Running VMware 3.02 and Parellels 5.0.9308 at the Same Time

[tomkeator]

I have increased my RAM to 8GB on a MBP15" with a 2.4 processor and am running both VMware and Parallels using Windows 7 in separate spaces and can really now see the performance for each. I am only running Office 2007 applications related to business, no games or design programs. Originally, when 3.0 was released, I posted how much faster and better Parallels appeared to be however with now a side by side comparison, with the current VMware release, I am finding both fairly the same in performance for the activities I require. VMware seems to boot up slower however once up and the speed of processing appears to be on par with Parallels.

[tramac]

I am not a virtualization expert, but I have read that is not advisable to run different virtualization softwares at the same time. The following citation is from another producer, but I hope VMWare will not mind, since it should be a general guideline:

<<...Warning: Do not run other hypervisors (open-source or commercial virtualization products) together ...! While several hypervisors can normally be installed in parallel, do not attempt to run several virtual machines from competing hypervisors at the same time. (They might not be able to) track what another hypervisor is currently attempting to do on the same host, and especially if several products attempt to use hardware virtualization features such as (hardware acceleration), this can crash the entire host...>>

Greets

Roberto

[tomkeator]

Thanks Roberto,

I am unaware there was a licensing issue and thought it was a performance issue which I was trying to explain that together in my applications they perform pretty much the same.

Tom

[WoodyZ]

I am unaware there was a licensing issue

What licensing issue? Only you brought up the subject of licensing and since you did I'll just add that there is no licensing issue with running different hypervisors concurrently.

and thought it was a performance issue which I was trying to explain that together in my applications they perform pretty much the same.

You explained your situation just fine and tramac's reply was a cautionary note about running more then one hypervisor concurrently as there may be a possibility they could crash the Host because both are trying to control the same resource at the same time and that would not be a good thing.

[admin]

The VT-x hardware design poses some challenges to running concurrent hypervisors, particularly if the hypervisors are not written to "play well with others." VMware products are designed to quiesce the VT-x hardware when we relinquish the CPU, so there should be no problems running concurrently with other hypervisors that do the same. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any other hypervisor that does this (with the possible exception of Windows Virtual PC, and only then with the hotfix for MS KB 977632).

Having said that, we have made significant progress in coordinating the use of VT-x hardware even with hypervisors that do not play well with others. To the best of my knowledge, the only hypervisor that still can't run concurrently with a VMware hosted product is kvm. I do not believe there are any problems running Fusion 3 concurrently with Parallels 5.

[tomkeator]

I guess what's missing here is I am observing the both programs seem to be working pretty much the same, side by side, therefore I am not complaining about the current Fusion release.

[woodmeister]

In your particular case I am not surprised that you don't see much difference as

the applications being used do not require a lot of CPU power nor do the

require a lot of graphics capability. Probably would not see much difference with

with Virtual Box either in your application.

My recent experiences have shown a noticeable difference when the software

being run in the host is CPU hungry, disk I/O intensive, and graphically intensive.

It also seems (don't have any benchmarks) that USB 2.0 devices operate more

efficiently. All of which, Parallels seems to have the edge. And note

that I don't play games. I use VM's for electronic hardware, firmware and

software development, which can require some substantial CPU and GPU

horsepower.

Once again, I am still a Fusion advocate and would really hope that 3.1 solves

the performance issues. As I had stated in another thread, I had tried Parallels

back at version 2 on a PC platform and it was a disaster which prompted my

move to VMware Workstation and then eventually to the Fusion product. And

even though things seem to be smooth in the current Parallels offering, I still

wait for the time when it will decide to "meltdown".