusion Pro. My usecase is commercial as I'm using it for work.
Do you have any feedback on these two softwares that you can share?
 
Last edited:
I use VMware Workstation Pro on my Win11 laptop.
Earlier, have seen colleagues using both vmware and parallels on their Macs.
Don't think there is a better s/w than VMware for works like these, parallels can be a runner up.
 
Every solution works. I'm asking what is the experience on different solutions and any difference like performance, advantages, etc.,

Example: One of the things I'm looking to automate is programatically create a VM, create a DNS record for that IP on my DNS NS. Then install k3s and GitHub action runners on top of that and set it to run on my org. It's kinda like I want to spin up runners on demand and delete them when not required.

For this I'm thinking I need Terraform support (create VM and add DNS record) and further managed by scripting. For that multipass is low effort and is also kinda working. Although the above limitations are kinda blocking me.

So I'm looking at what solutions others are using and if I could learn anything from their setup.

TEUser2K1 said:
Otherwise Qemu is also there, but tad complicated to work with.
Click to expand...
Multipass is also built on top of QEMU.
 
AFAIK on ARM M series mac only Parallels seems to work as they have official partnership with Microsoft. Rest dont compare but there was another app - > https://mac.getutm.app/
I dont think there is anyway to run x86 apps unless youre running ARM version of the OS with that OS running its own conversion layer like MAc does. Windows on ARM will run on this, then you run windows x86 apps on that.
 
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