MacPro freezing with Parallels 7 due to RAM configuration?

Hi experts,

I am running Parallels 7 with latest support patches on a Mac Pro (early 2009) with 32 GB of RAM. Mac OS and Parallels is a clean, new install. Guest OS is a Windows Server 2008 R2, which I have attributed 8 GB of RAM, despite the warning from Parallels since the Mac should have more than enough RAM to run the Server. There is no other software installed which would eventually steal RAM.

Problem:
I experience that my Mac freezes after a period of time running the Windows Server; I can confirm all free RAM slowly gets consumed watching the system activity monitor, however I can't see any process which cumulates RAM - even the process for the virtual machine stays well under 8 GB. When I reduce the attributed RAM from 8 GB to 4 GB, the Mac apparently doesn't freeze - however the Server stays well under its suggested RAM setup.

Question:
- what's the most amount of RAM Parallels recognizes from a host? Seems like mine will not show more than 8 GB, no matter how much RAM the host really has.
- is there a way to attribute more than 8 GB of RAM to a virtual (Windows) guest OS?
- has anyone else had a similar problem?

So far, it seems I have to run the server with no more than 4 GB RAM to avoid the problem.

Thanks for your input.
Mark

 

8 GB is the maximum you can give a VM.

Steve

 

Hi Steve,

thanks for your confirmation. I guess I'll have to live with a max of 8 GB then.

I still have the problem of the Mac freezing because of memory consumption - unfortunately, setting the RAM for the VM to 4 GB did not do the trick in the end. Do you know of any reason why this happens? After a while, the host - and with it the VM - runs out of mem and all I can do is a hard reset. Neither Mac not Windows likes this.

Right now, this is a real problem to my intended use.

Cheers,
Mark

 

Have you watched if the RAM gets increasingly consumed even with the VM at 4 GB RAM? Might be another program (for instance, a browser) that is leaking.

Have you tried assigning 6 GB? At least is more than 4 GB.

 

Solution

Hi all,

thanks for helping me out with this problem. I just wanted to give a short feedback: the memory leaks are finally gone - but I had to switch from Parallels to VMware because I run into some other stability problems (http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?p=602588#post602588) as well with my choice of guest system. I will keep my other clients (Windows 7) on Parallels for now, but since the switch I have contribiuted 8 GB to the server and still have plenty of GB over for my host; and the leaking is gone.

Seems like Parallels has some problems with SBS 2011, at least the latest builds.

Cheers,
Mark

 

Need a real solution

I just switched to parallels, and I am to experiencing the freezing issue of Windows 2008 R2. Switching to vmware is not really a good option, as Parallels should be fixed. But I'm not sure it's the same as your issue. I have 2GB allocated with 6GB for the host OSX. When using the Windows 2008 R2 VM, it locks up my entire machine. The only thing I can do is a hard power-off. (Windows 7 works fine).

If I have to switch back to vmware,....

 

Guys before switching try to contact tech support first - guys are working to solve issues with software.
go to www.parallels.com/support
it is free