Parallels Virtual Machine

Taking the best from the virtual machine and Intel virtualization technologies, Parallels Desktop enables you to create virtual machines with a variety of virtual hardware devices.

A Parallels virtual machine works like a stand-alone computer with the following hardware:

CPU	Up to 4-core Intel/AMD CPU (Intel Celeron or AMD Duron for legacy OS compatibility)
Motherboard	Intel i965 chipset based motherboard
RAM	Up to 8 GB of RAM
Video Adapter	VGA and SVGA with VESA 3.0 compatible Video Adapter
Video RAM	Up to 256 MB of Video RAM
Floppy Disk Drive	1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive mapped to an image file or to a physical floppy drive.
IDE Devices	Up to 4 IDE devices
Hard Disk	Hard Disk Drive mapped to an image file (up to 2 TB each)
CD/DVD-ROM Drive	CD/DVD-ROM drive mapped to a physical drive or to an image file

SCSI Devices	Up to 15 SCSI devices
Hard Disk	Hard Disk Drive mapped to an image file (up to 2 TB each)
Generic SCSI Device	Generic SCSI device
Network Interfaces	Up to 16 Network interfaces: including Ethernet virtual network card compatible with RTL8029
Serial (COM) Ports	Up to 4 Serial (COM) ports, mapped to a socket or to an output file
Parallel (LPT) Ports	Up to 3 Parallel (LPT) ports, mapped to output file, to a real port, or to a printer
Sound Card	AC'97-compatible Sound Card, sound recording support
Keyboard	Generic PC keyboard
Mouse	PS/2 wheel mouse

Each virtual machine is stored in Mac OS X as a bundle of files (.pvm) that contains the virtual machine configuration file (.pvs), the virtual hard disk file (.hdd), and other files of the virtual machine.

A virtual machine may have the following files:

`.pvm`	A bundle that contains the virtual machine files.
`.pvs`	A virtual machine configuration file. It defines hardware and resources configuration of a virtual machine. The configuration file is generated when the virtual machine is created.
`.sav`	A file created when the virtual machine is suspended. It contains the state of the virtual machine and its applications for the moment the suspend was invoked.
`.mem`	A file containing memory dump for the suspended virtual machine. For a running virtual machine, it is a temporary virtual memory file.
`.hdd`	A bundle of files that represents a virtual hard disk of a Parallels virtual machine. When you create a virtual machine, you can create it with a new virtual hard disk or use an existing one.
`.iso`	An image file of a CD or DVD disc. Virtual machines treat ISO images as real CD/DVD discs.

.fdd

A floppy disk image file. Virtual machines treat FDD images as real diskettes.

If you install a Windows guest OS in the Express Windows installation mode, Parallels Desktop creates the unattended.fdd floppy disk image file and places it to the virtual machine folder. The file is required for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows Vista installation.

.txt

Output files for serial and parallel ports. The output .txt files are generated when a serial or parallel port connected to an output file is added to the virtual machine configuration.

For a virtual machine that has any of Windows OSs installed (starting from Windows 2000), the following subfolders are created automatically in the virtual machine folder:

The Windows Applications folder. This folder contains aliases for the Windows applications installed in the virtual machine. Aliases are used for supporting the file extensions transparency.
The Windows Disks folder. This folder contains aliases for the Windows disks available in the virtual machine.

Please send us your feedback on this help page