Question How can I best run access on a MAC (1 Viewer)

ryetee · Dec 12, 2017

I am deploying an access database to a small number of laptops.
I have just learnt that the boss has a MacBook!
I've read that this can be done using Parallels or VMWare.
Has anyone any experience using Parallels or VMWare?
Are there any open source solutions?

How do they actually work? Will he need to buy Windows 10?
I presume they are some sort of emulator - can I remote desktop with say something like teamviewer into them for support purposes?
Within Parallel/VMWare/Somehing else will the file structure look like a normal windows environment - ie will I 'see' a C: drive.
Can i use VBS files in this environment that use things like %USERPROFILE%
and fullpath = fso.GetAbsolutePathName(folderName)?
Are there any pitfalls?

Any help greatly appreciated.
I'm thinking of asking him to give me his MacBook and buy himself a laptop but not sure that would go down that well!

pbaldy · Dec 12, 2017

My boss has a Mac, and we used VMWare. It creates a virtual machine, so yes that machine would need a Windows license. Within the VM, it is exactly like a stand-alone computer; it has a C drive, etc. You can remote into it.

I don't have a lot of Mac experience, so I can't compare VMWare to any other method.

ryetee · Dec 12, 2017

pbaldy said:
My boss has a Mac, and we used VMWare. It creates a virtual machine, so yes that machine would need a Windows license. Within the VM, it is exactly like a stand-alone computer; it has a C drive, etc. You can remote into it.

I don't have a lot of Mac experience, so I can't compare VMWare to any other method.

Thought it would be. So you can remote into it and 'play' around?
What remote software do you use?

pbaldy · Dec 12, 2017

We have a Teamviewer license, but I suspect any of them would work.

sxschech · Dec 13, 2017

Open source option is Virtual Box and I have used that one. This may be true of all of them, but speaking for Virtual Box, when you set it up, you will need to allocate the amount of hard disk space and memory you want Windows to have, so for example if you need a computer with 500g to hold windows plus whatever programs and free storage of hard disk then you will be taking that away permanently from the Apple side. The memory would be temporary, so if you have 16 of ram and say you want 10 for windows, once you close virtualbox, the 10 will be returned to mac os. If there isn't enough space on hard disk, you could use an external drive, but I think you may still need to allocate a bare min on the machd, not sure as didn't have that issue.

Apple has bootcamp which is free (last time I checked), but requires rebooting into one or the other os rather than being able to switch between mac and windows via mouse or keyboard if you need to share data or do work on one os while the other os is running in the background.

jleach · Dec 13, 2017

I thought Parallels was the goto for Mac VM platforms?

pbaldy · Dec 13, 2017

That could very well be Jack. Like I said, I don't have much Mac experience. My boss is a Mac guy, brought in his Mac and a copy of VMWare Fusion, so that's what I used. You don't argue with the big dog.

ryetee · Dec 13, 2017

Thanks to everyone for the input.
i had read up and VMWare, Parallels and Virual Box seemed to be the main 3 contenders.

Thansks sxschech, I hadn't considered you had to allocate the space up front.
PBaldy - do you know if this is the case for VMWare
jleach - do you have experience of Parallels? If so is this the case for parallels as well

I presume I can hang a printer off the mac via the thunderbolt connection and there will be no problem using it from within any virtual machine.

Probably going to try virtul box as it's free!

jleach · Dec 13, 2017

While I have a fair amount of VM experience on PC, I have very little on Mac (none past emulating mobile apps with Xamarin, actually).

That said, I know numerous people who are "big hitters" so to speak and Parallels is what they use (and also being an Apple product itself, it might be less prone to issues, but VMWare is a very solid company as well: and of course VirtualBox is run by Oracle, but be careful: you get what you pay for).

Generally speaking with Virtualization, you can either a) allocate a bunch of disk space up front (20gb is usually ok for a basic Windows OS install, but be careful: updates will check that up fast - for long-term VMs I'll allocate 80gb for the drive because I won't have to worry about it for a long time, and because storage is cheap these days). Or, b) set it up to auto-grow. There's pros and cons to each, but generally you get better performance with fixed-size, and usually there's some means to increase the disk size even for fixed size (which generally involves turning off the VM, using the VM Manager to increase the files that house the virtual disk, then firing up the VM again and extended the disk partition with Windows).

Besides harddisk space, you'll also have to carve out a slice of your CPU (at least one core), and some RAM (I go for 2gb min, but I keep a lot of RAM on my primary machine specifically so I don't have to worry about it - you might get away with a bit less).

Then there's networking: usually you don't have to configure much of anything here, the VM client will bridge to your Mac's adapter and piggyback off that.

That's about all I have offhand for VM guidelines. Again, I have little Mac/Parallels experience, but have worked with Hyper-V, VMWare (Fusion and Workstation), VirtualBox and probably some others on PC, and those are all typical configuration things regardless of which platform is used.

Good luck! (on the bright side, Virtualization is AWESOME and you'll wonder how you ever lived without it once you've got it under your thumb)

Edit: printers and USB drives and other such peripherals are typically easy to configure as well. VMs are good at this stuff and most of the VM client wizards are much better now than they were 5 years ago.

ryetee · Dec 13, 2017

jleach said:
While I have a fair amount of VM experience on PC, I have very little on Mac (none past emulating mobile apps with Xamarin, actually).

That said, I know numerous people who are "big hitters" so to speak and Parallels is what they use (and also being an Apple product itself, it might be less prone to issues, but VMWare is a very solid company as well: and of course VirtualBox is run by Oracle, but be careful: you get what you pay for).

Generally speaking with Virtualization, you can either a) allocate a bunch of disk space up front (20gb is usually ok for a basic Windows OS install, but be careful: updates will check that up fast - for long-term VMs I'll allocate 80gb for the drive because I won't have to worry about it for a long time, and because storage is cheap these days). Or, b) set it up to auto-grow. There's pros and cons to each, but generally you get better performance with fixed-size, and usually there's some means to increase the disk size even for fixed size (which generally involves turning off the VM, using the VM Manager to increase the files that house the virtual disk, then firing up the VM again and extended the disk partition with Windows).

Besides harddisk space, you'll also have to carve out a slice of your CPU (at least one core), and some RAM (I go for 2gb min, but I keep a lot of RAM on my primary machine specifically so I don't have to worry about it - you might get away with a bit less).

Then there's networking: usually you don't have to configure much of anything here, the VM client will bridge to your Mac's adapter and piggyback off that.

That's about all I have offhand for VM guidelines. Again, I have little Mac/Parallels experience, but have worked with Hyper-V, VMWare (Fusion and Workstation), VirtualBox and probably some others on PC, and those are all typical configuration things regardless of which platform is used.

Good luck! (on the bright side, Virtualization is AWESOME and you'll wonder how you ever lived without it once you've got it under your thumb)

Edit: printers and USB drives and other such peripherals are typically easy to configure as well. VMs are good at this stuff and most of the VM client wizards are much better now than they were 5 years ago.

Thanks for that!
May be a stupid question but I presume wifi works within the virtual machine?

jleach · Dec 13, 2017

ryetee said:
Thanks for that!
May be a stupid question but I presume wifi works within the virtual machine?

Shouldn't be an issue. The VM should be picking up on the host machine's connection by default, so whether or not it's wifi shouldn't make a difference.

(note: there is much that can be done with advanced network configs in VMs, and again a grain of salt because I don't use Macs much, but if it's anything like everything else (presumably so), you should have no major issues there)

ryetee · Dec 13, 2017

jleach said:
Shouldn't be an issue. The VM should be picking up on the host machine's connection by default, so whether or not it's wifi shouldn't make a difference.

(note: there is much that can be done with advanced network configs in VMs, and again a grain of salt because I don't use Macs much, but if it's anything like everything else (presumably so), you should have no major issues there)

I thought as much.
It struck me though that the host machine could connect to router 1 and the VM to router 2. Not sure why you would want to do that but hey ho!

Question How can I best run access on a MAC (1 Viewer)

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