trouble with parallels deployment

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

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?

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.

@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

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.

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

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

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