Native virtualization for macOS

[mrmondo]

I've tried this as I was really excited after hearing about fusions discontinuation and how incredibly poorly performing virtualbox IO and network is.

I found it to be even slower than virtualbox which I have no idea how this is possible. Tested on a late 2015 5k iMac top specced and a late 2015 MacBook top specced both running OSX 10.11 at the time.

I will re-test the latest version with MacOS 10.12.

[nailer]

Totally different results here. I use a Surface Book now but on my Mac (2013 MBA) Veertu destroyed VMware and VirtualBox for interactive latency.

Ie, VirtualBox and VMware were slow to the point I'd consider them unusable (I'm latency sensitive, eg, I consider Eclipse to the be same and other people think it's fine). Veertu made me actually test in Edge again.

Did you still have VMware or VirtualBox drivers installed? IIRC VMware doesn't actually remove itself when you uninstall it, you have to remove the kmods yourself.

[mrweasel]

VMware Fusion isn't discontinued. I might be wrong, but wasn't the last update in September? And you can still buy it from VMware.

[mrmondo]

OK just re-tested with the latest version (which is very different looking for sure) on the latest OSX on my top specced late 2015 iMac 5K 27''.

I mounted the latest CentOS 7 ISO image, completely standard and md5 summed, it boots to install and I have no keyboard or mouse control OR the VM is immediately frozen.

Seemed to boot faster than Fusion which is an improvement from the last time I tried.

I'll next try a shudder Windows 10 shudder VM.

[davidcollantes]

It is the same under macOS 10.12.1. I tried it (can't beat free!), and within a few days I was back on Fusion.

[rufius]

I see Parallels isn't in that list of software. Is there a reason you don't use it?

[doodyhead]

Found the same on a 2015 rMBP with max specs (Sierra, 16GB RAM, Core i7). It's much less performant with exactly the same VM as VirtualBox.

In fact, it ate my entire CPU while it was running, even when the VM OS (Windows 10) settled down after startup. and was apparently running no CPU-intensive processes.

It also crashed twice in the space of an hour, bringing down the entire VM, necessitating a restart.

Not touching Veertu again for a long time.

[tambourine_man]

Where did you hear that it was being discontinued?

[dragonshed]

Well, I'm excited by the potential of having something better than Virtualbox available for free.

I tried converting a linux vm I frequently use via vagrant just now, and it seems to work well except for network bridging: You can't bridge over wifi. Kindof a deal-breaker.

The relevant page[1] explains it thus: "Due to features of wireless protocol, level 2 bridges don’t work over Wi-Fi, and so you can’t use wireless interface of your Mac to route bridge traffic to external network – only among VMs and host."

[1] https://veertu.com/knowledgebase/vagrant-setup-instructions/

[fensipens]

better than Virtualbox

Just take a look at VBoxManage --help for a crazy list of settings and features that VBox has accumulated during the past ~10 years.

It even supports ATA TRIM so your fs-driver can discard blocks and keep the VDI-file deflated at all times.

Performance-wise: Compiling stuff within VBox on an i7 quad-core (-j5) is almost as fast as native. X on Linux-VMs feels native too, especially when running in fullscreen.

[grav]

I have a current `docker-compose`-based dev-setup, which I'd like to move out of Docker for Mac because of instability and into a Linux VM.

One dirty detail is that the Docker containers need to communicate with the host machine (the dev-Mac). Would this be achievable with the limited bridge that Veertu supports?

[jlgaddis]

I just ran into this same issue (bridging over Wi-Fi) last night when setting up KVM on a laptop (running Ubuntu 16.04).

Apparently, this can be worked around using a TAP/TUN device but I haven't tried it yet. Perhaps a similar workaround is feasible on OS X/macOS.

[oneplane]

Makes sense, 802.11 isn't Ethernet.

[maykr]

I wonder what are its benefits in comparison to an OSS solution https://github.com/mist64/xhyve Here's the link to the previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9690846

[stephenr]

My understanding is that xhyve isn't a "click and go" solution for most users.

Also, Veertu Desktop is now free: https://github.com/veertuinc/vdhh

[aroman]

Awesome! Was hoping something like this would come along — has anyone used this and can speak to their experience with it? In particular, what about graphics performance?

[hajderr]

Just installed Debian with 1GB and 2 CPU, default settings. Runs smoothly and install was easy. Haven't dived into advanced use yet though :). Definitely promising!

[rvanmil]

I bought the Veertu 2016 Business edition in april this year, with the intention of replacing VMWare Fusion, but it didn't work out for me. At the time the performance was great and it worked properly for the most part. Though some critical features were missing, such as copy/pasting files from and to the VM. Graphics performance was nowhere near VMWare performance the last time I used it. Reading their blog, "Listening, Growing and Adapting" apparently means taking 40,- from your users and cancelling your product 6 months later.

[thoughtsimple]

Doesn't even minimally support macOS guests. This makes Veertu mostly useless to me. Fusion support of macOS guests is pretty minimal but it does work.

[falcolas]

How is support for this going to be funded? Will there be a commercial license which will pop up later? Paid features? It would be great to have some information.

I'm always leery of adopting a technology which will be fundamental to my work environment when I don't know how long it will be supported, or if I will have to change my use of it due to licensing issues.

[gaius]

The version that can run only images from their library is free-as-in-beer. The version that you can create your own VMs with, is paid.

[riobard]

This is very nice! HiDPI mode works perfectly for Windows 10 guest (unlike VirtualBox, which has weird graphic issues).

Unfortunately macOS Hypervisor.Framework does not support USB devices (https://veertu.com/knowledgebase/usb-support/), which makes Veertu useless to me, as the only reason I use Windows VM is to attach stupid USB tokens for certain banking use cases.

[izik_e]

We now support usb, try it. Note that we have a bug that make it work only with mass stirage device, but we will release fix soon.

[gigatexal]

I use this on my mac as well. Runs as good or better than virtual box or vmwares offerings.

[jhack]

No support for storing VMs on an external drive? Not even symlinking seems to work (VMs don't get saved to the list).

[tmikaeld]

Have you checked so it's not a user permission issue?

[weitzj]

I just had an idea: What if the hypervisor framework prepares macOS to add a future compatibility layer to run apps on X64 and ARM. "Like" a new version of Rosetta (PowerPC on X86). But now maybe you can run iOS apps on macOS (you probably could do this with BitCode ?)

[petecox]

The Verge have speculated [1] that the new Touch Bar found in the latest MBPs is a gateway to running iOS apps natively, with no emulation.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13454052/apple-macbook-pr...

[IMcD23]

Hypervisor.framework only exposes X86 virtualization and Intel VT-d to the user space. It does not allow for the emulation of any other architecture.

[raihansaputra]

I know gaming is not the main pull of this, but would this be better than parallels and fusion for gaming?

[chrismbarr]

If you're going to install a 2nd OS on your Mac for gaming purposes (where you want as much performance as possible) you might as well just dual boot it with BootCamp.

I've not used this before, but it sounds like it's fast, but you'll still have the overhead of running 2 OS's at the same time.

[izacus]

Nah, for that you really want to use BootCamp (native installed Windows). You can then use Parallels or VMWare Fusion to import it as a VM to be used inside of macOS or reboot fully to Windows to get full hardware performance.

[dimillian]

I can recommend Wine (Staging, with the command stream patch) if you don't want to dual boot to run games. It's quite amazing how fast it is now. In some games you can have close to native performance.

[m_eiman]

I don't think they have accelerated 3D graphics, so probably not. Unless you play 2D games, of course :)

[maxforce]

Site's down - here's the download link: https://d2sje6b9huarvp.cloudfront.net/VeertuDesktop.dmg

[raihansaputra]

Heads up, site is up again right now.

[rcarmo]

Anyone know if this interacts OK with Docker beta? that uses xhyve as well, so before I install both I'd like to make sure nothing breaks.

[izik_e2]

yea, it is working togather

[tedmiston]

Veertu looks interesting and very lightweight. Can someone help me understand how it relates to the Docker for Mac beta app?

[Graphon1]

Why would I switch from VirtualBox ?

[oddevan]

In theory? Veertu uses the built-in Hypervisor.framework from macOS, so it can run without installing a kernel extension. I think they're still working on building out features, but for my basic needs I prefer it on that basis alone.