The steps that you, as the system administrator, need to take to migrate your Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition setup to Enterprise Edition depend on the type of activation in your existing Business Edition setup:
Per-device, when you activate a copy of Parallels Desktop on each individual Mac using a sublicense key that you have created in Parallels My Account or
Per-user, when each user activates their copy of Parallels Desktop by signing in with their corporate credentials using the standard SSO procedure via your organization's identity provider.
Note: Starting from late December 2024, organizations using Enterprise Edition will be able to mix and match the two types of activations in their Parallels Desktop for Mac setups, with some seats activated with per-device keys and some on a per-user basis via SSO.
If your existing Parallels Desktop setup is activated on a per-device basis using license keys, you will have to take the following steps:
Contact your sales representative using Parallels My Account and purchase an upgrade;
Ask them to convert your existing Business Edition license to an Enterprise Edition one (the recommended path). If your organization has multiple Business Edition licenses, tell your sales representative which one to convert.
Make sure the name of the license in My Account has changed from Business to Enterprise;
[OPTIONAL] Configure Golden Images using the Parallels Management Portal;
[OPTIONAL] Set up or verify the existing sublicenses and configure or reassign policies accordingly;
Make sure that all Parallels Desktop for Mac users in your organization have upgraded to at least version 20.1.0 or newer to enable communication with the Management Portal;
Verify that all your end-user installations remain activated;
Check the monitoring tab in the Management Portal and see it populated with virtual machines on your network.
As a result of this:
The Business Edition product card of your choice on your My Account page will change to an Enterprise Edition product card, while the Enterprise Edition trial license will be suspended;
You will not have to reactivate your end-users' copies of Parallels Desktop for Mac unless you have decided to split them into groups using sublicense keys (step 5 above);
Your Golden Images from the trial license will be saved and offered to the users on your new Enterprise Edition license.
This is not a recommended scenario. However, if you choose it, you will need to follow these steps:
Contact your sales representative using Parallels My Account and purchase an extension;
Explicitly tell them that you wish to convert your trial Enterprise Edition license to a permanent one. Your Business Edition users will remain activated with their Business Edition license;
[OPTIONAL] Configure Golden Images using the Parallels Management Portal;
[OPTIONAL] Configure or reassign policies to groups according to your preferences;
Make sure that all Parallels Desktop for Mac users in your organization have upgraded to at least version 20.1.0 or newer to enable communication with the Management Portal;
Verify that all seats have been activated;
Check the monitoring tab in the Management Portal and see it populated with virtual machines on your network.
As a result of this:
The Enterprise Edition trial license product card on your My Account page will be replaced with the permanent license card;
You will not have to manually migrate all the users to the new setup and activate their licenses (Step 7 above);
Your Golden Images from the trial license will be saved and offered to the users on your new Enterprise Edition license.
If your existing Parallels Desktop setup is activated on a per-user basis (SSO activation), you will have to take the following steps:
Contact your sales representative using Parallels My Account and purchase an upgrade;
Make sure that all Parallels Desktop for Mac users in your organization have upgraded to at least version 20.1.0 or newer to ensure communication with the Management Portal;
Make sure the name of the license in My Account has changed from Business to Enterprise;
[OPTIONAL] Configure Golden Images using the Parallels Management Portal;
[OPTIONAL] Your SSO setup in the Business Edition license did not involve multiple user groups. If you would like to benefit from the flexibility it provides, follow the instructions in this chapter;
Verify that all your end-user installations remain activated;
Check the monitoring tab in the Management Portal and see it populated with virtual machines on your network. The end-user copies of Parallels Desktop for Mac refer to the server to verify their licenses every seven days. If you would like your users to reactivate their copies sooner, you could use your device management solution to run this command remotely:
As a result of this:
The Business Edition product card of your choice on your My Account page will change to an Enterprise Edition product card, while the Enterprise Edition trial license will be suspended;
Your end-users' copies of Parallels Desktop for Mac will eventually get in touch with the server and update their licensing information (Step 7 above);
Your Golden Images from the trial license will be saved and offered to the users on your new Enterprise Edition license.
Note: Once you convert your setup from Business Edition to Enterprise Edition, Parallels Desktop will retain the locally configured restrictions in the security tab until the policies are created in the Management Portal.
Once a policy is created and assigned to the user group, the previously created restriction in the security tab in Parallels Desktop preferences will be ignored, and the restrictions from the policy will be applied.
Your new setup will continue to respect any policies (like a specific local update server or policy or default virtual machine image) delivered via configuration profiles. However, this functionality will be removed in the future. For all new setups, we strongly recommend making the best use of the Parallels Management Portal's functionality.
For virtual machine images, the Management Portal currently supports providing one for Intel Macs and one for Apple Silicon Macs. In the future, as we remove support for configuration profiles, we will introduce support for providing multiple virtual machine images for each architecture, and you will be able to target specific user groups with each one.
Blocking major Parallels Desktop version upgrades can currently be achieved via the Policies section of the Parallels Management Portal.
[OPTIONAL] Create sublicenses for the groups of your Enterprise Edition users to benefit from granular policy management or if you wish to manage ;
Migrate/reactivate users to the new Enterprise Edition ;
If your previous Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition setup had enabled, you will have to configure the respective policies using the Parallels Management Portal. See this chapter for more information.
We expect many Enterprise Edition users to upgrade from our previous flagship version, the Business Edition.
The Enterprise Edition differs in the deployment and management procedures, with a particular emphasis on the new Management Portal, which enables you to apply and quickly change policies to groups of Parallels Desktop users and control and monitor Parallels Desktop virtual machines in your environment.
You can convert your existing Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition to an Enterprise Edition one by contacting your Parallels sales representative for purchase and further instructions. Make sure to communicate to them whether your setup uses per-device or per-user licensing, as the upgrade procedure differs slightly between these two setup types.
Note: A single Parallels Business account cannot hold more than one Enterprise Edition license. If you have multiple Business Edition licenses on the same account and would like to convert one of them to Enterprise Edition, you need to let your sales representative know which one you would like to convert.
It is important to know that converting your Business Edition license to an Enterprise Edition one will not require you to reactivate your existing installations, move users to new groups, or redeploy your existing setup.
Note: Parallels Desktop for Mac Enterprise Edition contains features that require end-user installations to communicate with the Management Portal for instructions. The earliest version of Parallels Desktop for Mac that supports that functionality is 20.1.0. When upgrading, ensure that all user installations are upgraded to that version or newer.
Once you convert your license to Parallels Desktop for Mac Enterprise Edition, your local Parallels Desktop for Mac installations will retain their assigned security policies until you set up different policies using the Management Portal, following this section of the guide.
If you have an existing Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition setup where end-users activate their liceses using Single Sign-On (SSO), you can trial the same setup on the Enterprise Edition concurrently. You will have to take the following steps:
Contact your sales representative using Parallels My Account and request a trial license key;
Register the received key in My Account;
On the side of your organization's identity provider (IdP), register a new group and include in it trial users;
If your IdP supports group hierarchy, make sure the trial group is a child of the main Parallels Desktop user group mapped in My Account as part of the integration;
Otherwise, make sure to include those users in the main Parallels Desktop users group;
Activate the end-user copies via SSO using the trial accounts;
Explore the Parallels Management Portal capabilities.
If your organization is subscribed to Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition and then decides to try the Enterprise Edition, you will need to contact your Parallels sales representative to receive a separate, time-limited trial key in your Parallels My Account.
Note: If you try to add a purchased Enterprise Edition license to a Parallels business account with an active Enterprise Edition trial, you will be offered to suspend the trial license or abort the license registration process.
Once the trial ends and you decide to upgrade to Enterprise Edition, the recommended way forward is to contact your Parallels sales representative and convert a Business Edition license of your choice to an Enterprise Edition one.
Attention: If your organization's business account holds multiple Business Edition licenses, make sure to communicate clearly which one you want to be upgraded to Enterprise Edition.
In this scenario:
The Enterprise Edition trial license will be suspended;
The Golden Images added during the trial will become available to the users of the new Enterprise Edition setup;
The policies created during the trial will be saved but not applied to any sublicense keys/user groups. You will have to reassign them.
[NOT RECOMMENDED] Technically, your trial Enterprise Edition license can also be converted to a permanent one, keeping your existing Business Edition setup intact, on the following condition:
If your Business Edition license seats have been activated using the per-seat/license key method, your trial Enterprise Edition license can be converted to a permanent one, albeit with much effort;
If your Business Edition license seats have been activated using the per-user/SSO method, your trial Enterprise Edition license cannot be converted to a permanent one, and you'll need to convert one of the existing Business Edition ones.
Creating a completely new setup with new sublicense keys and user groups and migrating your users to it is a daunting task, so we don't recommend this path.