Virtualisation on M1

Hi, has anyone tried running Virtual Machines on an M1? I have recently been trying UTM with mixed results for running a Ubuntu VM (that i’d like to be a database server). Interested to know what others are doing/have explored/are holding out for?

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Got Ubuntu 20.04 ARM64 running on latest Parallels without problems.

Windows 10 ARM runs well, however still need to find the applications and software I want to make it really work

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Are there any M1-native virtualizations? Or do they all run through Rosetta? That’s a lot of virtualization going on!

Apparently Parallels 16 is native.

Also Rosetta is translation rather than virtualization.

Problem here is that on Windows side only the ARM aversion of Windows is compatible with Parallels on M1. So many x86 apps on Windows don’t run nicely enough, specially x86 32 bit. I found windows emulation of x86 64 bit on Windows to run fine for low processing programs.

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*Preface: You are witnessing history in the making. :wink: I am new here, and will no-doubt get a reputation for what I am about to do. So you can all say you saw it happen first. :stuck_out_tongue: *


@Mac WHY?

(Generic) virtualization (of an entire system) is (quite) often not the best solution. That is (mostly) why (generic) containerization is growing in popularity. Emulation is also a solid candidate for consideration in many cases.


‡ I’m not being a smart-ass, I am a First Principles person and am wondering if maybe your asking the wrong question because there might be a better way to get at what you want than going the route you have chosen so far.

n.b. “Because.” is definitely an “acceptable” answer if you are doing something as a learning endeavor.

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You might actually consider running containers under docker for a database server (be sure to use a volume mount for persisting data locally). It would be tremendously lighter than running a full VM and you also don’t need to run virtual machine software as well. I’ve used this a ton for development on the Mac and really think it’s the way to go.