trouble with parallels deployment

[TomB]

Hi folks,
i'm completely new in this business but this forum has already helped me a lot. Now to my problem; i want to deploy parallels with a pre-installed windows 10 and some other software. Since the whole package is about 20GB i first want to cache the installer but if i do it with smart groups and policies i often get the policy error code 803 (package integrity could not be verified). I also tried another method, via script and self service. Here it runs through but it just installs parallels and leaves out the windows 10, although one can add windows by hand.

Does anyone had encountered similar problems?

Thanks

[blackholemac]

Assuming you've got your windows image VM properly sys prepped, you'll need to package up the VM itself. We always put VMs in /Users/Shared/Parallels so multiple users can use our Windows VMs

[TomB]

Ah sorry, i forgot to mention that, the VM is a packaged. We also use the /Users/shared/Parallels folder. But what exactly do you mean sys prepped?

[donmontalvo]

When you sysprep the Windows virtual machine, are you setting the vm_reset_hwid in the "Virtual Machines" section of the deploy.cfg file deployed with the PKG? Assuming you're caching the PKG to install at startup?

# Specify whether to keep or regenerate the guest OS hardware ID (SMBIOS ID).
#vm_reset_hwid="no"   # Keep VM SMBIOS ID. Windows will not require reactivation
vm_reset_hwid="yes" # Regenerate VM SMBIOS ID. Windows will require
                     # reactivation.

[blackholemac]

@donmontalvo is right on...forgot to write that step in the post above...actually I forgot to do that on our first deployment years ago. didn't end so well

[TomB]

I set vm_reset_hwid to "no". The "yes" option would mean that you would need a key for every user, right? I cache and and install (later) at check in.

[donmontalvo]

@TomB The setting is applied during install. We deploy to /Users/Shared/Parallels/ so for our deployments it only needs to be done once.

[PatrickD]

Hey @TomB ,

Just my 2 cents. For deploying large files, like VMs, I like to use a DMG as I find it more reliable. So you could just wrap it in a DMG to put it where you want.

Curious to know how you are installing the Parallels software? Are you using a snap shot? Reason I ask is when I was looking at this I found that Parallels actually have a guide for "Mass Deployment" which goes through how to package the software. I think it is all in here

http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v11/docs/en_US/Parallels%20Desktop%20Business%20Edition%20Administrator's%20Guide.pdf

Cheers,
Pat

[TomB]

Hi,

thanks for guide @PatrickD, i follow the instructions in this guide. At least up to the point were it comes to actual deployment. My file I want to deploy looks like this, a pkg file I named Parallels-test with two folder inside, the typical contents folder and the Parallels folder in which a Parallels.dmg file, the windows-10.pvm and the deploy.cfg is. I upload this via Jamf Admin. On the JSS I see it as a .zip.
How can it be that Parallels is installed but the VM is not included?

Cheers, Tom