OptimizeYour Virtual Machines

Virtual machines have become ubiquitous and are being used for various

purposes ranging from running mission critical applications to testing. With

time and usage, the size of virtual machine starts increasing and then comes the

problem of increasing the size of its hard disk. This problem can be solved by

using Parallels Compressor Server-a disk management tool, which can reduce the

size of virtual disks and clean unnecessary files present on the virtual disk.

It can be used on virtual machines created in VMware Workstation, VMware GSX

server, Microsoft Virtual Server and PC, and 'Parallels Workstation '

environment.

This tool can either be installed on the host operating system or inside the

virtual machine. If you are running multiple virtual servers on a single

machine, it is recommended that you install it on the host operating system.

This is because then this tool can be used by all virtual machines running on

the host OS. One can install it on Windows 2003, 2000, XP, 2003 x64, XP x64, and

major flavors of Linux. However, if you are installing it on the guest OS then

it only supports Windows.

How to use?



Installing this management tool is simple. Once you're through with its

installation then you will find a ParallelsCompressor.iso image file on the

location where you've installed the software. Now, go to the settings of the

virtual machine that you want to compress, and in its CD/DVD option specify this

image file. To do this in VMware workstation, go to 'Virtual Machine Settings'

option and select CD-ROM. Now choose the 'ISO image' option and click on

'Browse' button to specify the location of the ISO image. This image will be

visible in virtual machine's CD/DVD-ROM drive. Double click to open the image,

click on 'Manual mode' button and this will start the 'Parallels Compressor

Wizard.' It will automatically detect the type of VM and OS running on your

virtual machine, and will then ask you to select the mode of compression. Select

the 'Advanced compression' option. Next, the wizard will detect and list virtual

hard disks present in the virtual machine i.e. the virtual hard disks created

during the creation of VM and not the real ones. Select the hard disk that you

want to compress, click on 'Next' and then choose the compression level.

Parallels Compressor supports three compression levels: low, high, and medium,

and in each level certain VM optimization tasks are performed. You can simply

select the compression level by moving the slider. You can also select the tasks

which you want to be executed during compression. Select the compression level

and click on 'Compress'. After the first step, the virtual machine restarts and

compression resumes. But before the process is resumed, a pop up message will

ask if you want to continue. Click on 'Yes to continue,' and you're done.

Parallel compressor lets you decide which tasks should be execu- ted at the time of compression & choose the level of compression