Suspending and Pausing a Virtual Machine

Starting and shutting down virtual machines may take a considerable amount of time. Instead of performing these operations, you can suspend or pause a virtual machine for the required time and quickly resume it later.

Note: Close the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog before changing the virtual machine state.

Suspending a Virtual Machine

Suspending a virtual machine is similar to putting a real computer into the sleep mode. When you suspend a virtual machine, you save its current state (including the state of all applications and processes running in the virtual machine) to a special file on your Mac. When the suspended virtual machine is resumed, it continues operating at the same point the virtual machine was at the time of its suspension.

Suspending your virtual machine may prove efficient if you need to restart your Mac, but do not want to:

quit the applications running in the virtual machine
spend much time on shutting the guest operating system down and then starting it again

To suspend a virtual machine, do one of the following:

Click the virtual machine state menu in the status bar and choose Suspend ; or
Choose Suspend from the Virtual Machine menu.

You can see the progress of saving the virtual machine state.

Note: You can only view the configuration of a suspended virtual machine. If you want to edit it, you will have to stop the virtual machine.

To resume a suspended virtual machine, click the virtual machine state menu in the status bar and choose Resume or choose Resume from the Virtual Machine menu.

Pausing a Virtual Machine

Pausing a virtual machine releases the resources, such as RAM and CPU, currently used by this virtual machine. The released resources can then be used by the host computer and its applications or by other virtual machines running on the host computer.

To pause a virtual machine, do one of the following:

Click the virtual machine state menu in the status bar and choose Pause ; or
Choose Pause from the Virtual Machine menu.

When a virtual machine is paused, its window is grayed out. To continue running the virtual machine, click the virtual machine state menu in the status bar and choose Resume or choose Resume from the Virtual Machine menu.

Parallels Desktop is designed to operate like an ordinary computer application. This means that you do not have to change the virtual machine state from running to paused, suspended, or stopped before putting your Mac to sleep. In sleep mode, the applications running on your Mac (including Parallels Desktop and all virtual machines) do not consume any resources and quit automatically. As you start your Mac, all the applications are automatically up and running again.

Setting a Restriction on Changing the Virtual Machine State

If you select the Change virtual machine state option in the Security pane of the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog, you will have to provide your administrator password each time you want to start, stop, suspend, or otherwise change the virtual machine state.

To edit the security settings of your virtual machine:

Select Configure from the Virtual Machine menu to open the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog.
Select the Options tab of the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog and go to the Security pane.