Orka Overview Part 2: Deploying Mac Virtual Machines

Manipulating virtual machines has become a core skill for DevOps engineers, developers, and operations administrators. With Orka, there are quite a few options, many of them with overlapping features to match customer workflows. Orka allows for automated management of macOS VMs with simple commands - check out the top of the Working with VMs docs page for more information.

Orka macOS VM creation is done in one of two ways:

• By making the config file then deploying (the Jenkins plugin approach)
• By just creating and deploying a VM configuration

From there, you can manipulate the VM (a popular thing to do). And, depending on workflow, operators will favor different commands or approaches.

Docker users will appreciate the start/stop/suspend/resume functionality. Essentially, these are Docker commands being exposed through the Orka CLI.

For VMware users, commands like clone and migrate make a lot of sense, and they function like their VMware (or vSphere) counterparts.

For Kubernetes users, the --replicas flag or scale function will be very familiar. The replicas flag allows the user to specify a number in the replicas field *.yaml file, which then spins up the appropriate amount of VMs. The scale function directly calls kubectl scale, also setting the replicas entry.

What is the difference in most of these functions? Not much. For example, to create multiple macOS VMs, a user can clone a base, or scale, or run multiple deploy commands. There are some subtle differences – things like getting a new container ID versus adding a numeric suffix to an existing container ID – that vary with each protocol. Orka provides the flexibility to find the commands that suit a user best or match the current workflow(s) closest. Looking for more detail? The VM Orka docs provide specifics on all commands.

At MacStadium, we believe in enabling virtualization for macOS the right way and are happy to incorporate best practices in an easy-to-use fashion. Keep your eyes peeled for more installments in our Orka walkthrough series. And if you haven’t played around with our Orka demo, what are you waiting for? The Orka demo is ready for you - with a 20-minute walkthrough and up to two hours to explore.

Ready to get started? One of our sales engineers would be happy to help you evaluate Orka or any of your other Mac cloud infrastructure needs. Contact us now at sales@macstadium.com or by filling out the form here.