Parallels Workstation 2.2, the first major product released by Parallels, but greatly overshadowed by the much more widely known and used product Parallels Desktop for the Mac. Parallels Workstation in comparable to VMware Workstation, and user would find the differences minimal.
Parallels Workstation 2.2 can be downloaded directly from Parallels at: Download Free Trial Today
Build 2.2.2222 (Jan 31, 2008)
Windows EXE (19 Mb)
RPM package (21 Mb)
DEB package (21 Mb)
TGZ archive (21 Mb)
System Requirements
Processor: 400 MHz or faster processor which supports the Pentium II instruction set. 1.5 GHz or faster is recommended.
Memory: Memory to run primary OS, plus memory required for each guest operating system and its applications.
Disk Space: Software Installation - 20 MB of available hard drive space for Parallels Workstation installation. (Does not include hard drive space for guest virtual machine)
Virtual Machine Installation: Hard drive space allocation for virtual machines is dependent upon the guest operating system.
Networking: To access the Internet from your VM, the host computer and primary OS must have an Ethernet adapter
Communications: Serial or parallel port (optional)
CD-ROM: CD/DVD-ROM drive for installation (if applicable)
Floppy: 3.5” floppy drive (optional)
Display: Any SVGA video card with an 8-bit display adaptor supported by the primary OS. 16-bit color depth or higher is recommended.
Virtual Machine Hardware Profile: Sun VirtualBox 1.6.2 (Closed Source Edition)
VirtualBox 1.6.2 is a growing product, produced by Innotek, a company which was recently acquired by Sun Microsystems. The platform is possibly the widest range of supported host platforms, from the Mac OS, OpenSolaris, Linux and Windows. Most other desktop virtualization products tend to only support 2 or 3 different platforms.
VirtualBox 1.6.2 can be downloaded directly from Sun at: Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6.2
Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6
VirtualBox-1.6.2-Win_amd64.msi 26.12 MB
System Requirements
* Reasonably powerful x86 hardware. Any recent Intel or AMD processor should do.
* Memory. Depending on what guest operating systems you want to run, you will need at least 512 MB of RAM (but probably more, and the more the better). Basically, you will need whatever your host operating system needs to run comfortably, plus the amount that the guest operating system needs. So, if you want to run Windows XP on Windows XP, you probably won’t enjoy the experience much with less than 1 GB of RAM. If you want to try out Windows Vista in a guest, it will refuse to install if it is given less than 512 MB RAM, so you’ll need that for the guest alone, plus the memory your operating system normally needs.
* Hard disk space. While VirtualBox itself is very lean (a typical installation will only need about 30 MB of hard disk space), the virtual machines will require fairly huge files on disk to represent their own hard disk storage. So, to install Windows XP, for example, you will need a file that will easily grow to several GB in size.
* A supported host operating system. Presently, we support Windows (primarily XP) and many Linux distributions on 32-bit hosts and on 64-bit hosts. Support for Mac OS X is currently in the works (note also the last Mac OS X Beta).
* A supported guest operating system. Besides the user manual (see below), up-to-date information is available at “Status: Guest OSes”.
Virtual Machine Hardware Profile: Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
Virtual Server 2005 is based on the original work done by Connectix to build Virtual PC. It has some major drawbacks, including lack of 64bit client support. But it is FREE, and can be used to run linux in a Microsoft server environment. It had a very long beta period, and basically never reached maturity in the eyes of the industry as Microsoft moved right on to Hyper-V and cpu based hypervisor virtualization methods. This program is a great solution for a smb who maybe running older equipment but want to start a transition to a virtualized environment.
Virtual Server 2005 can be downloaded directly from Microsoft at: Download details: Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1
Version: 2005
Date Published: 6/11/2007
Language: English
Download Size: 40.8 MB
Do you know which nic is in your virtual machine? How about which video card or soundcard? Probably not, because if it works you just take it for granted. But now with so many virtualization options on the market it is time to compare them, by their virtual hardware. Some of the more mature products, including Virtualbox offer a variety of Nic and Audio options while older products such as Virtual PC are truly locked into their minimal configuration.
I have gathered the hardware profiles of some of the most common virtualization vendors using the following test system:
Dell SC440 Poweredge server, running Windows XP 64bit, without VT Technology. I have used, with permission, Belarc Advisor to create the hardware profiles of all the virtual machines. Starting with the actual physical host machine. Here is the hardware profile of the SC440:
Computer Profile Summary
Computer Name
Bradford-5vjh0w (in WORKGROUP)
Profile Date
Monday, June 23, 2008 3:33:32 PM
Belarc Advisor Version
7.2x
Windows Logon
Administrator
Operating System
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Service Pack 1 (build 3790)
System Model
Dell Inc. PowerEdge SC440 System Service Tag: 6JXV4G1 (support for this PC) Chassis Serial Number: 6JXV4G1 Enclosure Type: Tower
HID-compliant consumer control device (2x) HID-compliant device USB Human Interface Device (3x) HID Keyboard Device HID-compliant mouse (2x) USB Composite Device USB Root Hub (5x)
Virus Protection
No details available
Over the next few days I will be releasing the profiles of some very popular virtualization platforms, including: VMware server, Parallels Workstation, Virtual PC, and VirtualBox.
100% of the time you are working with ANY virtual machine you will be remotely connected, you maybe at the physical server, logged into the local console, looking at the VMware Server Console, but it is still “REMOTE”. The images are being processed, compressed and sent to the software. The virtual machines doesn’t know that, and doesn’t care. The console software can connect from anywhere, on the same machine, across the room or even across the world.
What technologies are being used to transmit these images?
Currently the big 2 are VNC and RDP.
VNC
In computing, Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop sharing system which uses the RFB protocol to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse events from one computer to another, relaying the graphical screen updates back in the other direction, over a network.
VNC is platform-independent — a VNC viewer on any operating system usually connects to a VNC server on any other operating system. There are clients and servers for almost all GUI operating systems and for Java. Multiple clients may connect to a VNC server at the same time. Popular uses for this technology include remote technical support and accessing files on one’s work computer from one’s home computer, or vice versa.
(source)
VNC Comments
VNC is a nice tool. It’s improved a bit over the years, but still has several flaws.
1) A VNC server is required for an OS. Many operating systems have them, but some don’t.
2) If a server is available for an OS, it has to be configured through the OS. There is no way to keep the configuration external.
3) RFB doesn’t work well over high latency connections.
4) All RFB clients and servers that I know of are only moderately adaptive to bandwidth.
NX/FreeNX are much better than VNC as far as latency and bandwidth go. Unfortunately, client and server implementations are less available than with VNC.
(source)
Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a multi-channel protocol that allows a user to connect to a computer running Microsoft Terminal Services. Clients exist for most versions of Windows (including handheld versions), and other operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, and PalmOS. The server listens by default on TCP port 3389.[1] Microsoft refers to the official RDP client software as either Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) or Terminal Services Client (TSC).(source)
Problems with RDP, or really problems with Microsoft:
Recently during a SP roleout Microsoft changed a flag for remote connections to XP and Vista systems, now if you where using an independant technology, like VNC, Microsoft wouldn’t have been able to ruin your afternoon.
If you install SP3 for Windows XP or SP1 for Vista, the switch for connecting to a console via a RDP session apparently changes from /console to /admin. This means that if you use the /console switch it, it will be ignored and you will only have a regular RDP session.(source)
