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I am using a 27" Late 2015 iMac.

I have a set of applications and websites that I use as part of a demo. Currently, I have to manually load everything at the beginning of the demo and make a set of changes to each application and site to get everything into the proper state for the demo to start.

I am looking for a tool that will allow me to take a snapshot of the demo start state and load it at the beginning of the demo.

I have tried the snapshot functionality in Parallels with Windows 10 but have found it to be unbearably slow. My Mac is quite fast so there should be no issues but Parallels has not yet fixed the bug that is causing the slowness and I need to move on and find a different solution.

zgall1
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Taking a snapshot of the VM is the only to "save-state & restore-state" as you're describing.

The reason it is slow is due to the fact that the VM running in parallels has a lot of RAM. When doing a "snapshot"... it basically is forced to take what is in the virtual-machine's RAM and write it to disk. When restoring, it has to read it all back from disk and back to RAM.

Soooo... you're left with two options: get a faster disk or less RAM in the VM.

---edit--- it also comes to mind that there is another reason it is slow to restore. Perhaps your iMac doesn't have enough RAM, and is trying to push other programs out of physical memory and into virtual memory. More overall Physical RAM in the system might also help.

TheCompWiz
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  • I have 24 GB of RAM and a 1 TB Fusion Drive. I'm not sure how what else I can realistically do. Also, Parallels restricts the amount of RAM that can be allocated to Windows to 8 GB in the regular edition. I just found out that the Pro edition can have more so maybe I will check that out. – zgall1 Apr 11 '18 at 22:03
  • You don't want more RAM in the VM... more means longer time to make a snapshot. If the applications & such function with less... that would be better. – TheCompWiz Apr 11 '18 at 22:12
  • I’m pretty sure that the issue is a bug in Parallels. I’ve read threads where people are complaining about similar issues without any real response from Parallels support. – zgall1 Apr 12 '18 at 01:40
  • Do you have any alternatives to Parallels? I’m fine with any OS/virtualization software. – zgall1 Apr 12 '18 at 01:42
  • For a mac? Virtualbox, VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion, KVM, ... the list goes on. I expect you'll see similar results with all of them. – TheCompWiz Apr 12 '18 at 15:57
  • By similar results, do you mean that the snapshot will take forever to load? – zgall1 Apr 12 '18 at 20:25
  • Is there a free OS that you might recommend? I have a feeling it might be the Parallels-Windows combination that is making things worse than it otherwise would be with a different OS. – zgall1 Apr 12 '18 at 20:26
  • 8GB of RAM is 8GB of RAM. Try writing an 8GB file... then read it back out. It's gonna take a while. The OS makes little difference. – TheCompWiz Apr 12 '18 at 22:03