Parallels 6 vs VMWare 3.1 query

[donmontalvo]

I know MacTech did a review and shows Parallels 6 is better than VMWare Fusion 3. The review focuses on performance. Our challenge is to decide on which preserves our ROI best. If performance is high but support doesn't answer emails or calls, then our ROI is impacted.

We have a client with a fairly substantial VM deployment (500 or so instances), and all are individual licenses. So according to JAMF' and Parallels' documentation, automated deployment is only possible with volume license. When we looked at the VM deployment strategy in place in this environment, it was clearly flawed. So we reached out to the procurement team to get information on licensing, with our plan being to consolidate our Parallels licensing. Hopefully we can do this without disrupting the deployed copies of Parallels (most vendors work with us on this kind of thing).

Anyway, I wanted to poll the Casper admins here to see which of these two VM solutions they have deployed, and if there are any reasons to consider one over the other. Not talking about performance, we are mainly concerned about ROI. Which do you prefer and why? Which is easier to deploy, manage, etc.

PS, Just noticed Parallels announced a new Enterprise version/tool for managing settings during deployment (ala AAMEE?).

Thanks,
Don

[talkingmoose]

+2

This past week I worked with a second level technician via remote control
after an infuriating 1st level support experience and they finally had to
close my ticket as unresolved.

What made this infuriating is that their email support ignored the details
of my problem report and replied with boiler plate answers that were not
apropos to the issue. Three times.

--

William Smith
Technical Analyst
Merrill Communications LLC
(651) 632-1492

[CasperSally]

Parallels support has been dreadful for us in the past, we gave up on them. Would be interested to know if they've gotten better?

We are looking to move from single to volume licensing with VMware as our deployment grows.

[nessts]

+1

--
Todd Ness
Technology Consultant/Non-Windows Services
Americas Regional Delivery Engineering
HP Enterprise Services

[donmontalvo]

In fairness to Parallels, the deployment process defined by both JAMF and Parallels does require a volume license. Since our client doesn't have a volume license, it's no wonder the deployment process in place now doesn't work (never did).

Here's a link to the recently announced Parallels Enterprise tool

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/enterprise/

Don

[taugust04]

We have volume licensing for VMWare. I tested reliability rather than performance before we went with VMWare (version 2) at the time, and found it crashed less than Parallels.

Deployment is very easy with Casper, no problems. I have the install package provided by VMWare and a second pkg with the license file.

-Ted