OS X Lion Virtual Machine on Yosemite?

I have a Mid-2014 MacBook Pro (Retina), running OS X Yosemite. I would like to run OS X Lion within a virtual machine.

Is this setup supported by Parallels/VirtualBox/VMware, even though this MacBook would not run Lion natively?

If so, how can I obtain a copy of Lion to install in the virtual machine? Would it help if I had access to a Mac Mini running Lion?

Solution 1:

Lion works fine as virtual machine - as well as all Mac OS X' since Snow Leopard* - in all of the mentioned apps. VMware/Parallels usually offer a better system integration and better performance though - with the downside that they aren't available for free.

To get the OS X Lion installer, check your purchases in your App Store account. If you have downloaded it previously on the MacMini, it should be available there.

*: It's a bit tricky to install Yosemite in VirtualBox and performance is sluggish.