All you need to know about the sparse RAW disk images used inside lightweight VMs on Apple silicon Macs.
virtualisation
Virtual Machines for lightweight virtualisation on Apple silicon Macs rely on sparse files. Here are tips to ensure they stay small and don’t explode to full size.
Refactored for a smoother experience and with control over shared folders, Viable beta 7 now has a sandboxed and locked-down sibling ViableS, ideal for research.
It’s a fair and simple question: how much free space is needed to update Ventura from 13.0 to 13.1? Is it 2.53, 12.97, 13.22, 13.56 or 14 GB?
Step-by-step guide to installing, configuring and using a Ventura 13.1 virtual machine on an Apple silicon Mac.
Rosetta 2 is key feature for the transition to Apple silicon, and is also available to run Intel x86_64 binaries in virtual macOS and Linux (in Ventura).
Now feature-complete with support for shared folders with the host Mac, and everything is in place for Rosetta 2 translation of x86_64 binaries within the VM.
Now fully supports shared folders, on Ventura hosts running Ventura in a VM. This gives access to faster storage, and to iCloud Drive as well.
Just 4 cores and 16 GB of memory were used for the virtual machine to run Xcode and build apps successfully, but only for local testing.
Writing to the Data volume in a VM is dismally slow. Is using shared storage any quicker? What happens when you copy a VM to an external SSD, or to another Mac?
The Eclectic Light Company 