VMware Quick Start

Setting up a robust, secure macOS cloud with MacStadium and VMware

In the IP Plan document you receive at signup, you’ll find the necessary information for setting up basic CI with VMware. With that info handy, let's get started.

Note: You can find a copy of your IP Plan in the files section of the MacStadium Customer Portal.

Note: The specific software versions denoted in the following guide are intended as representative examples. Please ensure that the versions you select and install are compatible with your specific tech stack.

Process:

  1. Setup access to Mac Cloud (VPN) ( ~10 min )
  2. Login to VMware's vCenter ( ~5 min )
  3. Create a Virtual Machine ( ~10 min )
  4. Install macOS on VM ( ~30 min )
  5. Install VMware Guest Tools ( ~15 min )
  6. Install OSX Build Tools ( ~10 min)

Before you can gain access to your MacStadium VMware private cloud, you must first configure your firewall. For the sake of security, MacStadium initially blocks all access by default. Our recommended method, and the one most MacStadium customers follow, is to access your VMware private cloud via a Remote Access VPN.

VPN Client
We recommend using the Cisco AnyConnect client. See this page.

Alternately, you can use the open-source openconnect (most macOS users can run "brew install openconnect").

Step 2 Login to VMware's vCenter

Once you’re connected via VPN, you can securely connect to your vCenter instance. Use the information in the IP Plan available via the files section in MacStadium Portal to find the address of your vCenter web client and your login credentials.

Users of vSphere 6.5+ can access the HTML5 version by appending “/ui” to your login url, e.g., https://xx.xx.xxx.xx/ui This is the recommended method if possible.

Note: Chrome will often disallow access to the vCenter web client due to a self signed cert, if this occurs use a non chromium based browser such as safari or firefox, or type 'thisisunsafe' anywhere in the browser window.

Note: Because this view is being served from your private cloud, you may see a warning in your web browser about the absence of SSL protection. It is safe to ignore this and proceed.

Now that you've logged in to your vCenter instance, you're ready to build out your first VM. You will have set the number of physical hosts in your computing cluster at sign-up, but you can adjust at any time according to your needs.

It will be within one of these host machines that we will create our first VM.

As you create subsequent VMs, you will be able to include macOS in the VM template, but we recommend that you follow this guide for installing macOS initially.

VMware has a set of tools that must be installed on macOS. These get mounted via a virtual CD drive. Follow the guide below to install or upgrade your tools.

Finally, to make this environment into a viable build env, we'll need to install several OSX build tools.