For graphics, another cool thing is intel iGPU pci passthrough - I have had success with this when running esxi on my 2018 mac mini https://williamlam.com/2020/06/passthrough-of-integrated-gpu...
MacOS VMs do work in Proxmox with a Hackintosh setup but you pretty much have to passthrough a GPU to the VM if you're using the GUI. Otherwise you're stuck with the Apple VNC remote desktop and that's unbearably slow.
I have a bunch of qemu/kvm virtual machines for various tasks. For two of them I decided that graphics performance needed to be at least OK and ended up buying and passing through old Quadro cards. It'd be lovely to not have to do that.
https://github.com/notAperson535/OneClick-macOS-Simple-KVM/
Mostly used it when trying to track down reported macOS bugs for an OSS project, so maybe once every few months. But it's worked quite well at those times. :)
"Quickly create and run highly optimised desktop virtual machines for Linux, macOS and Windows; with just two commands. You decide what operating system you want to run and Quickemu will figure out the best way to do it for you." https://github.com/quickemu-project/quickemu
On Proxmox you can do the same. You're going to need OpenCore if you're not on a Mac indeed. But if you're not on a Mac you're breaking the EULA anyway.
Running macOS is only supported/licensing-compliant on Apple-branded hardware anyway, and with the supported Intel Macs getting pretty old this was inevitable anyway.
6 cores 12 threads
64GB DDR
nvme
4 thunderbolt3 ports for pci expansion
10GbE onboard nic
boots ESXi
boots Proxmox
boots or virtualizes windows
boots or virtualizes linux
boots or virtualizes macos
iGPU passthrough
Supports nested virtThe main point is proper non-hackintosh support for running (unlimited amount) of macOS vms on esxi - which requires Apple hardware. Running macOS, Windows and Linux on the metal is another benefit. IMO it's almost as versatile as a framework chromebook (chromeos, crostini, kvm, android with play store)
* If you don't mind dedicating the video card to a VM, you can do PCI-passthrough. https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough
You can also accelerate video (though it's uncertain what "pure software" means?)
this guy: https://www.nicksherlock.com
has been writing up proxox vms running macos for a while, the latest being:
https://www.nicksherlock.com/2022/10/installing-macos-13-ven...
yes, it uses opencore.
I haven't really bothered with macos GPU acceleration, It is possible but a little fiddly with an nvidia card. I mostly rely on screen sharing to display the remote vm and that's really good (rich text copy/paste, drag and drop files, etc)
As to general guest 3d, you can do this with GPU passthrough, and although it's technical the first time, each vm is then easy.
basically I add this line to each VM for my graphics card:
hostpci0: 01:00,pcie=1,x-vga=1
hostpci1: 03:00,pcie=1
The passthough has worked wonderfully for Windows, ubuntu and arch linux guests, giving a full accelerated desktop, and smooth gaming with non-choppy sound.
two things I wish proxmox did better:
- passthrough USB into containers
usb is pretty fiddly to propagate into a container. It is marginally better with VMs but sometimes devices still don't show up.
- docker/podmain containers
proxmox has lxc containers, but using them is a little like being a sysadmin. Docker/podmain containers that you can build from a dockerfile would be a much better experience.
It's the fastest mac I've ever owned and it's virtual, executed on a machine running a chip that apple never supported, and you'd never be able to tell it was a vm unless you were told so. kvm and vfio are amazing pieces of software.
A good place to start: https://github.com/luchina-gabriel/OSX-PROXMOX
Why? IIRC running ZFS on NVMe SSDs limit their performance seriously. With sufficient queue depth modern SSDs can easily get up to 1mln+ IOPS and on ZFS I can barely get 100k :(
proxmox takes advantage of zfs' features if available, like when you select block storage on zfs it makes each vm disk its own dataset which you can tune as you see fit for each one. cloning a vm is instant if you make a cow clone. suspending the vm to do snapshot based backups is also nearly instant, etc
Disable atimes and turn off the arc cache and metadata cache (don't really need either with fast storage compared to spinning rust) and use lz4 compression and you minimize write amplification or needless wear on the drive. zfs is perfectly fine on ssd for my use case
* Unmodified macOS guest VMs can run under ESXi (if you're reading this on macOS, you have an Apple-made VMXNet3 network adapter driver on your system--see /System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleVmxnet3Ethernet.kext )
* Accelerated 3D has reasonable guest support, even as pure software. You wouldn't want to work in one of those guest VMs, but for any sort of build agent it should be fine, including opening i.e. Unity editor itself in-VM to diagnose something
Does anyone know where either of these things stand with Proxmox today?
I imagine macOS VM under Proxmox is basically a hackintosh with i.e. OpenCore as bootloader?