Optimize your Virtual machines

BANGALORE, INDIA: 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.

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.