The world's first hypervisor-powered desktop virtualisation solution. Parallels Workstation's lightweight hypervisor inserts a thin layer of software between the machine's hardware and the primary operating system that directly controls some hardware profiles and resources, resulting in dramatically more stable, more secure, and higher-performing virtual machines. Hypervisor technology also enables users to immediately realize the benefits associated with Intel VT hardware virtualisation architecture.

Parallels Workstation is the most powerful, easiest-to-use, cost-effective desktop virtualisation solution available today. It empowers any user, from experienced professional developers to sales executives to casual home users, with the ability to create completely networked, totally secure independent, maximally stable virtual machines on a single physical machine. By mapping the host computer's hardware resources directly to the virtual machine's resources, Parallels Workstation sophisticated virtualisation engine enables each virtual machine to operate identically to a stand-alone computer. Each virtual machine works with its own processor, RAM, floppy and CD drives, I/O devices, and hard disk — everything a physical computer contains.

Why choose Parallels Workstation?

The World’s First Hypervisor-powered Desktop Virtualisation Solution: Parallels Workstation is the first desktop virtualisation solution to include a lightweight hypervisor to dramatically improve virtual machine stability and performance.

Optimised for Hardware Virtualisation: Parallels Workstation’s lightweight hypervisor fully supports the features and benefits of next-generation CPUs built on Intel’s Virtualisation Technology “VT” architecture.

Strong OS Support: A sophisticated virtual machine engine that offers broad support of x86-based operating systems, including the entire Windows family from 3.1 to XP and Server 2003, several Linux distributions, FreeBSD, and “legacy” operating systems like OS/2, eComStation and MS-DOS.

Easy to Install, Easy to Use: A powerful wizard enables users to create virtual machines in seconds, and the industry’s most user-friendly management console ensures hassle free control operation.

Lowest TCO: At an industry-leading price of £31 per license, Parallels Workstation is the most cost effective desktop virtualisation solution available today.

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Details

Parallels Workstation: One Machine. Multiple Operating Systems. Unlimited Possibilities.
Parallels Workstation is the most powerful, easiest-to-use, cost-effective desktop virtual PC solution available today. It empowers any user, from experienced professional developers to sales executives to casual home users, with the ability to create completely networked, totally secure independent, maximally stable virtual machines on a single physical machine.

Trusted Technology for Powerful Performance
Parallels Workstation is a hardware emulation virtualisation solution. This stable, trusted technology maps the host computer’s hardware resources directly to each virtual PC’s resources, allowing each virtual machine to operate identically to a stand-alone computer. Parallels Workstation’s sophisticated virtual machine engine enables each virtual machine to work with its own processor, RAM, floppy and CD drives, I/O devices, and hard disk – everything a physical computer contains.

The World’s First Hypervisor-powered Virtual PC Solution
Parallels Workstation 2.0 is the first desktop virtualisation solution to include a lightweight hypervisor, a mature technology originally developed in the 1960s to maximize the power of large mainframes. Hypervisor technology dramatically improves virtual machine stability, security and performance by using a thin layer of software, inserted between the machine’s hardware and the primary operating system, to directly control some of the host machine’s hardware profiles and resources. It not only makes Parallels Workstation-powered virtual machines secure, stable and efficient, but also empowers users to immediately realize the benefits associated with Intel VT hardware virtualisation architecture.

Hypervisor Technology for Stronger, More Stable Virtual Machines:
Parallels Workstation is the first desktop virtualisation solution to include a lightweight hypervisor that directly controls some of the host computer’s hardware resources. The inclusion of this trusted, mature technology ensures that virtual PCs built using Parallels Workstation are the most stable and efficient available.

Optimised for Hardware Virtualisation: Parallels Workstation’s lightweight hypervisor fully supports the benefits of next-generation CPUs built on Intel’s VT architecture, and will support AMD Pacifica architecture when it is released to the general public.

Strong OS Support: A sophisticated virtual machine engine that offers the broadest support of x86-based operating systems, including:

• The entire Windows family - 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP and 2003
• Linux distributions from popular distributors like Red Hat, SuSE, Mandriva, Debian and Fedora Core
• FreeBSD
• “Legacy” operating systems like OS/2, eComStation and MS-DOS.

Easy to Install, Easy to Use: A powerful wizard enables users to create virtual machines in seconds. The industry’s cleanest, most user-friendly management console ensures hassle free control of all virtual machines.

Highly Efficient: A small program footprint and trusted hypervisor technology maximizes the efficiency of both the primary and guest OSes.

Lowest TCO: At only £28/€40/$49 per license, Parallels Workstation is the most cost effective virtual PC solution available today. Its ease of use, high-efficiency, quick startup time and responsive technical support program maximize value and significantly reduce TCO.

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Parallels Workstation in Action

Parallels Workstation helps enterprises and individuals worldwide use virtual PCs to move from a traditional physical IT infrastructure to a virtual one. Below, you'll see a few of the ways that IT professionals, software developers, business managers, students, teachers and casual home users are using Parallels Workstation to increase their productivity, maximize their hardware resources, and reduce the overall TCO of their IT infrastructure:

Use Virtual PCs to lower hardware and operating costs.
Since users can work with multiple operating systems simultaneously and seamlessly switch between virtual machines running them, there is no need to dedicate entire machines to specific operating systems. From one location, Parallels Workstation users can load and use the ideal operating system to compete necessary tasks. With a reduced number of physical machines, enterprises can significantly lower hardware infrastructure expenses, dramatically shrink operating and cooling costs, and more efficiently use physical office space

Improve IT efficiency.
Testing new software, updates or patches in a virtual PCs prior to deployment to physical environments ensures that potentially hazardous bugs or conflicts can be identified and eliminated before they can do damage to servers or individual machines. IT managers can also test complex, multi-tier applications on a single machine rather than risk their physical network.

Run mission-critical “legacy” applications on virtual machines alongside modern day-to-day applications.
Instead of dedicating an older machine specifically to run an aging legacy program, users can create a virtual machine inside with the necessary hardware requirements and that runs the appropriate legacy OS, and run it alongside their primary OS.

Create portable virtual PC profiles that can be used anywhere.
Parallels Workstation virtual machine profiles can be easily zipped in a single file that can be instantly loaded on any Parallels Workstation-enabled machine. Users working anywhere can work their “home” machine profile, regardless of their location, or their temporary workstation’s hardware configuration.

Speed software development & strengthen QA testing.
Users can create virtual development and testing environments on a single machine, enabling them to test software in a variety of real world conditions in real time without having to boot up multiple machines. This streamlines the QA process; testers are able to perform a more complete review in a smaller timeframe, resulting in a more mature, bug-free final product.

Share complex, multi-tier demonstrations from a single laptop.
By creating several virtual machines on a portable laptop, sales engineers and business development managers can demonstrate their software’s full capabilities across a real network of virtual PCs, rather than remaining tethered to a physical, off-site network of physical servers and workstations.

Create student-friendly teaching environments.
Parallels Workstation enables instructors to create self-contained virtual PCs in which users can work with multiple operating systems and software sets simultaneously. Virtual machines can be programmed to automatically reset at shutdown, ensuring that students will have a clean, error-free environment to work with each time they come to class.

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New Features

What’s New in Parallels Workstation?
Parallels Workstation offers a number of new features, broader hardware and OS support, enhanced functionality and performance. A complete list of new features, functions, support and fixes is below:

New Features:

• A completely new, visually stunning user interface.
• Better virtual machine performance, stability and isolation.
• “Suspend and resume” functionality lets you instantly suspend a virtual machine’s state and resume it at a later time without having to completely shut down and start up a guest operating system.
• Support for Physical Address Extension (PAE) allows Workstation 2.1 to run on PAE-enabled primary OSes with up to 4GB of RAM.
• An improved, redesigned Parallels Tools package for Windows that provides useful add-on features that let each user customize their Parallels Workstation experience. New tools include guest/host time synchronization and complete support for normal video modes in Windows 95, 98 and Me.
• "Compacting Hard Disk" feature that removes unused space from expanding virtual machine hard drives, increasing the free disk space of the primary OS.
• Improved OS/2 guest performance.

Stronger Hardware Support:

• USB Support enables you to access a wide range of popular USB devices directly in virtual machines.
• Wireless networking support in Windows frees users from network cables. Now, you can connect virtual machines to the internet via any WiFi connection.
• Improved sound support and sound recording feature. Now you can work with your favourite programs which require microphone or line in inside Parallels.
• Stronger support for Intel VT® technology that improves the speed, performance and stability of virtual machines running on VT-powered computers.
• Virtual processor supports more features and improves performance of a modern operating systems in virtual machines.
• Better programmable interval timer (PIT) support: extends legacy OSes and legacy applications support.

Broader OS Support:

• Primary and guest OS support for SUSE Linux 10.
• Guest OS support for Sun Solaris.

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Operating System Support

Primary OS Support
Parallels Workstation supports multiple operating systems for use as a primary OS. Supported Windows and Linux version are below.

Mac OS operating systems, including:
Mac OS X on Intel 10.4.5 (or above)

Multiple Windows operating systems, including:
Windows 2003 Standard Edition SP0, SP1
Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition SP0, SP1
Windows 2003 Web Edition SP0, SP1
Windows XP Professional Edition SP2
Windows XP Home Edition SP2
Windows 2000 Professional Edition SP4
Windows 2000 Server SP4

NOTE: In case of a Windows primary OS you must have Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher installed.

Multiple Linux operating systems, including:
Fedora Core Linux 4 stock 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4
Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS4 stock 2.6.9-5
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS4 stock 2.6.9-5
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES4 stock 2.6.9-5
Red Hat Linux 9 stock 2.4.20-8
Debian Linux 3.1 stock 2.6.8-2-386
SUSE Linux 10.0 stock 2.6.13-15
SUSE Linux 9.3 2.6.11.4-20a
SUSE Linux 9.2 stock 2.6.8-24.11
SUSE Linux 9.1 stock 2.6.4-52
Mandriva Linux 10 stock 2.6.3-7

NOTE: If using a Linux primary OS, the following software packages must be installed:

• Sources of currently installed kernel (if you did not install the kernel manually, then you should install kernel-sources package from your distribution);
• glibc [glibc]
• gcc [gcc] (included in any development package)
• X Window system including
  • xf86vidmode extension (for full screen only)
  • XKB extension (for keyboard national layouts and leds support)
• QT 3.0.5 library multithreaded [qt3]

Guest OS Support
Parallels Workstation supports multiple operating systems for use as guest OSes running on virtual machines. Additionally, Parallels Workstation can be easily upgraded to support any other x86 compatible guest operating system.

The current version of the Parallels Workstation officially supports the following guest operating systems:

Multiple Windows operating systems, including:
Windows 2003 Standard Edition SP0, SP1
Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition SP0, SP1
Windows 2003 Web Edition SP0, SP1
Windows XP Professional SP0, SP1, SP2
Windows XP Home SP0, SP1, SP2
Windows 2000 Professional Edition SP4
Windows 2000 Server SP4
Windows 2000 Advanced Sever SP4
Windows NT Workstation 4.0 SP6
Windows NT Server 4.0 SP6
Windows ME
Windows 98
Windows 95
Windows 3.11
Windows 3.1

Multiple Linux operating systems, including:
Fedora Core Linux 3, 4
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS4
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES3, ES4
Redhat Linux 7.3, 8, 9
Debian Linux 3.1
SUSE Linux 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3
MMandriva Linux 9.2, 10, 10.1

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD 4.1, 4.3, 4.5, 5.4

Multiple operating systems from the OS/2 and eComStation family:
OS/2 warp 3, 4, 4.5
eComStation 1.1, 1.2

Sun Solaris:
Sun Solaris 9, 10

MS-DOS:
MS-DOS 6.22

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Requirements

Primary OS Computer Hardware Requirements
The computer to be used for installing and running Parallels Workstation should meet the following hardware requirements:

• 400 MHz or faster processor which supports the Pentium II instruction set. 1,5 GHz or faster is recommended.
• 32bit platform.
• Memory to run the primary OS (for example, 128 Mb for Windows XP) plus memory required for each guest operating system and its applications.
• Hard disk with 20 Mb of free disk space is required for product installation. Disk space required for Virtual Machines should be estimated according to volume of data you suppose to store on virtual hard disks.
• Any SVGA video card with an 8-bit display adapter supported by the primary OS (Windows GUI, Linux X-Server, etc.). 16 bit colour depth or higher is recommended.
• Optional: a 3.5" floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, DVD-ROM drive.
• If you intend to access Internet in Virtual Machine, you should have Ethernet adapter installed on your computer that is supported by your primary OS: Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 or Linux. The adapter should provide the promiscuous mode and supporting network features for a VM. At present, almost every 10/100/1000 Ethernet card can support the promiscuous mode.
• Optional: serial port, parallel port.

Virtual Machine Hardware Specification
Parallels Workstation virtualizes a full set of the standard PC hardware including:

• CPU Pentium II or AMD Duron;
• Generic motherboard compatible with Intel i815 chipset;
• RAM up to 1500 Mb;
• VGA and SVGA with VESA 3.0 support;
• 1.44 Mb floppy drive (mapped to a physical drive or to an image file);
• Up to four IDE devices, that may be either virtual hard drives (from 20 Mb up to 128 Gb each, mapped to image file), or CD/DVD-ROM drives (mapped to physical drive or to image file), or both hard drives and CD/DVD-ROM drives;
• Up to four serial (COM) ports (mapped to real port, to pipe or to output file);
• Up to three bi-directional parallel (LPT) ports (mapped to real port, to printer or to output file);
• Ethernet virtual network card compatible with RTL8029; Generic Parallels Virtual network card;
• AC97 compatible sound card;
• 104-key Windows enhanced keyboard;
• PS/2 wheel mouse

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