Managing Virtual Machine Resources

Parallels Server Bare Metal allows you to manage the following resources of your virtual machines:

• main memory
• number of CPUs
• video memory

The procedure of managing these resources is described below in this section.

Configuring Main Memory

To configure the amount of memory that will be available to the virtual machine, use the --memsize option of the pctl set command. The following session shows how to change the amount of memory for the MyVM virtual machine from 512 MB to 756 MB and to check that the new value has been successfully set:

# pctl list -i MyVM | grep memory

memory 512Mb

# pctl set MyVM --memsize 756

Set the memsize parameter to 756Mb

The VM has been successfully configured.

# pctl list -i MyVM | grep memory

memory 756Mb

You can configure the memory size for both running and stopped virtual machines.

Configuring the Number of CPUs

If the Parallels server has more than one physical processor installed, you can control the number of CPUs which will be used to handle the processes running inside your virtual machines. By default, a virtual machine is allowed to consume the CPU time of one processor only. However, you can modify the number of physical CPUs which will be simultaneously available to a virtual machine using the --cpus option of the pctl set command. For example, if your server has 4 physical processors installed, you can set the processes inside the MyVM virtual machine to be run on 2 CPUs by issuing the following command:

# pctl set MyVM --cpus 2

Set cpus(2): 2

The VM has bee successfully configured.

Note: The maximum allowable number of virtual CPUs depends on the number of physical CPU cores available on the Parallels server. For example, if you have a Core 2 Duo physical processor, the maximum allowable number of virtual CPUs will be 2.

You can check if the number of CPUs has been successfully changed by running this command:

# pctl list -i MyVM | grep cpu

cpu 2 VT-x acc1=high mode=32

Configuring Video Memory

To set the amount of video memory to be available to the virtual machine's video card, use the --videosize option of the pctl set command. Assuming that the current video memory size of the MyVM virtual machine is set to 32 MB, you can increase it to 64 MB by running the following command:

# pctl set MyVM --videosize 64

Set the --videosize parameter to 64Mb.

The VM has been successfully configured.

To check that the new value has been successfully set, use this command:

# pctl list -i MyVM | grep video

video 64Mb