Well I stumbled on something interesting when I was trying to virtualize Windows Server 2019  on MacOS Sonoma 14.4.1: I completely forgot that it only runs on x86-x64 architecture and my simple mind forgot that I can run only ARM64 compatible OSes in Vmware Fusion. (shout out to the free player Vmware provides for us to use to play around with these things!)

Basically the reason for doing this was so I can learn and teach myself the ins and outs of Active Directory so I can put it in my home lab homework history.

Anyways I stumbled upon a software application called UTM: specifically made for MacOS and it allows EMULATION, which means I can run any OS architecture, albeit at a penalized state (aka not optimized). Apparently running with multiple cores would help speed up things, especially on my M2 based ARM64 processor.

The link is here: https://tcsfiles.blob.core.windows.net/documents/AIST3720Notes/WindowsServeronanM1Mac.html

Currently in Vmware Fusion I have Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Windows 11 virtual machines sitting in the library, and while I am posting this getting UTM to install Windows Server 2019 and Kali Linux 2023. If there is a computer “issue”, there is usually a computer solution.

On the home network I have a separate hardware device running video transcodes in the form of a small form factor HP (HP ProDesk 400 G5 Desktop Mini i5-9500T 8GB DDR4) using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and another NAS appliance running UnRaid (Intel Xeon CPU E31220 @ 3.10GHz with 15 SATA connections, 16GB DDR3 Single-bit ECC), which also hosts 18 Docker containers. Trying to figure out how to build out a Pi-hole/OpnSense device to supplement the built in firewall from the TP-Link Archer BE550. All configurations and ideas mostly came from serverbuilds.net.