Prerequisites

Hardware, accounts, software, and capacity planning requirements before deploying MacStadium VDI.

Confirm everything on this page is in place before you start deploying MacStadium VDI. Items that vary by deployment model are called out in each section.

Mac hosts

Apple’s software license agreement limits each host to two concurrent macOS VMs. Plan your host count accordingly: divide your peak concurrent user count by two and round up.

Hardware specifications

MacStadium VDI supports any Apple silicon Mac meeting the following requirements. Intel-based Macs are not supported.

Specification	Minimum	Recommended
Processor	Apple silicon (any M-series)	M2 Pro, M4 Pro, or higher
RAM	8 GB	32 GB
Storage	256 GB	1 TB+
Ethernet	1 GbE	10 GbE
macOS	13 (Ventura) or later	14 (Sonoma), 15 (Sequoia), or 26 (Tahoe)

MSDC-Hosted

MacStadium provisions and manages the Mac hardware. Contact your MacStadium account team to confirm host availability and reserve capacity before you begin setup.

Self-Hosted (On-Prem)

You provide Mac mini or Mac Studio hardware meeting the specifications above. Hosts must have SSH access enabled and be reachable from your control plane machine over the network.

Self-Hosted (AWS)

You provision EC2 Mac dedicated instances in your AWS account. Supported instance types: mac2, mac2-m2, and mac2-m2pro. A 24-hour minimum allocation period applies per host. Hosts must be in a VPC subnet that can reach your control plane.

Control plane

The control plane runs on a dedicated machine separate from your Mac hosts. It hosts Docker (for the management UI) and acts as the Ansible control node.

Requirement	Minimum
Operating system	macOS or Linux
CPU	2 vCPUs
RAM	4 GB
Disk	20 GB
Network	SSH access to all Mac hosts

Software

Install the following on the control plane machine before setup:

Software	Purpose
Docker and Docker Compose	Runs the management UI
Ansible	Runs orchestration playbooks
uv	Python package manager used by the orchestration layer
Python 3.x	Required by Ansible and the orchestration layer
sshpass	Required for Ansible playbooks that SSH into VMs via the host as a jump proxy

Accounts and licenses

Item	Notes
MacStadium account	Required for all deployments
Orka Engine license key	Provided by MacStadium at onboarding
VDI broker subscription	Any platform that supports macOS VDI, such as Citrix DaaS or HP Anyware
AWS account with EC2 Mac capacity	Self-Hosted (AWS) only

VDI broker

Before setup, confirm you have:

• An active VDI broker subscription and Delivery Controller configured
• The VDA installer for macOS (for Citrix DaaS, a .dmg file; MacStadium recommends hosting it in S3 with a presigned URL)
• An enrollment token for registering VMs with your Delivery Controller

Identity provider

MacStadium VDI uses your VDI broker’s identity integration. You need one of the following:

• Active Directory (on-premises or Microsoft Entra ID)
• Okta
• Any SAML 2.0-compatible provider your VDI broker supports

No MacStadium-specific identity configuration is required.

MDM (optional, recommended for production)

Supported MDM platforms: Jamf, Kandji, and Intune. MDM is not required to run VMs, but it’s the recommended way to manage configuration profiles, compliance reporting, and app deployment in production.

If you plan to use MDM, have your MDM server URL and an enrollment invitation ready before you seal your golden image. See MDM enrollment for a full walkthrough.

Capacity planning

Use the following to size your deployment before onboarding.

Host count

Each host runs a maximum of two macOS VMs. Divide your peak concurrent user count by 2 and round up, then add 10 to 15 percent for maintenance windows, rolling updates, and peak headroom.

Concurrent users	Hosts needed
10	5
25	13
50	25
100	50

For dedicated (persistent) desktops, size for your total user count rather than peak concurrency: each user holds a VM whether they’re logged in or not. For pooled (non-persistent) desktops, size for peak concurrency, typically 60 to 80 percent of total users.

VM resource defaults

Resource	Default
vCPUs per VM	2
RAM per VM	4,096 MB
Max VMs per host	2 (Apple EULA)

RAM guidance by workload

Workload type	RAM per VM	Recommended host RAM
Standard office / browser-based	4 GB	16 GB
Developer / Xcode / compilation	8 GB	32 GB
Heavy creative / ML inference	8 to 16 GB	64 GB+ (Mac Studio)

Start conservative. MacStadium hosted deployments can add nodes without re-architecting. It’s easier to add hosts than to right-size VM RAM after users are in production.