pausing vs suspending?

[Tony Carreon]

using Parallels Desktop Pro 11.1.3

reading the parallels KB, it appears that suspending and pausing a VM are essentially the same as far as resources go.

the kb states that the VM will release memory and not use any CPU cycles when in a paused state, same as a suspended VM.

however suspending will allow you to actually close parallels desktop and restart your mac. a VM in a paused state will be reset if you close parallels and/or restart your mac.

but, when i look at resources, i notice that my paused VM is still wired to the memory that was allocated to the VM and even consumes a small amount of CPU cycles (less than 1%).

so is the KB incorrect? am i missing something? or is there a bug/problem with the way parallels pauses a VM?

 

[marat_t]

Hi Tony,
You may compare pausing with Sleep and suspending with hypernation.
In regards to resources, when VM is paused memory is not released to Mac. I found this article that looks to be clear in explaining differences:
http://kb.parallels.com/en/123111

 

[sukhbirsinghbadal]

Parallels Desktop is designed to operate like an ordinary computer application. This means that you do not have to change the virtual machine state from running to paused, suspended, or stopped before putting your Mac to sleep. In sleep mode, the applications running on your Mac (including Parallels Desktop and all virtual machines) do not consume any resources and quit automatically.

 

[Tony Carreon]

Parallels Desktop is designed to operate like an ordinary computer application. This means that you do not have to change the virtual machine state from running to paused, suspended, or stopped before putting your Mac to sleep. In sleep mode, the applications running on your Mac (including Parallels Desktop and all virtual machines) do not consume any resources and quit automatically.

thanks but i wasn't asking about what happens to the VM when i close the lid (sleep) on my mac.

my question was about suspending vs pausing the VM from the actions menu / control center. i asked because i run mulitple VMs at once and on occasion i need to run a cloned vm (which would cause a problem since they both use the same MAC address). so i usually just suspend VM 1 and start VM 2. i was curious if i could just pause VM 1 but it appears that it wouldn't be a good idea since, as marat_t said, the memory is not freed up and released back.

 

[Pradeep@Parallels]

Hello Tony Carreon,
Yes, you are right Pausing a virtual machine will clear the virtual machine CPU activity but RAM is still used by the virtual machine's process. Then the released CPU resources can be used by the host OS and its applications or by other virtual machines running on the host computer.