Parallels® Workstation 4.0 Extreme Read Me ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Welcome to Parallels Workstation Extreme build 4.0.4992. This document contains the information you should know to successfully install Parallels Workstation Extreme and set up virtual machines. TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. About Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme 2. What's New 3. System Requirements 4. Supported Guest Operating Systems 5. Installing Parallels Workstation 6. Setting Up a Virtual Machine 7. Assigning PCIe Devices to Virtual Machines 8. Troubleshooting 9. Known Issues 10. Copyright Notice 11. Contact Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. About Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme Parallels Workstation Extreme is a software product that enables you to create virtual machines on any PC with a 1.66 GHz (minimum) Intel® processor with the Intel VT-x hardware virtualization technology support. You can install a Windows®, Linux®, or another operating system in each of your virtual machines, and work with them and their applications side-by-side with the applications of your primary operating system. Built on Parallels' award-winning hypervisor-based virtualization technology and taking full advantage of Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (Intel VT-d), Parallels Workstation Extreme enables you to: - Create powerful and easy to use virtual machines. - Directly connect PCI Express (PCIe) devices to your virtual machines using the Intel VT-d technology. - Use applications installed in your virtual machine side by side with the applications of your physical computer without need to restart it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. What's New - The Nehalem/Tylersburg support is added. - You can assign up to 2 PCIe video adapters to a virtual machine. - You can connect up to 8 USB 2.0 and 8 USB 1.1 devices to a virtual machine. - You can use separate displays for your host computer and your virtual machines with PCIe video adapters assigned and easily move the mouse pointer between them. - You can arrange the displays allocated to your host computer and virtual machines using Display Manager. - PCIe devices names contain extended information in order to help you identify them. - The application performance has improved. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. System Requirements Hardware Requirements: - Minimum 1.66 GHz x64 (64-bit) CPU with the Intel VT-x hardware virtualization technology support. - 2 GB of memory minimum. 4 GB or more is recommended. Note: The recommended amount of memory assigned to a virtual machine is 1-2 GB (you can assign up to 64 GB of RAM). - About 30 GB of disk space for each virtual machine. Note: To store virtual machine's temporary files, you need to have twice as much free disk space as the overall amount of this virtual machine's memory (memory + video memory) + 150 MB. If you want to use a directly connected PCIe video card in your virtual machine, you will also need: - Intel chipset with Intel VT-d support. Note: The directed I/O support may be disabled by default in some computers that actually support Intel VT-d and you may need to enable it manually in BIOS. - Two video cards. One video card for your host computer and the other – for the virtual machine. Note: Parallels Workstation Extreme officially supports the NVIDIA Quadro® FX 3800, 4800, and 5800 video cards for virtual machines. For these video cards, use the latest drivers available on the manufacturer's website. Host Computer Operating System Requirements: 64-bit operating systems - Windows XP SP2 - Windows Vista SP1 - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 You also need the following software to set up a virtual machine: - An installation disc or disc image for the operating system you wish to install in the virtual machine. - The latest NVIDIA video card drivers for setting up a video card in the virtual machine. These drivers are available on the manufacturer's website. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. Supported Guest Operating Systems The current version of Parallels Workstation Extreme officially supports the following 64-bit guest operating systems: Windows - Windows Vista SP1 - Windows XP SP2 Linux - Fedora 10 - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7, 5.3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. Installing Parallels Workstation Extreme To install Parallels Workstation Extreme in a Windows or Linux operating system, locate the installation file and use the installation procedure typical for the operating system installed on your physical computer. For detailed information on installing Parallels Workstation Extreme, see Getting Started With Parallels Workstation Extreme. Warning: Before installing Parallels Workstation Extreme, make sure that there are no Parallels virtualization products installed on the physical computer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. Setting Up a Virtual Machine The procedure of creating a new virtual machine is almost intuitive and doesn’t require much time. To create a virtual machine: 1. Open Parallels Workstation Extreme and choose New Virtual Machine from the File menu. 2. Follow the wizard’s instructions to create a virtual machine and install an operating system in it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. Assigning PCIe Devices to Virtual Machines Using Intel VT-d First you need to reserve the PCI Express (PCIe) device for use by the virtual machines: 1. Choose Preferences from the File menu and click the Intel VT-d pane. 2. In the PCI Devices column, select the PCIe device you want to assign to one of your virtual machines. 3. In the Assignment column, specify the PCIe device assignment. To this effect, double-click the corresponding field and choose the Virtual Machines option to reserve the specified PCIe device for use by virtual machines. In this case, the device will be reserved for use by virtual machines only and will not be available to the host computer. Note: If you choose the Host Computer option, the device will be available to the host computer only. 4. Click OK to save the settings. 5. Once you click OK, Parallels Workstation Extreme will install an appropriate pass-through driver for the device on the host computer. This driver will make the PCIe device invisible to the host computer. Then you need to add the PCIe device to the virtual machine configuration: 1. Choose Configure from the Virtual Machine menu to open Virtual Machine Configuration. 2. Click the plus button in the bottom part of the window to open Add Hardware Wizard. 3. In the Add Hardware wizard, choose Video Adapter to add a PCIe video adapter or Network Adapter to add a PCIe network adapter and follow the wizard’s instructions. If you choose Network Adapter, in the next step, select the Direct Assignment (using VT-d) option. Warning: If the PCIe device is reserved for the host computer in Preferences, it will be added to the virtual machine configuration but will appear as disabled. 4. After adding the PCIe device, start the virtual machine and install the manufacturer's driver for this device inside the virtual machine. Note: Parallels Workstation Extreme officially supports the NVIDIA Quadro® FX 3800, 4800, and 5800 video cards for virtual machines. For these video cards, use the latest drivers available on the manufacturer's website. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8. Troubleshooting If the pass-through driver cannot be installed automatically after a PCIe device has been assigned to virtual machines in Preferences, install it manually by doing the following: i) Go to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware and open the Device Manager. ii) In the Device Manager, locate the appropriate PCIe device, right-click it and choose Update Driver from the context menu. iii) In the Hardware Update wizard, choose to install the driver from the specific location. iv) Choose to specify the driver yourself. v) In the next window, select the Have Disk option and specify the following path to the driver’s location: C:\Program Files\Parallels\Parallels Workstation\Drivers\prl_vtdvideo.inf or C:\Program Files\Parallels\Parallels Workstation\Drivers\prl_vtdnet.inf and click Open. vi) Follow the wizard’s instructions to complete the installation of the driver. vii) Restart the host computer. In rare cases you cannot boot the primary Linux operating system after a PCIe device is added to the configuration of a virtual machine. To work around the issue, do the following: i) In the grub loader splash screen, with your primary operating system selected in the list, press 'e' on the keyboard to display the boot parameters. ii) Select the line starting with "kernel" by pressing the down arrow on the keyboard. iii) Press 'e' to launch an editor for the selected line. iv) Add ' init=/bin/sh' (without quotes) at the end of the line. v) Press ENTER to return to the boot parameters screen. vi) Press 'b' to boot the kernel. vii) In the command line window, mount the root partition in read-write mode by typing 'mount /dev/root / -oremount,rw' (without quotes) and pressing ENTER. Note: If you want your root partition to be mounted to a different location, replace 'root' with this location in the command above. viii) Type 'echo -n "" > /etc/parallels/vtd.hook' (without quotes) and press ENTER. ix) Type 'mount /dev/root / -oremount,ro' (without quotes) and press ENTER. x) Type 'reboot' and press ENTER. This procedure will make your primary Linux operating system boot normally. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. Known Issues - Stopping or starting the X server on 64-bit Linux host computers may cause the virtual machines that have directly assigned PCIe devices to stop responding. - Linux host computers performance may slow down when virtual machines are running. - Parallels Workstation may not be loaded on RHEL 4.7 64-bit host computers. - Putting the computer that hosts a virtual machine with a directly assigned video card into the sleep or hibernate mode may cause various problems. - Writing to USB devices in virtual machines may be slow on Linux host computers. - Time settings of a Linux guest OS may not sync with the time settings of the host computer. - Linux guest OSs may not resume from hibernation. - After a virtual machine with a directly assigned network card is started, USB crashes may occur on the host computer. - Starting and stopping the Linux host computer's X server may cause the guest OS to stop to respond. - The quality of sound may be low in Linux guest OSs. - A BSOD may occur in a 64-bit Windows Vista guest OS when it is being resumed from sleep. - A BSOD may occur in a 64-bit Windows Vista virtual machine after changing the number of CPUs in its configuration. - If a Windows Vista host computer was not restarted after a restart prompt from another application, the error 1935 may occur during the Parallels Workstation installation. - Parallels Tools installer may corrupt the X server configuration file after installing Parallels Tools on Linux. - When a Wacom Tablet is connected to a virtual machine, Parallels Workstation may occasionally prompt you to reconnect it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10. Copyright Notice Copyright© 1999-2009 by Parallels Holdings, Ltd. All rights reserved. Parallels, Coherence, Parallels Transporter, Parallels Compressor, Parallels Desktop, and Parallels Explorer are registered trademarks of Parallels Software International, Inc. Virtuozzo, Plesk, HSPcomplete, and corresponding logos are trademarks of Parallels Holdings, Ltd. The Parallels logo is a trademark of Parallels Holdings, Ltd. This product is based on a technology that is the subject matter of a number of patent pending applications. Distribution of this work or derivative of this work in any form is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained from the copyright holder. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Server, Windows NT, Windows Vista, and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11. Contact Information Product Website: http://www.parallels.com/ Support: http://www.parallels.com/support/