Skip to main content

Parallels 4.0: For the new MAC, experimental 8-way SMP as well!

The release of the 4.0 version of Parallels’ Desktop for Mac on Nov. 11 comes a few months after VMware released the latest version of its Fusion software, which allows Windows and Linux operating systems to run along side the Mac OS X. The Parallels Desktop for Mac software, which is now available, retails for $79.99.

While virtualization technology has been traditional used by consumers for their Macs, the technology is increasingly important in the enterprise as more and Macs are finding their way into boardrooms and corner offices.

In this release, Parallels has included new features specifically designed for IT managers. For example, the new release of Parallel’s software allows up to 16 NICs (network interface cards) to work with each virtual machine. The software also allows an IT manager to boot a guest OS off the company’s network.

Parallels has also included support for Mac OS X Server 10.5 Leopard and experimental support for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard as guest operating systems in virtual machines. In addition, Parallels is offering Windows Server 2008 and 2003 support.

In this latest version of virtualization software for the Mac, Parallels has expanded the virtualization software’s ability to handle 64-bit guest operating systems. In addition, Parallels has added the ability to support 4-way SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) within each virtual machine, which allows the hardware to handle heavier workloads even in a virtual environment.

Parallels can also support experimental 8-way SMP in the 4.0 release.


Source

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Security: VMware Workstation 6 vulnerability

vulnerable software: VMware Workstation 6.0 for Windows, possible some other VMware products as well type of vulnerability: DoS, potential privilege escalation I found a vulnerability in VMware Workstation 6.0 which allows an unprivileged user in the host OS to crash the system and potentially run arbitrary code with kernel privileges. The issue is in the vmstor-60 driver, which is supposed to mount VMware images within the host OS. When sending the IOCTL code FsSetVoleInformation with subcode FsSetFileInformation with a large buffer and underreporting its size to at max 1024 bytes, it will underrun and potentially execute arbitrary code. Security focus

OS Virtualization comparison: Parallels' Virtuozzo vs the rest

Virtuozzo's main differentiators versus hypervisors center on overhead, virtualization flexibility, administration and cost. Virtuozzo requires significantly less overhead than hypervisor solutions, generally in the range of 1% to 5% compared with 7% to 25% for most hypervisors, leaving more of the system available to run user workloads. Customers can also virtualize a wider range of applications using Virtuozzo, including transactional databases, which often suffer from performance problems when used with hypervisors. On the administration side, customers need to manage, maintain and secure just a single OS instance, while the hypervisor model requires customers to manage many OS instances. Of course, the hypervisor vendors have worked hard to automate much of this process, but it still requires more effort to manage and maintain multiple operating systems than a single instance. Finally, OS virtualization with Virtuozzo has a lower list price than the leading hypervisor for comme...