User`s guide

Managing Virtual Machines 180
Optimizing Performance With
Adaptive Hypervisor
If you use a lot of applications in the primary and guest OSs at a time, you may lack the CPU
resources. The current version of Parallels Desktop presents you the Adaptive Hypervisor
technology that helps you to distribute the CPU resources between the primary and guest OS in
the most efficient way.
The Adaptive Hypervisor technology automatically allocate the host computer CPU resources
between the virtual machine and primary OS applications depending on what application you
are working with at the moment. If your virtual machine window is in focus, the priority of this
virtual machine processes will be set higher than the priority of the primary OS's processes and
as a result more CPU resources will be allocated to the virtual machine. If you switch to the
primary OS window - the priority of its working applications will be set higher and the CPU
resources will be relocated to the primary OS.
You can enable the Adaptive Hypervisor option in the Optimization pane (p. 111) of Virtual
Machine Configuration
. In this pane, you can also configure the host computer memory
resources distribution.
Working With Snapshots
A snapshot is a saved state of the virtual machine. Snapshots can be created manually or
automatically when the virtual machine is running. After you make a snapshot, you can continue
working with the virtual machine and revert to the created snapshot at any time of your work.
Snapshots are stored in the primary OS inside the virtual machine bundle (p. 13), in the
Snapshots subfolder. Each snapshot has a nu
mber of files, including the .sav file that
contains the virtual machine's state, the .mem file that contains the memory dump for the virtual
machine, and other different files of the virtual hard disk.
Note: Snapshots are not backup copies or clones (p. 168) of your virtual machine. You cannot
use them alone without your virtual machine or move them from the virtual machine bundle.
You may need to make snapshots in the following cases:
 If you are configuring a software that requires a lot of settings, you may want to explore the
settings functions before selecting them. For testing the settings, create snapshots at
branching points.
 If you want to mark milestones in the development process. If something goes wrong, you
can always revert to the previous state or create a branch of snapshots starting with the
particular milestone snapshot.