Virtualization Times

"One of the most frequent questions we've been getting recently is 'Should I upgrade to Parallels Desktop 5?' We decided to put Parallels Desktop 5 to the test and compare it to Parallels Desktop 4, the previous version," Neil Ticktin reports for MacTech.

Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES), a provider of integrated performance analysis software for sustainable building design, recently announced that VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop are the preferred virtualization software for Mac installations.

IES now offers full technical support for installations within Apple Mac environments which use VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop or the Boot...

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This is a guest blog by Tommy Oddo, a freelance design consultant in Austin, Texas, who designs logos, websites, web-based applications, animated product tours, and digital/printed marketing collateral that helps companies build stronger brands, increase sales, improve customer retention, and educate customers and employees. For more information, please visit: www.oddodesign.com.

Over the last five years, server virtualization has been big business in the computer industry. Companies such as Citrix and VMware have market caps that are approaching $10 billion. Virtualization allows companies to fully utilize their computing resources by subdividing and allocating processing power and memory to "computers" that only exist through software.

A new version of Sun Microsystems’ VirtualBox is available today, bringing Teleportation, a feature that allows for the live migration of a VM session from one machine to another. Additionally, VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots instead of only the last one. New snapshots can also be taken from other snapshots, these being just a few key additions typical to this Beta release of the software.

Unlike Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion, VirtualBox is free to download and use for anyone packing the necessary hardware. The software is a feature-rich, high-performance

For some time now, I've been working with Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac, the latest version of the software that first brought Intel-era Windows virtualization to the Macintosh, but I held off writing about the software because of quality issues.

Parallels 5's initial release had a lot to recommend it, but it was quite buggy. It felt like a beta rather than finished software. By contrast, the most recent release of its top competitor, VMware Fusion 3, felt polished and finished. I decided to wait for an update to Parallels 5, which came on Monday.

Last year, when I did my comparison of virtualization apps for OS X, many readers told me they wished I’d done more extensive performance testing. So this year, when I decided to compare the latest versions of those apps (Fusion 3.0.1, Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac build 9308, VirtualBox 3.1.2), I did. Macworld Labs ran (or attempted to run) the WorldBench Windows benchmark test in each of these programs. And I ran my own suite of benchmarks to gauge other aspects of performance.

One thing I found out in doing that...

In the battle for the Mac desktop virtualization market, VMware is preparing its latest soldier with the VMware Fusion 3.1 Beta build (release notes).

Currently, this Beta version has 10+ new and improved features and includes 200+ bug fixes.

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VMware Fusion 3.1, with 20+ New Features and up to 5X Faster 3D Graphics, Available Worldwide Today
Latest Version Now Supported and Recommended by Autodesk for AutoCAD 2011. PALO ALTO, Calif., May 26, 2010 — VMware, Inc.