Manage Mac® OS X®. One of the most significant challenges for IT organizations has been the management of non-Windows® IT platforms due to the struggle of connecting them to Active Directory® (AD or MAD). Specifically, IT admins over the years have struggled to manage Mac® OS X® systems. During the early 2000s, and for about a decade. Latest comparisons. Apple hasn't introduced new features to window management in macOS Monterey, but it's made the existing ones easier to find — and it has made some refinements.
I write software for Windows. Exclusively for Windows. These days, VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop are two very mature virtualization products that allow clients to run virtually any Windows software on the Mac. Right now I have a client reporting an issue under VMWare Fusion 5. It’s an important client, so I’d better support him. My options to reproduce the issue are to buy a Mac Mini, or try out a virtual mac hosting service.
I need the following things
- Root access. I need to install the software I want to test, including VMWare Fusion.
- OS X Mavericks. I need the latest version of the operating system.
I’m reviewing these services based on my needs of occasional full speed access for testing. If you’re after a dedicated server for an application like web hosting, you will have different needs than I have.
Here’s a list of all of the services that I could find offering roughly the kind of service I’m looking for.
Some of these services offer cheaper plans with a more limited feature set (e.g. no root access). I’ve chosen in most cases to review the cheapest plan that offers Mavericks and that offers root access to your VM.
| Service | Notes |
| xcloud xcloud.me | Plans from $85 USD/month (priced in swiss francs). The rolls royce of virtual macs. Does everything, the only downside is that TeamViewer is not preinstalled. |
| Mac Mini Cloud macminicloud.net | Starts at USD $~150/month, which is somewhat sneakily described as a free tier. I didn’t see anything to recommend this over the other services I trialed, so I ruled this out based on the high cost and sneaky pricing. |
| Mac in Cloud macincloud.com | 1 day free trial is “included in each subscription”. Has a “pay as you go plan”, at $30 for 30 hours, which is great for an occasional user like myself. Does not include root access. Sounds good otherwise, but not suited to my needs so I didn’t try it. If you need specific software installed, you need to contact support to get it done. There’s a reasonable amount of positive media floating around about this mob, so I wouldn’t hesitate to try it. |
| vmOSX virtualmacosx.com | Free trial by email application. $40 USD/month for OSX Mavericks and root access. The plan is called Virtual Personal Desktop Advanced. They have cheaper plans for OSX Mountain Lion, and for non-root access. For your $40/month, you get 40gb storage, 1536 MB RAM and 2 virtual CPU cores. Virtual Machines are preconfigured with TeamViewer for remote access.I filled out the email form to request a trial, but at the time of publication they had not responded. There is some positive media floating around. They did however point out that they did not support running VMWare Fusion on their environment. |
| XCodeClub xcodeclub.com | A one man show. For $35/month subscription, or $55 once off for a single month, you get 42gb storage (20gb free after OS install), 2gb RAM, and 2 virtual CPU cores. Daniel very politely offered a 1 hour trial. I was going to take him up on that, but I spent longer than that just getting connected to another service, so I wont bother just now. While I didn’t try it out, xcodeclub is highly spoken of and good value, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use this service. The only downside is the one-man-show aspect. VMs are preconfigured with TeamViewer. |
I had every intention of trying out xcodeclub, vmosx and xcloud. However due to time constraints I ended up testing xcloud only.
xcloud is an offering from innofield who also provide the “Flow App Engine” (flow.ch).
Three plans are offered, all include Mavericks and root access. The cheapest one (“mini”) is 79 CHF, which is USD $~85/month at today’s exchange rates. For that you get 80gb storage, 2gb RAM, and 2 x 2.3GHz CPU cores.
No trial offered, but I asked for a 1 week trial via their contact form anyway. They were happy to oblige. I’ll be trailing a “pro” instance with 160gb storage, 4gb RAM and 4 virtual CPU cores.
From the customer console, I am able to start and stop the virtual instance.
API Capabilities
A support engineer was kind enough to explain some of the capabilities of the snapshot API.
This is just as powerful as AWS or Azure, but it’s for Macs! Brilliant.
This API seems to be undocumented, I expect that this is a work in progress and that we’ll see more of this soon.
Documentation
Xcloud provides excellent documentation for some of the basics. The getting started guide covers every operating system you might consider connecting from. Some of the more common problems you might expect to encounter are well documented.
Connecting to the Instance
I imagine if you’re connecting from a Mac in the first place, this whole thing goes much smoother.
Right from the console, there’s a button to launch an HTML5 VNC client. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the HTML5 client to work. I tried Chrome, IE and Firefox. I got this error in every case.
I was able to connect just fine with TightVNC, however. My experience was pretty slow, but I attribute this to my own ADSL connection rather than anything to do with xcloud. This was just painfully slow.
To resolve this, the Xcloud documentation suggests installing TeamViewer. So I started an AWS windows instance, RDPd to it, installed TightVNC there, VNCd to the xcloud instance (RDP-to-AWS-to-VNC-to-xcloud is actually reasonably fast), installed TeamViewer, then connected via TeamViewer. Phew! Happily, this all works just fine.
The only improvement to this would be if xcloud installed TeamViewer by default. VNC from Windows is just too slow.
Testing
Network connection seems more than acceptable. I was able to download a 4gb ISO from MSDN in less than 20 minutes.
I have full root access, so installing VMWare Fusion was not a problem. I couldn’t install 64-bit Windows, but the 32-bit version went in just fine.
The performance of this VM seems to be very good. It has no problem running a VM within a VM. My performance bottleneck is clearly the Internet connection speed to my own office.
Support
Xcloud support were quite responsive, and provided useful and timely answers to all of my questions.
Budget conscious? Xcodeclub might work out for you. But if you want a real killer go with xcloud for a few dollars more. You wont be disappointed.
Mac Bare Metal is an enterprise-class Mac cloud platform. With the easy-to-use control panel, it is possible to deploy, manage and scale dedicated, bare metal Apple Mac devices.
A number of predefined Mac mini device configurations (Intel and M1) are available on demand with instant activation. See pricing >
Due to the exclusivity and the wide variety of configuration options of the Mac Pro hardware, it's available on request only. To receive a non-binding offer, interested customers can request their desired config using the following link.
Mac Bare Metal is ideal for developers and businesses that need a super-fast, secure, always-on Mac Cloud environment. It's typically used for CI/CD purposes for the iOS/macOS build ecosystem and all kind of software testing. Also very popular as a hosting solution for FileMaker Server.
A worth reading article of the Spotify Engineering Team about the advantages of bare metal Macs compared to macOS VMs for CI. In a nutshell: blazing-fast build times, consistent performance, more simultaneous iOS simulators thanks to native GPU acceleration. Read the full story >
Start spending more time on your projects and less time managing your Mac infrastructure. You will receive a CHF10 credit (good for 14 days) when you create a new account. Sign up now >
It is a fully automated bare-metal Mac cloud platform with API support and pay-as-you-go pricing. It comes standard with advanced networking features such as private network, firewall and VPN at no additional cost. And last but not least, every Mac comes with Lights Out Management (LOM) functionality for easy remote management.
Something that is indispensable in the traditional server hardware world is the ability to manage the server via browser even when no operating system is running, to perform actions such as power off/on, access to keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM) etc. This functionality is known as Lights Out Management (LOM) or out-of-band management. Mac Pro and Mac mini devices do not have this functionality as standard. We took up the challenge and developed it ourselves – we call it MetalControl.
Mac Os Cloud Vm
MetalControl is the world’s first Apple Mac remote management controller, an in-house-developed and patented product. It's equipped with smart features such as power-button control, power-cord control and Keyboard-Video-Mouse access. Thanks to the unique functionality of MetalControl, tasks such as on-demand provisioning and management of physical Macs are possible via Control Panel and even via API. Literally, it allows you to control the physical Mac like a virtual machine.
Our Mac Bare Metal service comes with advanced networking functionalities as standard, such as private networking (VPC), firewall, and VPN for secure connections to third-party cloud providers or corporate networks. By default, each Mac device is isolated within a secure, private network. It's perfectly suited for both simple and sophisticated network topologies, at no additional cost.
With our simple RESTful API you can automate Mac infrastructure management without using our Control Panel. Explore API docs > Parad tantra vigyan pdf download.
On-demand provisioning
Provisioning a Mac device in the Cloud couldn't be simpler. By using our intuitive Control Panel your dedicated Mac mini is just a few clicks away.
Power button control
Yep, you can control the physical power button. No matter if a short press to turn on the Mac or a press and hold to turn off the Mac. It's almost magical.
Power cord control
Caterpillar d4 model u workshop manual. Even though you can manage most situations with the power button, there are scenarios where you would like to make your Mac powerless. This is also possible thanks to MetalControl.
Remote console (KVM)
Web-based access to the screen, keyboard, and mouse of your hosted Mac is just a click away. You have control over your Mac even if no network connection to the device is possible.
Control Panel and API
Provision and manage your Mac devices with an easy-to-use Control Panel or API. Trigger a power button push, unplug the power cord, access the screen-console, reboot in recovery mode, reset SMC etc.
Workflows
Xcloud Ios Beta
The karate kid movie torrent download 2010. Thanks to MetalControl, various workflows can be triggered with one click. For example a 'Reboot in Recovery Mode' or a 'Reset SMC' process. And there's more to come.
Predefined device types
A number of predefined Mac mini device configurations are available on demand with instant activation. Due to the exclusivity and the wide variety of configuration options of the Mac Pro hardware, it's available on request only.
Fully dedicated
No noisy neighbours or shared resources to gum up the works and impact your workload. You are getting access to dedicated, genuine Apple Mac devices. In addition, you are provided with root access at the operating system level.
Connect from any OS
You can access your device(s) using Screen Sharing app (included with macOS), Apple Remote Desktop or any available VNC client which gives you direct access to the console. By using a VNC Client, you can even remote connect with a Windows or Linux Box.
Premium data center
Professionally hosted in an ISO/IEC 27001-certified, state-of-art datacenter in Zurich, Switzerland. The Tier 4 data center offers the highest security and availability standards.
Project Xcloud Mac
Reliable by design
Thanks to redundant power-feeds and UPS systems, an emergency power system with diesel generators, a redundant Internet-uplink connectivity, the infrastructure is designed with maximum reliability in mind and offers guaranteed availability of 99.9%.
Support by experts
Around-the-clock remote support by experienced Mac engineers. A choice between Basic Support (included) Advanced and Premium Support plans, where Premium is designed for enterprises that operate business-critical 24×7 operations.
Virtual Private Cloud
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) functionality lets you provision and manage secure private network(s) where you can launch your Mac devices. With Mac Bare Metal by Flow, you get highest level of network isolation by default.
Xbox Cloud Gaming Iphone
Elastic IP Addresses
Dynamically allocate or remap to any of your Mac devices with Elastic IPs (publicly-accessible static IP addresses).
Security Groups
Xbox Cloud Gaming Ios Lag
With Security Groups, you can easily secure your Mac Cloud infrastructure and define which services and ports are visible on your devices.
Pure connectivity
With each device one dedicated, elastic IPv4 address is included. Unlimited data traffic and an 1 Gbit/s network uplink come as standard. Network traffic is not throttled in any way.
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