Provisioning a Corporate VM Image

Beginning with Parallels Desktop 16 for Mac Business Edition, IT administrators have an option to provision a corporate Parallels Desktop virtual machine image from a link that they specify in Parallels My Account.

Note: Due to differences in supported operating systems between Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs, different VM images must be used depending on the processor type. For the information about supported guest operating systems, please visit https://www.parallels.com/requirements/.

Here's a quick overview of how this functionality works:

1. An administrator first creates a Parallels virtual machine image with the operating system installed. The virtual machine will serve as a corporate VM image to be deployed on users' computers to run Windows applications used in the organization.

2. The virtual machine is then saved as an archive (ZIP or PVMP, we'll talk about archive formats later) and is placed on a server from which Parallels Desktop users can download it to their computers via HTTP or HTTPS.

3. The administrator creates a configuration profile in Parallels My Account and specifies the download URL of the virtual machine image (together with other required parameters).

4. When a Parallels Desktop user initiates the process of creating a new virtual machine, Parallels Desktop checks if a configuration profile with the VM image link exists and is applicable to the Parallels Desktop license key used by this Mac computer. If the profile exists, a dialog is shown to the user, inviting them to download and install the corporate virtual machine image. If the user accepts, the virtual machine is downloaded to the user's computer and is registered in Parallels Desktop.

The subsequent sections describe how to perform the steps above.