To open these settings, choose Actions > Configure > Options, then click Startup and Shutdown. In the Startup and Shutdown pane, you can configure how the virtual machine starts or shuts down. This way the guest OS can extensively use these assigned cores, and if the guest OS begins to have a large work load, the host OS can use the remaining cores to continue its business without having processes choked from the guest OS.Startup and Shutdown Settings Startup and Shutdown Settings Parallels will not reserve (or "park") cores the option you see in the guest OS options (Hardware > CPU & Memory > CPUs) merely limits the number cores that the guest OS will have access to rather than purely reserving them exclusively. ![]() b) CPU i) UsageĬPU, like the guest OS hard disk, is used on an "as-needed" basis and is accurately reported in the Activity Monitor. 2) Resource Usage a) RAMĪ set amount of RAM is reserved specifically for the guest OS - which you indicated to be 2GB Parallels will not use significantly more or less. The only time I shut down virtual machines is if I want to change some of the Parallels settings for that particular guest OS or if I encounter an odd bug that can pop up in Windows from time to time. In my personal experience with Parallels, I have found no issues with using sleep consistently between sessions. Aside from the standard reasons one might want to shut down a computer versus letting it sleep (updates, troubleshooting, etc.), there's one other reason to shut down the virtual machine: Parallels locks down quite a few of the guest OS settings (boot order, coherence mode, shared apps, etc.) and prevents them from being changed if the virtual machine state is anything other than shut down. On the other hand, both of these options have a more prominent effect on the guest OS. Unlike a physical machine, however, it uses no extra battery power, RAM, or CPU cycles to do so Parallels unloads it from RAM and stores it purely on the hard disk (think of it closer to a Windows laptop "hibernating" than "sleeping"). When suspending, it works just like a physical Windows machine: it saves the current state of the operating system for later use. Rather, they only affect how the guest OS will boot next time - (i.e. Shutting Down in Parallels a) How it affects the host OSīoth options do not affect the host operating system - in your case, OS X - from a resource usage standpoint. Are there any good rules of thumb about whether or when to suspend the virtual machine?ġ) Suspending vs.Does running a virtual machine running in Parallels on OSX use additional CPU or other resources over and beyond the CPU usage indicated in Activity Monitor? For example does it reserve cores?.However, I'm worried that I'm missing something. There is also some small background CPU usage if you don't shut it down. So my initial conclusion is that if you are short on ram, then suspending or shutting down the virtual OS is a good idea. ![]() In addition, when Parallels was running with a virtual machine runnning or not, it used around 200 MB and about 0.5% of cpu. When Windows 7 was suspended or turned off the process disappeared completely.When idle the Windows 7 virtual machine prl_vm_app was using around 2GB of ram and 2 to 2.5% of CPU.Using the activity monitor, I noticed the following: (c) Quit parallels completely Initial observations Ultimately, I'm interested in whether it is best when Windows 7 in parallels is not in active use, to: I'm curious under what conditions I will experience a performance hit either in terms of CPU usage. I have it configured to use 2GM ram and 2 cores on a Retina MacBook Pro with 8GB ram. I run Windows 7 using Parallels in host operating system OSX.
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