Upgrade from Parallels 11 to 12 Causes Dramatic Performance Degradation

[UlliM]

Hi,

A few days ago I upgraded from Parallels version 11 to version 12. Performance has dramatically declined. Both, starting Parallels itself, and starting individual VMs is dramatically slower, I would say it's at least factor 2 slower, and it consumes more memory.

Hardware and OS configuration: iMac with 3.4 GHz i7, 12GB RAM, macOS Sierra 10.12.1.

I have use all Parallels Desktop version starting from version 6, this is by far the slowest version.

Please advise.

Thanks,
U. Mueller

 

[PaulChristopher@Parallels]

Hi UlliM, please check out the instructions outlined below:
Have you installed any new software on Windows virtual machine after the upgrade of version 12? If so, please uninstall and check the performance. If the issue persists, please go to Actions > Configure > Options > Optimization > disable Free Space: Real-time Virtual Disk Optimization.
If the "Real-time Virtual Disk Optimization" option is enabled, it may slow disk performance up to 30% (at the moment of compaction, not constantly). If the host has an SSD disk, the feature will be enabled by default for all virtual machines but will work only if it is compatible with the guest OS.
Open virtual machine configuration > switch to Options tab > Optimization tab > Set performance to Faster virtual machine; check Enable adaptive hypervisor and Tune Windows for speed. If you're not running on battery power, you can also turn on the Better performance option.

 

[UlliM]

Thanks for the reply.

- I did not installed any new software on the Windows virtual machine.
- Why would the behavior would have changed so dramatically from version 11 to 12?
- FYI: the 'Real-time Virtual Disk Optimization' option is under Actions > Configure > Hardware > Hard Disk 1 > Real-time Virtual Disk Optimization. (see attached screenshpt)

Thanks,
U. Mueller