Dear Sirs,
I installed Parallallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme on a HP Z800 (12GB RAM, XEON E5520) with two Quadro FX 3800s. The hardware virtualisation of the graphics card works as advertised!
For all reported bugs the settings within the VMs are identical. Parallels Workstation is always configured to use one Quadro FX as directly assigned graphics card.
But there are some bugs left that have to be fixed:
- Sometimes the same keyboard-layout bug for foreign keyboards, that has been corrected in the "Desktop" version just some time ago, appears.
My host (Z800, Vista SP1 64bit) and guest (Vista SP1 64bit) have german keyboard layouts but sometimes the keyboard layout in the VM is just "messed up" in the same way as it happend with the non-corrected Parallels desktop 4 version. The only workaround for this problem is to leave the guest and click on the Parallels Windows to force a new keyboard and mouse capture. This helps for some time until the focus is lost again.
- Sometimes I cannot reenter the VM with the mouse!
After I moved a VM from the Z800 to a almost identical computer with better hardware (two FX 4800s, faster Xeon X5550 CPU, 24GB RAM, same chipset) but different OS (Server 2008 R2) a strange new behaviour appeared: When the automatically capturing of the mouse pointer is enabled (Configure, Features, Services, "Automatically capture and release the mouse pointer") as it is by default, I can use the VM but on leaving the monitor with the directly assigned video card (SLI MultiOS) it happens every now and then that I cannot reenter the VM! Even clicking on the Parallels window to force a mouse capture does not work.
When I move the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen towards the VM, I can sometimes see a flickering mouse cursor for tenth of a second on the VM-monitor but cannot enter or use the VM anymore.
The only solution is to shutdown and restart the VM.
I also tried to uninstall and reinstall "Parallels Tools" within this VM several times but it did not solve the problem.
The best workaround is to deactivate "Automaticallz caputre and release the mouse pointer". In this case it is always possible to leave and reenter the VM by pressing the assigned keys (STRG+ALT).
- Since I moved the VM to the other computer the IO- and especially read performance of the HDD is extremely low. To fix it the parallels tools have been reinstalled several times without effect. I also tried the "Parallels Compressor", rebooted both: Host and Guest, and ran "defrag" on the host (not on the guest) but nothing improved the performance to a normal level.
Using Crystal Disk Mark the performance varies from really good 85MB/s to lousy 1.x MB/s on reads. Writes are much better and do not vary much. These performance drops during reads can be recognized on every application and render the VM almost unusable. If you simply monitor the HDD-LED of the host during reads you can see that it is lit for a short time and then stays off for a long time befor it is lit again. So even if there should be continous HDD access there are huge delays.
Chipset of the Host: Intel 5520, HDD: Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB (10k rpm) connected to onboard Intel ICH-10R.
There are no performance drops with Parallels Desktop 4 on the same system!
- Intel 82576 Networking & VT-d:
It is not possible to bind one port of the Intel 82576 network interface to the virtual machines. A message appears that the adapter combines many PCI functions and both adapters have to be routed to the virtual machines.
This issue is a low priority issue because the bridged networking works just fine. Nevertheless it would be great to offer a way of the network hardware assignment to the VM that does not cause the host to be cut off the network completely.
I look forward that these bugs will be ironed out quickly. The keyboard layout problem might be fixed the same way as it has already be done within the desktop version. The HDD performance issue is a complete show stopper and should be fixed at first.
Let me know if you need any further testing to determine the root of the problems.
Kind regards
ThomasT
I installed Parallallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme on a HP Z800 (12GB RAM, XEON E5520) with two Quadro FX 3800s. The hardware virtualisation of the graphics card works as advertised!
For all reported bugs the settings within the VMs are identical. Parallels Workstation is always configured to use one Quadro FX as directly assigned graphics card.
But there are some bugs left that have to be fixed:
- Sometimes the same keyboard-layout bug for foreign keyboards, that has been corrected in the "Desktop" version just some time ago, appears.
My host (Z800, Vista SP1 64bit) and guest (Vista SP1 64bit) have german keyboard layouts but sometimes the keyboard layout in the VM is just "messed up" in the same way as it happend with the non-corrected Parallels desktop 4 version. The only workaround for this problem is to leave the guest and click on the Parallels Windows to force a new keyboard and mouse capture. This helps for some time until the focus is lost again.
- Sometimes I cannot reenter the VM with the mouse!
After I moved a VM from the Z800 to a almost identical computer with better hardware (two FX 4800s, faster Xeon X5550 CPU, 24GB RAM, same chipset) but different OS (Server 2008 R2) a strange new behaviour appeared: When the automatically capturing of the mouse pointer is enabled (Configure, Features, Services, "Automatically capture and release the mouse pointer") as it is by default, I can use the VM but on leaving the monitor with the directly assigned video card (SLI MultiOS) it happens every now and then that I cannot reenter the VM! Even clicking on the Parallels window to force a mouse capture does not work.
When I move the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen towards the VM, I can sometimes see a flickering mouse cursor for tenth of a second on the VM-monitor but cannot enter or use the VM anymore.
The only solution is to shutdown and restart the VM.
I also tried to uninstall and reinstall "Parallels Tools" within this VM several times but it did not solve the problem.
The best workaround is to deactivate "Automaticallz caputre and release the mouse pointer". In this case it is always possible to leave and reenter the VM by pressing the assigned keys (STRG+ALT).
- Since I moved the VM to the other computer the IO- and especially read performance of the HDD is extremely low. To fix it the parallels tools have been reinstalled several times without effect. I also tried the "Parallels Compressor", rebooted both: Host and Guest, and ran "defrag" on the host (not on the guest) but nothing improved the performance to a normal level.
Using Crystal Disk Mark the performance varies from really good 85MB/s to lousy 1.x MB/s on reads. Writes are much better and do not vary much. These performance drops during reads can be recognized on every application and render the VM almost unusable. If you simply monitor the HDD-LED of the host during reads you can see that it is lit for a short time and then stays off for a long time befor it is lit again. So even if there should be continous HDD access there are huge delays.
Chipset of the Host: Intel 5520, HDD: Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB (10k rpm) connected to onboard Intel ICH-10R.
There are no performance drops with Parallels Desktop 4 on the same system!
- Intel 82576 Networking & VT-d:
It is not possible to bind one port of the Intel 82576 network interface to the virtual machines. A message appears that the adapter combines many PCI functions and both adapters have to be routed to the virtual machines.
This issue is a low priority issue because the bridged networking works just fine. Nevertheless it would be great to offer a way of the network hardware assignment to the VM that does not cause the host to be cut off the network completely.
I look forward that these bugs will be ironed out quickly. The keyboard layout problem might be fixed the same way as it has already be done within the desktop version. The HDD performance issue is a complete show stopper and should be fixed at first.
Let me know if you need any further testing to determine the root of the problems.
Kind regards
ThomasT