Introducing Parallels Desktop 4 for Windows & Linux

Today I have some news I know a lot of people out there have been anxious to hear. Parallels is proud to announce:

Parallels Desktop 4 for Windows & Linux

 

Parallels Desktop 4 for Windows & Linux is the highly anticipated successor to our Parallels Workstation 2.2 product! Like Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac, it utilizes the Fastlane architecture and lets you easily create virtual machines on which you can run a wide range of guest environments. That means running single or multiple virtual operating systems (32 or 64-bit) within your existing Windows or Linux environment.

Are you using Ubuntu, but wanted to give the Windows 7 beta a try? Just throw it into a virtual machine and run it at the same time; starting, stopping, pausing it when you want and easily sharing files between the two systems. Each virtual machine can support up to 8 virtual CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, and sports our Adaptive Hypervisor technology, giving you the ability to maintain superior performance between operating systems.

    

Application developers will automatically see the benefit of running virtualized environments. For instance, let’s say you’re creating a new application which will defend the Earth against alien invaders, but there’s a 0.05% chance it will corrupt every file on your partition after you test it. No problem! Just whip up a fresh Linux or Windows virtual machine and clone yourself a duplicate as a “throw away” computer. Virtual machines run in their own isolated environment but will act, look, feel and smell exactly like a normal Windows or Linux machine! It’s a huge time saver, not to mention way more affordable compared to buying the additional hardware needed to build test rigs.

Parallels Desktop 4 for Windows & Linux is based on Parallels Fastlane architecture, so the virtual machines you create are completely portable to Parallels’ latest solutions, including Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac and Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme.

We’re confident that Parallels Desktop 4 for Windows & Linux will add flexibility and convenience to your PC, which in turn will increase your day to day productivity. It has features which our Parallels Desktop for Mac users have enjoyed for a long time, including Coherence mode for Windows guest machines, shared storage & USB devices, snapshots and support for both split disk and expanding disks for your guest partitions to easily manage your drive space. Not to mention (even though I am) that Parallels Desktop 4 for Windows & Linux will be fully backed by our support staff.

The page for the new product can be found HERE. The press release is HERE.

Questions? Uncontainable excitement? Post in the blog comments below!

Parallels teams up with Kerio

Kerio announced today that it will be offering its mail and collaboration platform, Kerio MailServer, as a Virtual Appliance designed specifically for Parallels on the Mac!

Organizations needing a groupware server can drop the new Kerio MailServer Virtual appliance right into their preferred Parallels virtual environment for testing or deployment on Apple hardware. It’s a pretty great solution for businesses that need to run more than one OS because it enables hardware to be shared and consolidates server power.

Kerio MailServer Virtual Appliance works with multiple desktop mail clients, including Apple Mail, Apple Address Book, iCal, Microsoft Entourage and Microsoft Outlook. It also has mobile e-mail support, anti-virus, anti-spam and automatic backup which can be administered remotely.

This is great news for IT admins out there who love their Xserves for the power, efficiency and reliability they're known for. If you can run Mac OS X Leopard Server, you can use the Virtual Appliance. For more information, or a full list of features, go here.

Parallels Innovation Party @ WWDC

Just a quick note to our developer audience that over on our consumer tech blog we have information on an event we’re hosting during WWDC in San Francisco. We’d love to see you there to talk innovation and get your input on our products, so please RSVP if you would like to join us!

Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme Has Arrived!

TODAY is the release of Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme! Announced in late March, Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme is the first virtualization solution to allow direct hardware assignment, so you get near-native performance from your graphics and network cards!

This will change the way many professionals work with 3D graphics and greatly improve user productivity. It means ditching the extra hardware to run multiple operating systems, and running them all at once on a single system. In other words, instead of cluttering your desk with multiple computers, cables, and peripherals; you can consolidate it all into one tower, one keyboard, one SmartMouse cursor, and a multi-monitor setup: each monitor with a different operating system, and each operating system using its own graphics card, CPU cores, and dedicated RAM. This also equates to easier networking management and some hefty savings on the power bill.

Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme is currently available through HP for its new Z800 Workstation: The first and only desktop with the right combination of approved technologies to make VT-d possible.

For those that haven't seen the latest video demonstrating the product in action, take a look!

Innovation and Collaboration for Extreme Visualization in Virtualization

Hi, I am RK Hiremane from Intel and I am responsible for product marketing of virtualization technology on Intel server and workstation platforms. I wish to begin this guest blog by congratulating Parallels, for delivering Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme, yet another unique software solution first to market that delivers significant value to all workstation customers. Let me explain the solution, our collaboration and the value to the end user in a bit more detail.

Some workstation users need multiple OS environments to perform their task. This is mostly due to their preference of applications and the OS environments these applications are optimized for. One such example in the Oil and Gas sector is GeoFrame, which runs on Linux, while Petrel runs on Windows, and engineers typically need both. These users also have large data sets in legacy environments, and hence porting of data and applications to single OS environment is challenging, time consuming and expensive.

Customer strategy to address multi-OS environment is to have multiple workstations, which results in more manageability and infrastructure (network, KVM, cabling) costs, and ergonomic issues at the worker’s desk. In some cases a single workstation with multi-boot options are used, which results in productivity loss switching back and forth.

Virtualization is a compelling solution to the challenge as it provides the ability to run multiple OSes on a single platform. However, since devices are emulated by most hypervisors/VMMs, graphics performance was not there. Most workstation users in manufacturing, oil and gas, finance, engineering, or content creation depend heavily on visualization. None of these users really want to sacrifice graphics performance, so we had to get around the emulation of graphics device in the VMM.

This is where the collaboration between Intel and Parallels began. We felt confident that Parallels with their graphics experience in virtualization would be capable of delivering a workstation solution that addressed the challenge. Intel’s VT for Directed I/O technology (VT-d) in the chipset allowed Parallels to enable the Virtual Machine (VM) or Guest OS directly access the graphics card without going through the VMM and thereby avoid the sluggish performance associated with emulation of graphics card in the VMM.

Once the VMM assigns each graphics card directly to a VM independently, the graphics card is in full control of the guest OS running in the VM. The guest OS driver and any associated accelerators (OpenGL or DirectX) can be used with graphics device assigned directly. This lets end users to experience the full graphics capability including full 3D capability and near native performance even in virtualized environment on a workstation.

Similarly network devices can also be directly assigned for I/O performance.

The applicability of Parallels Workstation Extreme is broad and many. It enables end users for the first time to run graphics intensive visualization and compute intensive tasks on multiple OSes on a single workstation. End users can also deploy their corporate sensitive applications on one VM and secure it from other business productivity applications on another VM. Developers can test visualization applications on multiple OS at the same time.

Give Parallels Workstation Extreme on Intel’s newest Xeon 5500 based Workstations from HP a try and tell us how it benefits you.

RK Hiremane is a product marketing manager at Intel responsible for virtualization technology marketing on Intel server and workstation products. He has been with Intel for 10 years, holds two patents and has published several articles. He has an MBA in business strategy and MS in electrical engineering, and enjoys hiking, climbing and snowboarding.

Intel Visits BTL

We’re very excited to announce that Between the Lines will be hosting a blog from our friends at Intel next week, and we’ll be posting over at their Server Solutions Insider blog as well.

What's the occasion? Well, as many of you know, Parallels has worked very closely with Intel for years, especially in relation to their virtualization technology (VT) suite. The architecture plays a vital role (on many levels) regarding the capabilities that Parallels software is able to present today. The blog will be a celebration of that cooperation, plus the fantastic results it has produced.

Watch this space!

Apple Tune-in Series

Attention educators and IT professionals! Apple Education runs continuing (usually month-long) web seminars which revolve around similarly grouped topics. They call these their Apple Tune-in Series, and there’s a very familiar topic running until June 24th: virtualization!

The webinars are running from now until June 26th, and they’re free to attend.

Basically the star of the show is the stable and powerful Apple Xserves, and it’s a perfect chance to learn all about the benefits of Xserve Integration and Virtualization, and how enterprises can take full advantage of their potential. A single Xserve can virtualize multiple operating systems simultaneously, producing the same output as several normal servers. This single feat has multiple extraordinary benefits for businesses and clients who want to drastically boost their efficiency.

A brief case study on the Oregon City School District shows a perfect example of this. Micah Baker, the District Technology Coordinator for Oregon City School District, had a predicament on his hands, trying to upgrade and maintain 44 outdated and energy-intensive servers on a very tight budget. The case study shows how Micah took those 44 servers and consolidated them into 7 centrally located, energy-efficient Apple Xserves, cutting his overall IT expenses by a whopping 60%.

Micah also permanently cut his energy costs from getting rid of all those servers. The difference between powering, ventilating and cooling 44 aging servers versus 7 Apple Xserves saves Micah $13,000 a year. That money directly contributes to the district’s 1:1 computing initiative for students, equipping them with Apple MacBooks, and making other schools across the country extremely jealous in the process.

So you’ve read Micah’s awesome story, now hear Apple's stance: This Apple Tune-In Series is a great opportunity to learn and watch the pros at Apple do their thing, utilizing the only virtualization solution on the server platform for Macs. The sign up is HERE, you just have to register. Enjoy!

VDI Sprouts Green Desktops

A little while ago it was Earth Day and Parallels celebrated this on its Consumer Tech and At Your Service blogs. Most notably we launched a campaign to do more by planting trees. This got us thinking about what is and isn’t “green” about our practices and products and so today I thought I’d talk about how organizations can use virtualization to make their desktops more energy-efficient.

We all know that desktop computing has become a core technology for IT infrastructures in organizations. While the desktop provides enormous flexibility and mobility, at times the costs associated with operations, licenses, support and maintenance may seem like they’re getting out of hand. The current business environment demands a more economically-sensitive solution to the desktop cost overload. In addition, official and non-official organizations around the world drive initiatives which focus on the environmental impact of businesses, forcing many to change practice and reduce their carbon footprint.

With Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), everyone wins. The end-user wins because a virtual PC behaves, looks and is exactly like the physical PC they use today. It looks the same whether you are working at home, visiting a remote office or at your office – you as the end user get the full experience. You don’t have to carry around your applications or files as your profile is centrally stored. Help is available quickly - how many times have you lost productivity because your PC was down and you waited days for your slot in a support queue?

The technology Parallels uses for our VDI solution provides businesses with the highest virtualization density of desktop-to-server ratio in the industry. When you can generate hundreds of desktops per server, you have reduction in space, cooling and power. In addition, they can all be centrally managed from one location, thus allowing IT admins to be more productive. The cost efficiency gained from consolidating desktop images on a few servers helps to increase the business bottom-line and improve a company’s environmental standing.

Less power consumed means less draw from power plants and reduces the need to build new ones, which all leads to less environmental impact for the community. So it’s easy to imagine how the efficiency of one solution can affect the entire continuum, the end-user on one end, and the community on the other. Everybody wins.

At Parallels we are proud that our VDI solution offers the lowest overall cost of ownership. But don’t take our word for it, check it out by visiting the following 3rd party calculator.

If you’d like to read what businesses are saying about Parallels VDI, see KV Pharmaceuticals and Kalido.

Parallels VDI – a “green” win-win for your business, your employees, and your community.

A Capital Idea

Some of you may have seen some news from Cisco yesterday detailing a large investment in Parallels from Almaz Capital Partners (aka the Cisco Russian Fund I). This great news has received a lot of chatter... Almaz Capital Partners was looking for strong technology companies that share roots in Russia and they found the perfect match with Parallels! As many of you know, Parallels is an international company with a Russian connection: it was founded in Singapore by people born in Russia. Today we still have a large R&D base in Russia, as well as offices across the globe, including Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, the UK, Japan, China and two in the USA.

So why did Almaz Capital Partners want to get involved with us? The company focuses on investment to help accelerate the development and innovation of new technologies in the Russian digital market; a market rich with talent. Since Parallels’ has a record of relentless innovations – Containers-based server virtualization, Coherence mode for running Windows applications transparently on Mac OSX as if native, and Direct Assignment for native 3D graphics in a VM – we are a natural fit for Almaz.

The news might seem surprising given the current economic climate; however, Parallels continues to be a great investment as we enable SMBs, enterprises and consumers to save money on IT almost instantly and of course we think we do it better than anyone else! It looks like Almaz Capital Partners might agree, and a big factor in this is the role we play in enabling >cloud computing. We provide automation and virtualization solutions to cloud computing providers, underpinning a model that offers SMBs benefits including reduced upfront investment and ongoing cost of ownership, greater flexibility and simpler management.

From a purely financial perspective, Parallels’ revenues are growing despite the difficult economic environment and we continue to beat our targets while maturing and optimizing our operations. What could be a better investment target?! And our view of Almaz Capital Partners? We’re lucky to be working with a really good group of people who understand Parallels’ goals, agree with them, and have been familiar with the company for a while.

An Unparalleled Ride

I would like to take a moment to thank Bryan Goode at Parallels for giving me the opportunity to write a guest post on his blog today in celebration of Virtualization Ecosystem Month (VEM). I encourage everyone to check out Bryan’s post on my blog as well.

As you may likely know, Parallels has been in the virtualization business for some time now, in fact, it is quickly coming up on its 10th anniversary — what a huge milestone for Parallels and the virtualization market so let me be the first to say “congratulations!” While thinking about Parallel’s impact on the evolution of the virtualization market for this blog, I thought a quick trip down memory lane might be interesting. I remember working with some of the folks at Parallels when they were technically at SWsoft, a subsidiary of Parallels, Inc. that the company integrated under the Parallels brand last year. In fact I remember LinuxWorld in April 2005 when SWsoft won the "Best Virtualization Solution" for their innovative technology.

Over the years, AMD and Parallels have been providing high performance server virtualization solutions to customers. In fact, we have customers who deployed Parallels Virtuozzo Containers software on early single code (single core!) AMD Opteron processors before moving to Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors in 2005 and then leaping to our Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors over the past year, all with great scaling. Today, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor with AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) technology are widely deployed across businesses of all sizes—from the mid-market to the enterprise to hosted solution providers—and in the cloud.

In my opinion, I think customers choose to run Parallels Virtuozzo Containers on AMD Opteron processor-based systems because they recognize the power and performance advantages the platform provides. Taking advantage of the benefits of Parallels virtualization technology on AMD Opteron-based platforms enables customers to do more with less (which let’s be honest, is something we are all trying to do more of) as they can host multiple virtual environments on their servers with Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and then manage their business with Parallels Plesk Panel—the leading hosting automation control panel.

Together, AMD and Parallels are developing virtualization technology to meet the demands of tomorrow’s needs.  Given that virtualization technology is the back bone of cloud computing and cloud computing continues to gain momentum and we put everything from business applications to video games in the cloud, both Parallels and AMD recognize the benefits today’s hosted solution providers bring to the market—so we are diligently working together to ensure our technology is optimized to ensure our hosted solution provider customers will already have a leg up on the competition.

What makes Parallels so great (aside from its virtualization technology solutions) is that it recognizes that virtualized infrastructures requires choice—both bare metal and OS-based virtualization solutions have their purpose in the market, and the upcoming Parallels Server (hypervisor) with Parallels Virtuozzo Containers offers that choice.  I think customers appreciate that type of flexibility which is perhaps why Parallels annual conference, Parallels Summit 2009 doubled in size this year (which is significant in today’s tough economy).

By working together and delivering technology that meets the needs of the customers, I expect to be writing a blog in another 10 years (hopefully from my Oceanside villa with a cold beer in hand…I can dream, can’t I?) congratulating our good partners at Parallels on another 10 years of delivering innovative and flexible virtualization technology to the market. 

Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD.
Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.