Once your organization’s Parallels Desktop setup grows beyond a couple of dozen machines, the need often arises to manage them more granularly while relying less on manual procedures for things like setup, updates, and maintenance.

Thankfully, one of the main features of Parallels Desktop Enterprise Edition is the Parallels Management Portal — your one-stop shop for setting up and controlling your entire fleet of Parallels Desktop installations and virtual machines.

This section of the guide deals with all the tasks that can be completed from the Management Portal, such as deployment, management, policy provisioning, and removal of virtual machines.

You can reach the Management Portal by clicking the respective button in your Parallels My Account business profile or directly following this link.

Once your Parallels Desktop for Mac Enterprise Edition trial period or license expires, Parallels will continue to store account settings such as policies and golden images, for 3 months.

This section allows you to monitor all the Parallels virtual machines in use with your organization and delete them in case of need. The list shows not only the corporate machines installed from the Golden Images but also other virtual machines running on your users' Parallels Desktop installations.

You can use the drop-down menu in the top-left corner to select which of the following parameters you want to monitor:

• User name. This parameter is derived from the user account name on that Mac;

• Computer name;

• VM device name. As designated during the virtual machine’s image preparation process;

• VM device ID. As generated during the virtual machine's registration with Parallels Desktop;

• VM state. This parameter has the following possible values: Running, Stopped, Suspended, Unknown;

• VM status. This parameter will help you sort between active virtual machines, the ones whose Parallels Desktop setup had been deactivated, and the ones that have failed to delete;

• VM OS, VM Edition, VM OS build. This sorts your organization’s virtual machines by the operating systems, including editions and build numbers;

• VM serial number. This serial number is generated by Parallels Desktop for Mac. For Windows and Linux virtual machines, the format is "Parallels-6A F9 99 70 E2 6E 4F AB A4 CD 91 8C E4 29 A4 7D" while for macOS virtual machines, the format is "XNTJH2MFPN". This parameter resets to a new random value when a virtual machine image registers on an end-user's Mac;

• VM Source. This parameter helps you indentify which virtual machines were set up using your company's Golden Images;

• Last command. This parameter reflects the last command sent to the Parallels Desktop installation. The possible values are "None"; or "Pending delete", "Pending lock", "Pending redownload", "Pending restart", etc. for the commands that have been sent but not yet executed; or "Failed to delete", "Failed to lock", etc. for the commands that failed to execute;

• Last used date (UTC). This shows when the particular virtual machine was last launched. This parameter may help you quickly find unused virtual machines;

• Last reported date (UTC). This parameter shows the date and time a specific virtual machine’s presence was reported to the server;

• Parallels Desktop Version. This shows the major version number of the Parallels Desktop installation used to run a specific virtual machine. This may help you identify installations that have failed to upgrade to a newer, better version of Parallels Desktop;

• Parallels Desktop State. This shows the activation state of the Parallels Desktop installation used to run a specific virtual machine. The possible values are "Activated (SSO)", "Activated (License Key)", and "Deactivated". If you are, e.g., trying to migrate your user base from one activation type to another, this parameter may help you identify the users that require your attention;

• Parallels Tools Version. Using this parameter, you can, for example, identify the machines in your organization that either do not have Parallels Tools installed or use an outdated version;

• Mac serial number;

• CPU. In this column, you can sort your virtual machines by their operating systems’ target architecture: Intel or Arm (Apple silicon);

Uncheck the parameters you won’t need for your monitoring requirements.

Use the drop-down menu in the bottom-right corner to adjust the number of virtual machines shown per page from 10 to 40.

Use the search bar in the top right corner to find virtual machines by their known parameters, or use the individual filters in each column to search by that column’s parameter. Clicking on the funnel symbol in the header of each column will help you filter virtual machines by a specific parameter.

This may, for example, help you quickly identify the machines that require your immediate attention when an urgent upgrade is required to plug a known severe vulnerability.

Deleting a specific virtual machine

Once you have located a specific virtual machine, you can delete it by right-clicking on it and selecting Delete Virtual Machine. Read the dialog carefully and confirm by clicking Delete.

If you delete the only virtual machine that was running on a particular Parallels Desktop installation, its user will be offered to download a new virtual machine from the Golden Image supplied by your organization.

Incomplete or missing information on a specific virtual machine

Sometimes, information on a specific virtual machine may be incomplete or entirely missing from the Parallels Management Portal's virtual machine monitoring panel described earlier in this chapter. This section provides a list of possible explanations for each case so that you may follow it to eliminate potential causes.

A virtual machine is missing

• The VM is no longer active or has been removed.

• The Parallels Desktop for Mac application did not manage to report/communicate with the Parallels backend after the VM was created.

Incomplete information for a virtual machine

• The Parallels Desktop for Mac application is on an older version that does not support reporting these specific details. Use the Parallels Desktop Version parameter to verify.

• The Parallels Desktop for Mac application has been updated but hasn’t reported to the portal yet. Use the Last reported date (UTC) parameter to verify.

Information for a virtual machine is outdated

• Parallels Tools is not installed.

• Parallels Tools is installed but outdated and requires an update. Use the Parallels Tools Version parameter to verify.

If you would like us to improve or add a specific feature to the Parallels Management Portal, you can use our feedback form by clicking on the user icon in the top-right corner and selecting the Provide Feedback option. Just type in your request and hit Send, and our Product Management team will receive your idea via email.

On this page, you can assign policies for pre-existing user groups that you can set up in Parallels My Account. Each user group is a sublicense of your main Parallels Desktop Enterprise Edition license with a unique key. Read this chapter to learn more.

To create user groups and populate them with users, please refer to this page. If you plan on using Single Sign-On for license activation, refer additionally to this page.

To create a new policy, click on the Add button in the top left corner of the page.

Presently, policies only define what users from your organization can do with their Parallels Desktop setups and not their virtual machines. The four available settings are:

• Limit users to corporate virtual machines only. This policy prevents users from setting up new virtual machines from sources other than your organization’s Golden Images, as well as importing or cloning pre-existing ones. You may want to enact this policy to prevent members of your organization from setting up virtual machines for their own extracurricular activities;

• Limit the number of corporate virtual machines per user to one. This setting prevents users from installing any more virtual machines from the approved sources (i.e., your organization’s Golden Images). Note: If you select this option alone, without the previous option, users will still be able to add new virtual machines using third-party sources, such as the default images available through Parallels Desktop;

• Do not allow removing corporate virtual machines;

• Do not allow upgrading to the next major Parallels Desktop version. This setting will still allow users to update their Parallels Desktop installations to a minor version (e.g., 20.0 to 20.1) but will prevent them from upgrading to a major version (e.g., from 20.x to 21.x) when it becomes available. Enabling this setting will allow you to first ensure that a major new version suits your needs before proceeding with a fleet-wide upgrade. Note: This setting will have no effect if your organization is running a local update server, or your update policies are managed via an MDM solution.

When adding a new policy, provide the following information:

1. Name. Use a unique descriptive name in case the number of policies increases in the future;

2. Description;

3. Policy applies to. This setting allows you to add and remove the groups (as defined by secondary license keys) that the policy applies to. If you don't divide your Parallels users into groups, or have users assigned to the primary license key, you may assign a policy to the primary license key. To add a group, use the drop-down menu as indicated in the image above. To remove one already added, click on the (X) symbol next to the one already listed. Note: You may choose to apply a specific policy to the users whose copies of Parallels Desktop are activated with the primary license key. These settings will not affect any users who are on secondary license keys or have been included in one of the SSO user groups;

4. Set the restrictions as described above;

5. Click Save.

The default view of the main Policies screen shows you the list of all the policies under your management, citing their names as provided during the setup process, their descriptions, and the list of groups they apply to. Right-clicking on a policy from the list allows you to edit or delete it.

If a policy is marked as "not applied", it either means that no groups were selected during the creation, or the group(s) it initially applied to was (were) deleted.

This section of the Management Portal is where you go to designate the virtual machines that will be deployed across your organization. You can deploy multiple golden images. Each golden image may contain up to two virtual machine images, one for Apple silicon Macs, and one for Intel Macs.

If you are configuring your Parallels Desktop Enterprise Edition setup for the first time, the Golden Images section in your Parallels Management Portal will look like this:

Adding a virtual machine golden image for deployment

Fill out the following fields when adding a golden image record:

1. Name. Give the virtual machine a descriptive, easy-to-read name, e.g., {company_name} Windows 11 Pro for Arm. This name will be shown to your users;

2. [OPTIONAL] Description. Feel free to add a more detailed description that helps to understand the specific purpose or setup of each image, e.g., This image is for the accountants to run Excel for Windows. This description will be shown to your users;

3. Enable for {architecture}. You may provide golden images for one specific processor type or both. Note: You may choose not to add one of the images if your organization only uses Macs with one processor architecture;

4. Download URL for {architechture}. Upload your virtual machine .pvmp file to a server location that supports direct links and is accessible to all the machines where you plan on deploying it, and share the file. Optionally, you may use a URL shortener. Apple silicon Macs and Intel Macs will require two separate image files. Make sure the files are accessible without authentication. Note: A local network file share may be a suitable solution, provided the remote machines can connect via VPN;

5. Checksum (SHA-256). When packaging a virtual machine (right-click on it in the Control Center and choose Prepare for Transfer), the resulting .pvmp file is accompanied by a .txt file containing a SHA-256 checksum for it. Copy and paste the contents of that file in this field. Note: If you have the .pvmp virtual machine file but not the .txt file with its checksum, you can quickly find it by following these steps:

   1. Right-click on the .pvmp file while holding down the Option key and choose Copy {file_name} as Pathname;

   2. Open Terminal;

   3. Type in shasum -a 256 {file_desination}, pasting the copied pathname from Step 1, and hit Enter.

   The output will look similar to the following:

   63a90c3c38cc8c358221da339068fc1292b10bf7c00ed8449787b0e6019d706b /Users/parallels/Parallels/Windows11Pro.pvmp;

6. If you choose your primary license key, all users activated with that key will be assigned this golden image. If your SSO setup involves user groups, that may include all the users who have not been included in one of the groups and have therefore been activated using the primary license key quota.

Once you are done filling out the required fields, click Save to activate the golden image.

Editing or removing a virtual machine golden image

To change the settings for a golden image, click Edit on the golden image's card, and change the settings as described above.

To remove a golden image, select the one you want to delete, click Edit on the golden image's card, click Delete Golden Image in the bottom left corner of the card, and confirm the deletion.