Can parallels run more than one VM at the same time
I am a website designer/builder and need to test my sites in numerous versions of browsers and operating systems;
Is it possible to run more than one windows OS on parallels at the same time,
(ie. have xp running MS internet explorer 6.0 along side vista running MS internet explorer 7.0)
ALL RUNNING IN PARALLELS ON A MAC?
Hello TimidANDfriendly,
Parallels can run more then one VM at the very same time. But you should remember about the RAM. Total amount of memory you allocate to the VM's must be less then recommended maximum for one.
I wish you'll enjoy using Parallels with several OSes at the very same time.
My experience: I run on a Macbook Pro 2.4Ghz with 4Gb RAM, typically 3 parallels instances at once - one WinXP, two Debian Linux (one sarge, one etch, for testing against different libraries). Debian servers have 256Mb RAM each, Windows gets 512Mb, and it all hums along very quickly - no noticeable lag on anything, really. Admittedly, my machine is, well, very shiny, but it's quite comfortable.
more than one windows system at the same time
So what your saying is that i can definitely run XP and Vista alongside each other (at the same time).
Is it possible to run two XP systems also i.e. using the same XP installation disc.
Sorry to be so pedantic but I am gathering information to advice my company and i don't want to make promises that are not accurate
I wouldn't say definitely - it would depend on your hardware and the OSes requirements, but I'd give it a shot. As far as running two copies of XP off a single installation disk - if it doesn't break the copyright restrictions, it probably should - running two copies side by side feels wrong to me. I'd be looking at two separate licences for that, myself.
You can grab the demo copy of parallels and give it a try yourself, if you're worried about being right in your advice though.
And note that Vista is "rather" resource intensive. I wouldn't dream of running it w/o a gig of memory allocated to it. So keep that in mind when you're spec'ing out the hardware.
Andy M.
I'm not too worried about system resources as I plan to use one of the new intel mac pros with a minimum of 5gb of ram.
But it is of course worth mentioning. thx
allow say 3 gb for the Mac plus 1 gb per VMOriginally Posted by TimidANDfriendly
and a lot of empty hard disk space
it might pay to run each VM on its own physical hard disk
this MacBookPro is much happier with the VM file on a La Cie 800 firewire HD
Hugh W
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I sometimes run 3 VMs with XP Pro at the same time. I have 512 MB allocated to each one, which is plenty to run IE, and that still leaves 2.5 GB for Mac OS X. (I have a MacBook Pro with 4 GB.)
The VMs were all imported from Virtual PC, so I only ever had one license for XP Pro. I had to re-register them after I imported them, and they all still work.
hey man thx for posting. That answers my question completely ;-D
I run 3 VMs at a time as well. Mac Pro quad with 5 GB of RAM. It does work for a few days in a stretch, but eventually the WindowManager process in OS X gets slower and slower and then gives up the ghost and locks solid, forcing a hard reboot of the system and the loss of any data changed in all the open VMs.
Its been this way since Parallels was first released.
I have two large monitors, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200, on their own video cards (both nVidias). I never use coherence (not even sure how it would work with 3 VMs). Each VM has 768 MB allocated.
Also, an interesting point : it may only freeze the WindowManager if World or Warcraft has run at any time since the last reboot. Maybe. Can't prove that one way or the other. But it seems true.
What do mean by hard reboot exactly? I would imagine that you turn of the mac at the end of everyday. Then start the 3 VMs again everyday after your mac has started, or is that not the way it works?
Last edited by TimidANDfriendly; Aug 23, 2007 at 02:42 AM.
Hard Reboot
Most people I know run their machines 24/7. The only time I shut down my machines - all 6 of them - is when I'm going to be out of town for an extended period of time. I don't have any need to access them from afar so I don't need any of them on. My Mac Pro and other machines haven't been turned off since I returned from New York in late June. I have hard rebooted (turned machine completely off, sometimes by pressing the off button after an extended freeze that is unresponsive to anything) a few times since having VM's on my machine (Parallels and Fusion). I can't pin down the sources, but both have memory leaks that eventually require a hard reboot, but this doesn't happen in ordinary usage; only if the machine has been running with the VM's "active" for several days continuously.
This is how I roll!
This is how I roll! Well okay not really but it does show the power of Parallels and that you can run more then 1 VM at a time.
Here is a MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz 4GB Ram running...
OSX of course.
Ubuntu 7 Fiesty Fawn 512MB
FreeBSD 6 512MB
Windows XP 512MB
Windows Vista - BootCamp 1024MB
So that is 5 OS's all running at the same time. I wont lie its not very fast but it does clearly show both Windows boxes running in Coherence mode see the XP start bar at the bottom and the Vista start bar on the right? And the two *nix VM's running in their own window. Not to mention I am running various peices of software in OSX.
Can it be done? Yep. The picture below is the proof in the pudding.
The VM only goes off on my server in rare cases, I have had it go 24/7 for a month. Although due to a more recent issue of having it return out of HD space I have been prodded in the direction of the much improved Parallels 3. I am very optimistic that this will have taken care of the 'out of space' errors.
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