— The "free" hypervisor market is a marketing tactic for vendors to gain adoption with their technologies. The vendors that provide "free" versions typically limit the functionality and /or management capabilities of those versions. Once the user desires support, production quality environments or management capabilities there are complex licensing options with dozens of iterations based upon the sets of features desired. The free version quickly escalate into hundreds if not thousands of dollars per CPU. In contrast, Parallels provides three simple editions to meet the needs of most business situations.

— No, Parallels takes a different approach that is aligned with the needs of our business customers. Businesses do not install and use un-supported software, that’s just a plain fact. Therefore, Parallels only provides supported options that are not throttled nor bounded by artificial limitations. We want you to experience the full product at it’s best so we only provide production ready editions. Parallels does provide a free product trial that will allow you to experience the solution in your environment before you make a purchase decision.

— Before you can make an equal comparison you must first understand how each vendor licenses their management and support offerings. You must also make a list of the features you need for your environment such as integrated backups, clustering, 4, 8 or 12 way virtual CPUs, the number of processors you will be managing, etc. Once you have both of these lists you can then compare the appropriate version to the needs of your business. Parallels simplified this process by providing three easy to understand editions that meet the needs of most businesses. Our pricing for the Small Business Edition & Standard Edition are per SERVER, not CPU.

— Parallels Management Console is a client server GUI application that allows a single administrator to manage a collection of physical servers running Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal. This console is designed for smaller environments of up to five servers. Parallels Virtual Automation is a server based application that provides a web GUI for multiple users. Through this web GUI, administrators can manage physical servers & virtual environments for Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal and Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. Parallels Virtual Automation also includes features to simplify mass deployments, configuration changes and updates to reduce the management burden of virtual environments on the IT team. Lastly, Parallels Virtual Automation also makes self service possible to extend the reach of the IT team and improve the serviceability of the applications running inside the virtual environments.