Anyone using Parallels 16 with Catalina successfully ?

Only with the Apple Hypervisor. And it is ssslllloooowwwww. Unusable. Parallels Hypervisor crashes out and kernel panics the Mac.
 
StephenS11 said:
Parallels 16 with Mac Pro7,1. Catalina 10.15.6. No issues.
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Glad to see some success, given a number of significant problems people have reported. It would be helpful if you could provide some additional information so we all can tell more specifically what worked: (1) are you saying "no issues" with 10.15.6 with or without the recent 10.15.6 supplemental installed? (2) did you first download PD16 on 10.15.5, have it work, and then update to 10.15.6? (3) or perhaps you updated to 10.15.6 + supplemental and then downloaded PD16? Any more specifics would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
Parallels 15 installed on 10.15.5 and then updated to 10.15.6 and then updated to 10.15.6 supplemental update. No issues in all cases. Functioned well. Parallels 15 on 10.15.6 supplemental update then updated to parallels 16. Functions completely fine. Also had parallels 15 on MacBook Pro 15 inch on 10.16.6 supplemental update then updated to Parallels 16. Again no issues. Working well. Using parallels hypervisor, windows 10 64 bit all updated, office 365 64 bit, 4 processors allocated, 32 gb ram allocated on Mac Pro 7,1 and 12 gb ram on MacBook Pro. Works perfectly with performance improvement evident over Parallels 15 on Catalina.

Note that Catalina installations were clean: new machine Mac Pro and on MacBook Pro clean install of Catalina (10.15.4 at time of later installation). The latter clean install was because the MacBook Pro upgrade from Mojave to Catalina performed slowly and apps crashed. All resolved with the Catalina clean install.

Hope that helps.
 
StephenS11 said:
Parallels 15 installed on 10.15.5 and then updated to 10.15.6 and then updated to 10.15.6 supplemental update. No issues in all cases. Functioned well. Parallels 15 on 10.15.6 supplemental update then updated to parallels 16. Functions completely fine. Also had parallels 15 on MacBook Pro 15 inch on 10.16.6 supplemental update then updated to Parallels 16. Again no issues. Working well. Using parallels hypervisor, windows 10 64 bit all updated, office 365 64 bit, 4 processors allocated, 32 gb ram allocated on Mac Pro 7,1 and 12 gb ram on MacBook Pro. Works perfectly with performance improvement evident over Parallels 15 on Catalina.

Note that Catalina installations were clean: new machine Mac Pro and on MacBook Pro clean install of Catalina (10.15.4 at time of later installation). The latter clean install was because the MacBook Pro upgrade from Mojave to Catalina performed slowly and apps crashed. All resolved with the Catalina clean install.

Hope that helps.
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Thanks so much for your detailed response, it is really helpful and encouraging! While I hope that your experience is the norm, it would be great to hear from others about this topic.

However, a forum thread that was initiated on 8/11/20 reported a number of nontrivial problems with PD16 on 10.15.6 that, as far as I can tell, were never resolved (although Maria@Parallels participated in the thread). That leaves things uncertain as to the current status of things, with it being hard to tell if the earlier posted problems were idosyncratic or not . I also see that Maria has liked this thread. So, it would be great, Maria, if you could post for all of us a summary of known problems for the situation of PD16 installations on Catalina 10.15.6 with the supplemental update (this is the scenario that most users will end up operating from eventually). If the vast majority of users have had no problems, that would also be great to know. Thanks to all for providing info on this.
 
Parallels Desktop 16.0.0 (48916)
Catalina 10.15.6 (19G2021)
Early 2013 MacBookPro10,1, Quad-core i7, 2.7GHz, 16GB memory.
Once I turned all the TRIM functions off: No worries.

Other settings:
CPU/Memory:
Android 9 - 2 CPUs, 4096MB
Fedora 32 - 2 CPUs, 12288MB
Windows 10 - 4 CPUs, 8192MB
All VMs - Extended memory limit: Off, Hypervisor: Parallels (not Apple), Adaptive: On, no nested virtualization
Graphics:
Android 9 - 64MB, Resolution: Scaled, 3D acceleration: On
Fedora 32 - 64MB, Resolution: More Space, 3D acceleration: On
Windows 10 - 1GB, Resolution: Best for Retina
All VMs - Always use hi-perf graphics: Off
 
It works...kind of. There are a number of annoying issues. They aren't show stoppers for me, but they may be to you. Version 15 was pretty stable, so if that's more important to you I would recommend you stick with that for now.
 
KristianS1 said:
It works...kind of. There are a number of annoying issues. They aren't show stoppers for me, but they may be to you. Version 15 was pretty stable, so if that's more important to you I would recommend you stick with that for now.
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Thanks for your input. It would be very helpful if you would articulate what the "annoying issues" are. That would allow me to assess whether or not they might be important to me. Staying on Version 15 is not an option for the systems I am working on, so your time on this is appreciated.
 
You can look at the issues in this sub forum that people have reported. Not everyone has every issue. I'm on a 16 core Mac Pro, so not a very common setup.

So far the main issues. have been:

Smartguard and snapshots often don't work
Parallels hypervisor doesn't scale for machines with large number of cores. Workaround is to use the Apple hypervisor. This was true of version 15 though.
Intermittent freezing of VM on startup, which requires a reboot

The most annoying for me is the first. I don't like living life on the edge, especially as VMs are more prone to corruption and my work depends on it.
 
Thanks for the additional info.

For me, while it would be just "annoying" to have freezing on startup requiring a reboot, it would be more critical to not be able to depend on snapshots working reliably. Could you describe further what the snapshot issues have been, for example is it that (1) snapshots already taken can't be reliably used to revert the system back to the snapshot or (2) taking a new snapshot fails intermittently but ultimately works after several tries or (3) a combo of (1) and (2) or (3) something else.

As an aside, it has been frustrating trying to figure out what the issues are in fact for PD16 on Catalina 10.15.6 (19G2021). When I tried to submit a ticket asking for a comprehensive listing of issues, I just got a response that there are no significant issues with the latest Catalina (but their published knowledge base does not include Catalina 10.15.6 issues) and that Parallels will help me with whatever problems arise. That does not really sit well with me; feels like they are prioritizing making sales over full disclosure. I would be more likely to purchase with a sense of full disclosure so I could make an informed decision. It is kind of impossible to sort through all of the user posts to figure out what has or has not been resolved and whether or not unresolved problems would be relevant for me. Any thoughts?

Thanks!
 
EricG11 said:
Thanks for the additional info.

For me, while it would be just "annoying" to have freezing on startup requiring a reboot, it would be more critical to not be able to depend on snapshots working reliably. Could you describe further what the snapshot issues have been, for example is it that (1) snapshots already taken can't be reliably used to revert the system back to the snapshot or (2) taking a new snapshot fails intermittently but ultimately works after several tries or (3) a combo of (1) and (2) or (3) something else.

As an aside, it has been frustrating trying to figure out what the issues are in fact for PD16 on Catalina 10.15.6 (19G2021). When I tried to submit a ticket asking for a comprehensive listing of issues, I just got a response that there are no significant issues with the latest Catalina (but their published knowledge base does not include Catalina 10.15.6 issues) and that Parallels will help me with whatever problems arise. That does not really sit well with me; feels like they are prioritizing making sales over full disclosure. I would be more likely to purchase with a sense of full disclosure so I could make an informed decision. It is kind of impossible to sort through all of the user posts to figure out what has or has not been resolved and whether or not unresolved problems would be relevant for me. Any thoughts?

Thanks!
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P.S. While I did see the 8/11/20 update post by Maria, it is virtually exclusively with regard to Big Sur issues. Also, were the snapshot problems you reported using ver 16.0 or the newer ver 16.0.1?
 
Make sure your PVM file is static, not variable. Do not reclaim disk space. It does not work. Your Mac host system will be corrupted.
 
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