CentOS - Jan 2021 - Intel/64 CentOS VM running on a Mac M1?

My Dell Precision M3800 running Fedora works great but is really starting to 
show its age, and I'm thinking about getting a new Mac M1-based laptop as it
would really be useful for Video production. 

But I really need to have a IA64 CentOS 7/8 VMs running locally for 
development as I'm often on the road and flaky Internet makes it a necessity
to
keep productivity up. I've been unable to officially confirm that VMWare/
Parallels/VirtualBox intend to support IA64 based OS's and it *needs* to be
an
exact (VM) copy of production so I can trial environments and builds prior to 
roll out. 

Calling around, I actually got ahold of a sales staff at Parallels who assured 
me (in broken India-accent English) that "of course all OS will supported
when
the trial complete" but given that I wasn't sure that he really
understood my
question I remain uncertain. 

Anybody here have any more information than I do? 
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> On Jan 28, 2021, at 7:11 PM, Lists <lists at benjamindsmith.com>
wrote:
> 
> My Dell Precision M3800 running Fedora works great but is really starting
to
> show its age, and I'm thinking about getting a new Mac M1-based laptop
as it
> would really be useful for Video production. 
> 
> But I really need to have a IA64 CentOS 7/8 VMs running locally for 
> development as I'm often on the road and flaky Internet makes it a
necessity to
> keep productivity up. I've been unable to officially confirm that
VMWare/
> Parallels/VirtualBox intend to support IA64 based OS's and it *needs*
to be an
> exact (VM) copy of production so I can trial environments and builds prior
to
> roll out. 
> 
> Calling around, I actually got ahold of a sales staff at Parallels who
assured
> me (in broken India-accent English) that "of course all OS will
supported when
> the trial complete" but given that I wasn't sure that he really
understood my
> question I remain uncertain. 
> 
Take what I?ll say with a grain of salt. Virtualization solution became fast the
moment ?on the fly? conversion of guest system calls to host system calls was
invented. The first I know of is Cygnus solutions who did it in their cygwin
(company was bought by RedHat, and cygwin still exists and still is open source
project). This all implies the system of the same architecture on guest system
as is of the host system. Otherwise, one has to emulate different architecture
CPU, which will make virtualization an order of magnitude slower. That
(emulating generic CPU) was what VMware was doing originally. Then parallels
desktop emerged and was (without mentioning it) using what Cygwin did. One can
not know that about proprietary software, but give better guess than mine,
please. And later VMware went same way, and became really fast virtualization
solution too.

Bottom line: guest and host systems should have the same architecture for guest
system to be able to talk [semi-] directly to CPU for decently fast
virtualization. So, the answer I would give: NO, one can not have guest system
of different architecture as it is with decent speed.

Just my $0.02

Valeri
> Anybody here have any more information than I do?
_______________________________________________
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You need a virtualization solution that is supported on the M1 (currently
Parallels preview or QEMU as far as I know). Secondly you need a
distribution
that supports aarch64 (Ubuntu, CentOS and some others). This should be
sufficient to start with. However, all of this is in an early development
stage,
so several things might not work (e.g. the Parallel Tools are not available
for
aarch64 right now).

Kind regards Thomas
-- 
Linux ... enjoy the ride!

> Am 29.01.2021 um 02:11 schrieb Lists <lists at benjamindsmith.com>:
> 
> My Dell Precision M3800 running Fedora works great but is really starting
to
> show its age, and I'm thinking about getting a new Mac M1-based laptop
as it
> would really be useful for Video production. 
> 
> But I really need to have a IA64 CentOS 7/8 VMs running locally for 
> development as I'm often on the road and flaky Internet makes it a
necessity to
> keep productivity up. I've been unable to officially confirm that
VMWare/
> Parallels/VirtualBox intend to support IA64 based OS's and it *needs*
to be an
> exact (VM) copy of production so I can trial environments and builds prior
to
> roll out. 
> 
> Calling around, I actually got ahold of a sales staff at Parallels who
assured
> me (in broken India-accent English) that "of course all OS will
supported when
> the trial complete" but given that I wasn't sure that he really
understood my
> question I remain uncertain. 


If you need Intel VMs, there?s no way around Intel hardware at the moment.
Especially, if performance matters.

I would wait until 11th generation Intel CPUs or even better AMD Ryzen are
available for Dell?s mobile workstation-line (if you want to stay in that
product-line, which is not the worst thing to do).

Apple?s M1 are (probably) great - but only if you want to run macOS on it.
Anything else and the compromises will likely be even more severe than those
that had to be made in the earliest days of running Linux on a laptop.

Personally, I would also consider the Lenovo E15 (AMD Ryzen), it mostly seems to
work with Ubuntu, which means you would likely have to use Fedora for the time
being.

On Thu, 28 Jan 2021 at 20:12, Lists <lists at benjamindsmith.com> wrote:
> My Dell Precision M3800 running Fedora works great but is really starting
> to
> show its age, and I'm thinking about getting a new Mac M1-based laptop
as
> it
> would really be useful for Video production.
>
> But I really need to have a IA64 CentOS 7/8 VMs running locally for
> development as I'm often on the road and flaky Internet makes it a
> necessity to
> keep productivity up. I've been unable to officially confirm that
VMWare/
> Parallels/VirtualBox intend to support IA64 based OS's and it *needs*
to
> be an
> exact (VM) copy of production so I can trial environments and builds prior
> to
> roll out.
>
>
1. The Apple M1 uses a variant of the aarch64 (ARM 64 bit) CPU, and the
hardware architecture is different from aarch64 server class hardware in
multiple ways.
2. Currently the work to get Linux to run on the M1 works great in
emulation and somewhat with a lot of work in native mode.
3. IA64 is the Itanium server which Intel stopped making a while ago and
Red Hat quit supporting in 2017.
4. x86_64 (or amd64 ) is the native processor name for the Intel/AMD 64 bit
architecture. It is what your older system runs.
5. The only way to run x86_64 on an M1 is via 'double' emulation. First
you
would have to run a virtual machine on the M1 and that virtual machine
would have to emulate the x86_64. It would be extremely slow, inefficient
and probably could not emulate all the hardware needed.

If you are needing to update your hardware, you need to keep Linux running
native on the system, and that system needs to be x86_64, you will either
need to get an earlier generation Mac or a current system from Dell, HP,
ASUS, etc.


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.

Hello,

The Apple M1 is an ARM-based chip, which is a completely different
architecture from x86_64/amd64 (Intel 64) and IA64 (Itanium).  Run "uname
-m" on one of your production servers to confirm which architecture that
you are targeting. You can use qemu to emulate VMs for different
architectures, but it will be slower than normal VM's where the guest and
the host run the same architecture.

I would be surprised if Parallels and other non-qemu VM platforms supported
running a x86_64 guest on an Apple M1 chip. Even so, there might be some
hiccups. I would recommend looking at regular PC (non-Apple) laptops to
ensure the best compatibility for your use case.

If your servers are truly Itanium, then I don't know what to recommend.

Sincerely,
Jason
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On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 8:12 PM Lists <lists at benjamindsmith.com> wrote:
> My Dell Precision M3800 running Fedora works great but is really starting
> to
> show its age, and I'm thinking about getting a new Mac M1-based laptop
as
> it
> would really be useful for Video production.
>
> But I really need to have a IA64 CentOS 7/8 VMs running locally for
> development as I'm often on the road and flaky Internet makes it a
> necessity to
> keep productivity up. I've been unable to officially confirm that
VMWare/
> Parallels/VirtualBox intend to support IA64 based OS's and it *needs*
to
> be an
> exact (VM) copy of production so I can trial environments and builds prior
> to
> roll out.
>
> Calling around, I actually got ahold of a sales staff at Parallels who
> assured
> me (in broken India-accent English) that "of course all OS will
supported
> when
> the trial complete" but given that I wasn't sure that he really
understood
> my
> question I remain uncertain.
>
> Anybody here have any more information than I do? [Caution: Email from
> External Sender. Do not click or open links or attachments unless you know
> this sender.]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>

On 1/28/21 5:11 PM, Lists wrote:
> My Dell Precision M3800 running Fedora works great but is really starting
to
> show its age, and I'm thinking about getting a new Mac M1-based laptop
as it
> would really be useful for Video production.
>
> But I really need to have a IA64 CentOS 7/8 VMs running locally for
> development as I'm often on the road and flaky Internet makes it a
necessity to
> keep productivity up. I've been unable to officially confirm that
VMWare/
> Parallels/VirtualBox intend to support IA64 based OS's and it *needs*
to be an
> exact (VM) copy of production so I can trial environments and builds prior
to
> roll out.
Sorry to be pedantic but IA64 refers to Itanium architecture[0] in the 
Linux kernel. You might be referring to x86_64/amd64.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IA-64


Hope this helps,
Jack Morgan