MacPro/MacBootPro as dev machine – Visual Studio

Question

Hi guys
I just wanted to ask a couple of quick question about peoples experience with using MacPro’s and/or MacBootPro’s as windows development machines under boot camp and VMWare Fusion.
Firstly, does anyone know of any stats that are available that compare a MacPro/MacBootPro (under boot camp) and a PC of equivalent specs using XP and/or vista? I am trying to gain an appreciation of how the mac hardware compares to others out there.
Next, if I create a VM using either pc VMWare or mac VMWare Fusion, if the image is available on a drive that both the boot camp XP/vista and OSX can access, can I start up the VM in either physical environment without to much trouble? Also what’s the performance difference if any between running the same VM under the two different physical environments? I am thinking that if I am having a day of development I will boot up in boot camp otherwise stay in OSX but I want to have different environments as VM that I can start at any time in any physical environment, as well as a dev environment that has VS that I can start up if I am in OSX that I can connect to team server/file share.
Also, is Boot camp supported by apple? In that, will they continue to release drivers for their hardware, fix issues, provide phone support, etc?
Has anyone had any issue with the finial release of OSX leopard with running either XP/vista as a dev box that is a result of boot camp or the hardware? It is important that all the features of VS (like debugging threads etc) work the same in boot camp. Having said that is there any difference between boot camp and VMWare Fusion besides direct 3d/graphics support?
Is there anything that I should be aware of if I am looking to have a dev setup on either a new MacPro/MacBootPro?
Lastly, if I want to have two 23” monitors, will I have any issues in running these on the MacPro in either an XP/vista physical under boot camp or external hard drives or any other external physical devices?
Thanks for the help
Anthony

Answer 1

vdh_ant wrote:
does this means you can boot up the same physical install in both bootcamp and in VMWare.
Yes, exactly. I do it every day. I can run Windows natively (the Boot Camp partition) or run the Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine within OS X. And VMWare Fusion detected my new Boot Camp partition automatically.
You mentioned that there is no issue in saving files back and forward between the windows drive and the mac drive... Have you found that this is better than having a third drive that you put shared files that both can access?
Okay, there are a number of options here, all of them pain-free.
1) Nominate a Mac folder (e.g. /Users/myaccount) as a shared folder for your virtual machine. This shows up in Windows Explorer as *Shared Folders on '.host'*, as if it were a network share. So, within Windows, you can swap files between Windows and OS X. This is the default file sharing mechanism supplied by VMWare and works as well as file sharing on a Windows network.
2) Acquire an NTFS driver for the Mac that supports writing files straight onto the Boot Camp partition (the default Mac NTFS driver is read-only). You have a few choices here: Paragon's commercial NTFS driver; Google's MacFUSE and an open source driver whose name I forget right now. I opted for the commercial one because MacFUSE is pretty slow.
3) Acquire a driver for Windows that lets you write to a HFS+ partition. The only real option here is MediaFour's MacDrive. And it works well.
Option (1) is fine for 99% of file sharing duties.
Option (2) is necessary if you want to drop files into your Windows partition without having to start up a virtual machine.
Option (3) is necessary if you are running Windows natively and want to drop files into your OS X partition.
Also if you have a iTunes library stored on the Mac are you able to open the same library from within the bootcamp windows running iTunes?
Yes and no, I'm afraid. Yes, Windows Explorer can browse your iTunes music files on your HFS+ partition. But the actual iTunes database itself contains a Unix path for every music track. So your Windows iTunes won't be able to 'see' the files because it won't understand those pathnames.
I'm facing the same dilemma myself. With a bit of cunning symlinking on the Mac I could probably separate the music files from the iTunes database and simply have two database directories: one for OS X and the other for Windows. The problem then arises that tracks inserted when I'm in windows won't be visible when I'm in OS X. I'd have to import the new tracks every time I swap between the two systems. It's more of an irritation than a problem I suppose. Right now, I stick with my Mac for iTunes and listen to everything on my iPod when I'm working in Windows.
You mentioned that you are still running VS 2003, i am guessing that 2005 and 2008 aren't a problem?
Nope. I installed 2005 last week and 2008 at the weekend at both run like a dream. Again, RAM is your friend.
And graphic if you are running natively under bootcamp is not a problem.
Well, no problems for me, but I don't run games or anything 3D intensive, so I can't comment. The GPU is an NVidia 8600M GT with 128 MB video RAM. From what I can gather it is an okay card, but not stellar (most laptops don't have stellar cards because of battery life). You would have to research its suitability for hardcore graphics elsewhere.
I can see from what you’re saying, more cores are better than fewer ones as well as ram as much ram as I can get (I think the mac pro goes up to 32gb ).
Yup. More cores == more simultaneous VMs. And like I said, as much RAM as you can get. That said, I have since discovered that some VMs need less RAM that you might think. VMWare's support site has an article, based on Intel research, that outlines how to optimize the memory allocation to each of your VMs such that you don't give them more than they really need.
Finally how time machine work with bootcamp. As in when you are running OX is it able to backup the files on the windows partition? If this is the case how have you found this, have you found that you are able to recover from a total system crash on windows by using time machine or you don’t even attempt to try and use time machine for the windows drive.
Alas, you can't use Time Machine to back up your Windows partition. Time Machine uses Unix hard links to achieve its ends and they aren't supported by NTFS or FAT32.
However I use a fantastic app called WinClone to back up my Windows partition. It creates giant image files which I place on an external disk (which could easily be the same disk used for Time Machine). It's not a good Windows backup strategy though; it's an all-or-nothing Windows cloner.
I haven't had a system crash from which to recover (yet!), but I have used WinClone when I had to resize my Boot Camp partition. It took about two hours and worked flawlessly.
Thanks a lot for you time and help.
No sweat. I'm amazed at the versatility of virtual machines and Boot Camp. I don't think you'll be disappointed.