VMware Fusion 3 Versus Parallels Desktop 6 for MAC

Let me set the proper stage. I have been using Parallels Desktop on my MacBook Pro for a very long time. I also used Parallels Desktop on my Previous MacBook Pro for a very long time. I also use Parallels Desktop on my IMac computer at work for a very long time. Over All I was quite happy with Parallels Desktop for a very long time.  About a year ago, I decided to install Windows 7 on Paralells Desktop Edition for Mac. It has never worked correctly.  Let me say that again, it has never worked correctly. I was never able to get Paralells Desktopn 6  to fully integrate when running Windows 7 Enterprise in a shared manner with my Mac. I found this very disappointing.

My Choices As I Saw It

1. Continue to use Parallels Desktop running windows 7 in a non-shared manner with the MAC operating system. This took away one the functionaloty I liked most which was the complete integration of the two operating systems. Otherwise I might as well just run boot camp and dual boot my machine.

2. Continue to use Parallels Desktop running Windows 7 in a shared manner but accepts that it gives me errors at start up. Know something is wrong and deal with the issues cuased by this when Murphy's Law strikes. Accept I am having limited integration with the native O/S. This to me was unacceptable. I have work to do, and the tool that is suppose to be an enabler, should not be making this harder.

3. Continue to use Windows XP. Which worked quite well and has worked well for a number of years.

I decided to continue using Parallels Desktop on the Mac running the Windows XP operating system. I was not happy about this but it worked. It got the Job done. Yes I was settling for less. So this must lead you to the conclusion, is my blog article done, or is there more to this story.

Lesson: Never Settle For Less

 We should never settle for less. It never leads to any good. Imagine Mankind if we never dreamed for more and just settled for less. So let me tell you what events happened to make me consider wanting to change from Paralells Desktop 6  a tool I have been using for a very long time to the competition. As they say made me switch over to the dark side.

Was My MacBook Pro Beefy Enough

Since I had tried to create a fully functional Windows 7 Enterrpise edition on Paralell's 6  I noticed my MacBook Pro getting slower and slower.

My Machine has a 2.66 GHZ Intel Core I7 with 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 of ram.  1 Processor and 2 cores.

The point is my machine could easily handle a second operating system running under Paralells Desktop 6. Yet each time I attempted to do just that, I was constantly waiting. It just did not make sense. I was getting the dreaded wait from my MacBook Pro. 

Even if I shut down Paralells Desktop completely down my MacBook Pro was still slow. No matter what I tried to do, the computer was telling me to wait. It could not handle all the requests. Given Paralells Desktop was completely shutdown it made me think the two events were un-related. I had had enough and I decided I had to figure out what was causing this issue.

After much investigation I find out there is a run away CPU issue caused by the latest release of Parallels Desktop. This really irked me the wrong way.

Paralell's Know's How Spam You Constantly, Its A Shame Customer Support Does Not Know How To Reach Out To You

Given how many emails I receive from Paralells, Inc trying to sell me an upgrade I had already purchased, I was sure they knew how to contact me when there was a serious bug. I had taken the time to register my products online. Given the severitiy of this bug, I would have expected them to reach out to their user community. This was effecting the overall quality of my computer.

The problem when away with a few minor changes to how Paralells Desktop was setup. This was as they say the straw that broke the camels back.

I had had enough. I am a huge fan of VMware. When it comes to deploying mission critcal appliactions in a virtualized environment, VMware is the clear winner. It's my Database of Choice for running Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

So I decided to bite the bullet and deploy VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro.

From the very start it was a very smooth installation process. It had no issues dealing with Windows 7 Enterprise. What a nice change from Paralells Desktop.

The only thing I wish they could have done better was dealing with McAfee VirusScan. As you can see from the image, McAfee is already installed on my machine but it keeps asking me. I wish it were smart enough to auto-detect this.  In there defense I have not chosen the Dont Show Again option.

This is a really minor item.

One of the things I really like about Paralells Desktop was running the product in Coherence mode. There is where the two O/S are highly integrated.

So I was worried when I switched over the VMware Fusion I would loose this capabilty. Here is what the Paralells Desktop ;ooks like when running in Coherence mode.

The example I am showing is using Windows XP. Remember I was never able to get Windows 7 Enterprise edition to work correctly in a seamless manner. It still on my Machine, and one of these days I will remove it.

VMware Fusion has Unity mode. Which gives you a really nice seamless integration between the two operating systems. Here is a an example of VMware Unity being used:

In this example, you also see the McAfee icon. It shows up on the Mac docking area. Even though its a Windows 7 program its fully integrated on the Desktop. Very Nice !

 VMware also makes better use of the desktop space. At first Pass it's a better integration. The combination of VMware being able to run WIndows 7 Enterprise correctly and also Unity mode, in my opinion blows Paralells Desktop latest and greatest away. I wish I had made the switch a while ago.

More to follow

Michael Corey

Founder & CEO, Ntirety

www.ntirety.com

My Personal Twitter Account: Michael_Corey

Ntirety Corporate Twitter Account: Ntirety

I saw an interesting Blog Entry by Martien Van Den Akker from Darwin-IT Professionals. They are a Dutch Consulting company. It’s on Oracle BEA Strategy. Martien summarizes Oracle’s strategy to integrate BEA products in the Oracle FMW product lines. Its based upon a Podcast of Thomas Kurian (Oracles’s Vice President on Fusion Middleware).

Martien found the Podcast at….

www.oracle.com/products/middleware/bea.html

There were lots of great podcasts here including

PRODUCT AREA                     STRATEGIC PRODUCTS
Middleware                               Oracle Fusion Middleware
Application Server                    Oracle WebLogic Server
                                               Oracle WebLogic Suite
                                               Oracle WebLogic Application Grid
                                               Oracle Coherence
                                               Oracle JRockit
Transaction Processing             Oracle Tuxedo
Service-Oriented Architecture     Oracle SOA Suite
SOA Governance                      Oracle SOA Governance
Developer Tools                        Oracle JDeveloper
                                               Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse    
Enterprise 2.0 and Portals         Oracle WebCenter Suite
                                               Oracle WebCenter Services
Business Process Management  Oracle BPM Suite    
Enterprise Content Management  Oracle Content Management
Identity Management                  Oracle Identity Management    
Business Intelligence                 Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus
Event-Driven Architecture           Oracle EDA Suite
Data Integration                         Oracle Data Integration Suite

Here is the excerpt that Martien  created..

Oracle's strategy is to create a complete Suite of Middleware for building, deploying and managing applications on SOA. Thomas is apparently a three-pointer-guy. He talked about:

   1. Common middleware customers asked to bring the products together
   2. Oracle wants to broaden sales and distribution channels
   3. Oracle and BEA have very complementary product-sets and adoption of customers in industries and geographies.

So they come with a combined product roadmap.

   1. BEA and Oracle have complementary products: BEA has a JVM, Transation Monitoring, Security products. Oracle has Business Inteligence, Identity Management, Content Management products. This is very simple: these products are going to be co-exist.
   2. There where there is overlap: BEA and Oracle already interoperate, and will enhance the interoperatability of products based on Oracle's hotplugable strategy.
   3. There will be specific decisions on certain overlapping products. For example BEA's and Oracle ESB products are brought together. In this case it will mean that BEA's ESB will be promoted.

Tuxedo is considered to be an important asset. Oracle will enhance it significantly. Broadening the number of supported OS's. Integrating with Soa Infrastructure and integrating more tightly with DB Rac.

Weblogic will be Oracle's strategic Java Server, with another 3-pointer:

   1. All FMW technology that is already supported on Weblogic 9.x, will be certified on the new Weblogic 10.3.
   2. Integrating number of features of Oracle AS in Weblogic: Object Relation Modelling, EJB-implementation, Security manager, Webservices Stack.
   3. The “Conversed Application Server” is also going to be used in the Application Suites. (I wonder if this also is going to count for EBS in short notice; EBS just recently, since mid 2007, in R12 is based on Oracle 10g AS OC4J).

Thomas states that SOA is the fundamental architecture for Enterprise Applications.

A number of BEA features is going to be added to the Oracle SoaSuite. The Oracle SoaSuite then will consist of:

•    ESB conversed to SCA Services Component Architecture
•    Oracle BPEL PM
•    Oracle Rules
•    Oracle Complex Event Processing mechanism combined with Weblogic Event server
•    BAM
•    Oracle Webservices Manager
•    BEA Aqualogic Enterprise Repository
•    Oracle Enterprise manager
•    Oracle Integration B2B engine

Thomas also talked a little about Enterprise 2.0, what in his eyes is about the fact how people in an enterprise use applications on internet. How you share information. Apparently Oracle's Content management systems plays a big role with versioning, access, indexing and searching. This brings together CMS from Oracle FMW + BEA:

•    Weblogic portal
•    Aqualogic user interaction
•    Oracle webcenter

This will be called the Webcenter Suite that will bring web2.0 services.

Another interesting subject Thomas talked about was: Business Process Management. This is about Separating definition of business processes into a Business Process Management Engine. For this Oracle comes with the BPM Suite - Business Process Management suite: modeling, execution and monitoring business processes. I wonder how the BPA suite and SoaSuite fits in this. To me it seems that BPM (being business process management, not modeling) is: BPA Suite (Business Process Architecting + Modeling) + jDeveloper (BPEL Modeling) + SOASuite (BPEL PM for execution and BAM for monitoring). But I don't know how far this is true, since on the BEA website I find a datasheet on the Aqua Logic BPM Suite. Thomas does not talk about the BPA Suite, so this sound like a rebranding of the AL BPM Suite, which also has a Business Analyst part. Interesting though is that this BPM suite also has a Process Modeller and an execution engine, while I understand from the talk of Thomas that Oracle BPEL PM will be the Process Execution engine of the SoaSuite. So I'm still very curious about that.

Two other interesting product suites Thomas talked about are:

•    Access Management Suite.
•    Weblogic Application Grid.

The combined Suites already available. In September 2008 the public date that the 100-days plan is done. More interoperability is promised in the future release of FMW 11g.

So although it is interesting hearing Thomas about Oracle's FMW+BEA roadmap, I've still some questions. My major ones are:

•    What is the future of the SoaSuite adapters? They're JCA compliant, but BEA also brings in adapters with the Aqualogic ESB. I've not looked into them, but expect them to be JCA complient also.
•    As stated above what about Oracle BPA suite verses BEA Aqualogic BPM Suite. When Oracle talks about the BPM Suite is this the rebranding BEA ALBPM, leaving behind the BPA Suite?
•    How will the Oracle BPEL PM fit in the BPM Suite? Since there is a great effort already done on integrating BPEL PM with BPA Suite, which together in my opinion sounds very like the BEA AL BPM Suite.

Martien van den Akker did a really nice job of summarizing the Podcast. Here is a link to his original blog entry…..

Dawrin-IT Professionals Blog

When I was looking for approproate images, I cam upon this one.......

Posted by Michael Corey

www.ntirety.com