So I've been running multiple VMs (sometimes up to 5 or 6 at a time) on my 2012 Macbook Air with 8GB memory. Sure not the greatest performance, but it worked and made windows update and parallels tools updates easier. Since updating to PD12 I can no longer run more than one VM at as time. When first VM is open, all is fine. When second VM opens, one of them always freezes...usually the first VM opened. If I pause the running VM, the frozen VM starts to work. If I unpause the paused VM, one of them freezes. Note that one VM is older (built with parallels version 9 or 10) running Windows 7 and other is built with PD 12 running Windows 10. Both have latest and greatest parallels tools installed, run full screen, all of the sharing and integration stuff shut off.
I have the same problem too. One work around is to make one of the VM in Coherence mode. Hope it can get fixed soon.
Did you change memory allocation or more important video memory on any of the machines? Can you check to see if Parallels may have changed it? I'm on 16gb of ram, running 4 virtual machines (3gb each) with 512mb on each video memory (always factor this in, since it uses ram). And no issues. Also do you have "use apple" or "use parallels" for hypervisor selected (this is under hardware => cpu & memory)
I just upgraded from PD11 to 12, no changes to VMs that worked just fine in PD11 had this problem with PD12. So I'm back to PD11. I had a problem with trackpad which is what made me upgrade...only to find out that problem was with Sierra...updating to 10.12.1 fixed this. As for VM config, 1 GB of memory each, 256 MB video memory. Using Parallels hypervisor. Works fine in PD 11. This may be a upgrade problem maybe with config of exisiting PD11 VMs.
is one preferable over the other? from what i understand, "parallels" is generally the way to go since apple is running in the user space. is that an incorrect assumption?
i run 2 VMs simultaneously (from the SD card no less!) and don't really have a problem once they're up and running. if i try to start both at essentially the same time i do notice quite a bit of lag. however if i boot one, wait and then boot the second things seem to run fine. also, i try to not shutdown the VM but rather just suspend it. boot up is slower from the SD card obviously... all of my VMs are windows (usually 10 and server 2012) allocated with 2GB RAM, 2 processors and 256mb video memory each. running on an Early 2015 MacBook Pro 13" 2.7Ghz i5 / 8GB RAM... PD Pro 12.0.2
What does "freeze" mean? May be it is caused by http://kb.parallels.com/en/6860 or http://kb.parallels.com/en/122828 ?
I was finally able to recreate this. You need to submit a ticket, but here is how to recreate this issue. I am also submitting. The VM is not actually frozen. You just cannot click or do anything in it. Make the unfrozen machine non-fullscreen and you will get access back to the other one.
