Running Windows Server Virtually on Mac Min Server

[Acolapissa]

I have Mac Mini server at my office. I am using this from some couple of months. Now I want to know weather is it possible to run Windows Server 2003 or 2008 virtually on it. Is this thing possible. What all is needed here. Why I need this support because I have a accounting software. It works on Windows well so I can run that in the virtual environment.

[Paisley007]

It is possible to do that. You can use a USB Ethernet adapter on your Mac Mini. If I am not wrong the operating system used in your server is Snow Leopard. So here you can create a second LAN setup which will be used by the dedicated virtual machine. This is also quiet less costly as you does need to arrange for a fully new Windows server setup and hardware.

[Pabloa]

I too think so that it is possible by virtualization. This will be cheaper also and easy to manage. You will need to install Windows Server on any of your system. But for that you requires a additional Ethernet connector on your system. Try a adapter for that. There is very less risk in that. The best things for this is that you can easily manage both the servers without any extra efforts.

[Sabastiaan]

Download Parallels on your system and first create a virtual machine. Then you have to add up a addition network adapter to get a additional Ethernet Port. You have o assign bridge mode to the built in network card on Mac server. Because after this the NAT will not create further more issue. So in single machine you can get the benefit of both the operating systems.

[Visala28]

Vmware is also a proper solution for this. Just install the operating system and then you can create a virtual environment of windows server. I will not recommend you to use a usb card for the same. It is nice in most of the case. Because these cards have problem in them. They might not work properly. Other than this a dedicated LAN port for each of the operating system can make your work much easier.

[Shen]

That is right, if you use a USB card then there might be system conflict. The only thing which can work here is load balancing. And the other is minimizing the risk for a broken network card. In place of this a wifi is much accurate to use. Defining a different output for each of the operating system makes your system much stable. Virtualization needs a good hardware configuration.

[Steve123]

Virtualization comes with the option of headless mode in kind of issue when there is incompatibility error. You must first checkout the memor usage. The I/O is the biggest issue here. Virtual machine consumes lots of RAM which in return slows down the Mac Mini server. So that can be the primary cause between most the problem occurred in mac mini server.