This page is used to configure template distribution to multiple Microsoft Hyper-V hosts. Note that this page will only appear if the source VM is a Microsoft Hyper-V machine. For the description of this feature and requirements, please see Multi-provider template distribution.

To configure template distribution:

1. Select the Enable multi-provider template distribution option.

2. In the Available list, select one or more providers and click Add (or Add all to add all available providers). Note that only providers of the same type and subtype as the source VM are displayed in this list.

3. In the Number of providers for concurrent distribution field, specify the number of concurrent distribution operations. The template is distributed to target hosts using Hyper-V Live Migration, which first exports the virtual machine to a file and then moves it to the destination host. For each host in the Target list, a Live Migration operation must be performed. The number specified here dictates how many network copy operations should be started at the same time. The larger the number, the more network resources will be required. Note that virtual machine exports (the first step of Live Migration) are always done one VM at a time, so the number you specify here affect only the copy operations.

When done, click Next to proceed to the next wizard page.

Requirements

To complete the tasks described in this section, the following requirements must be met:

• For hypervisor-based hosts, make sure the hypervisor tools are installed and running in the host.

• Make sure you know account credentials that will allow you to push install the agent software on a VM. If you run the Parallels RAS console using such credentials (e.g. a domain admin), you will not be asked to enter them during the agent installation. If you run the console using a different account, you'll be asked to enter credentials when you install the agent.

• The guest OS (Windows) running in the VM must be configured to obtain an IP address from a DHCP server.

• For users to access published resources in a host, the RDP port must be open locally or via Group Policy in Windows running in the VM. The default RDP port is 3389.

• For RD Session Host templates, Network Discovery UDP port 137 must be enabled for a domain firewall profile in the guest OS. This can be done via domain group policies or manually in the guest OS.

Manual agent installation

Normally, you will push install the necessary agent software in a source VM right from the Parallels RAS console (as described later in this section). However, you can also install the software manually by running the Parallels RAS installer in Windows in the VM. When doing so, use the Custom installation option and select RAS Guest Agent to be installed in the source VM.

Create a template

To begin creating a template:

1. In the RAS Console, navigate to Farm > <Site> > VDI.

2. Select the Templates tab in the right pane.

3. In the Tasks drop-down list, click Add (or click the "+" icon)

4. In the dialog that opens, select a host from which you would like to create a template and click OK.

5. The Create Parallels Template Wizard opens. Each wizard page is described below in the order they appear on the screen.

6. Verify that the Agent is installed and install it manually if needed as described in Step 1: Check and install the Agent. This step only appears if an on-premises Provider is used.

7. Configure the template as described in Step 2: Configure the template.

On the Summary page, review the template summary information. You can click the Back button to correct some of the information if needed.

Finally, click Finish to create the template and close the wizard.

The Advanced page has different properties for different types of Providers. The differences are described below.

Hypervisor-based Providers:

• Cluster Shared Volume (CSV), Network share: These two options appear if you are using Hyper-V Failover Cluster. They allow you to select a type of storage where hosts will be created. Select a desired option and then click the [...] button next to the edit field. Depending on the option selected, specify a Cluster Shared Volume or network folder. Note that a shared folder must be compatible with SMB 3.0. Please also note that the same credentials used to register Microsoft Hyper-V host as a Provider will be used to access the SMB file share for Hosts.

  Please also read the important note below.

• Folder: This option is available if you are using Hyper-V, VMware vCenter, or Nutanix AHV (AOS). It specifies a folder where hosts will be created.

• Use a separate network interface for LAN access: This option is available if you are using any of the Hyper-V or VMware providers. Specifies the network interface that will be used by Connection Broker and Provider Agent. This is useful if a template has several network interfaces and you want to use a specific one for communication with Parallels RAS. If you select this option, you also need to specify the following:

  • Address: IP address of the network interface.

  • Subnet mask: Subnet mask of the IP address.

• Resource pool: Specifies a VMware resource pool.

• Physical Host: Available for VMware vCenter. Specifies a physical host where hosts will be created.

• Enable hardware acceleration graphics licensing support: This option is available if you are using VMware vCenter or VMware ESXi. Select it to allow vGPU-enabled hosts to unregister their vGPU licenses from the license server on shutdown.

Microsoft Azure Provider:

• Resource group: Select an Azure resource group where the cloned VM will be created. Note that this must be a group to which you granted permissions to the Microsoft Entra ID app. For details, see .

• Size: Select a VM size to be used for cloned VMs.

• OS disk type: Select a disk type to be used for cloned VMs.

On the General page, specify the following options:

• Template name: Choose and type a template name.

• Clone method: Whether to create linked or full clones. A full clone is a complete copy of a template. As such, it occupies as much space on the physical hard drive as the source template and takes a significant time to create. A linked clone is a copy of a template made from a snapshot that shares virtual disk with the source template, therefore it takes much less space on the physical hard drive and it takes only a couple of minutes to create.

  You should use full clones if your application and OS updates are too slow (full clones take longer to create, but they provide the best possible performance). Otherwise if your updates are fast enough, use linked clones as it takes much less time to create them.

• (Microsoft Azure only) Availability set: Select a Microsoft Azure availability set.

On the License Keys page, specify the license key information that will be used to activate virtual machines created from this template.

First, select the license key management type that you are using in your organization (KMS or MAK). Parallels recommend to use KMS because MAK has limited activations.

Key Management Service (KMS): If you are using KMS, click the Finish button to save the template configuration information. Virtual machines that will be created from this template will look for KMS in DNS (at the end of the OS mini-setup and domain joining) and will be activated accordingly.

Multiple Activation Keys (MAK): If you are using MAK, do the following:

1. Click the Add button and type a valid key in the License key field.

2. In the Max. guests field, specify the key limit. The limit should be greater than or equal to the max guests in the template (which you set on the first page of the wizard)

3. Click OK.

This section describes the host naming pattern that you specify on the page of the template creation wizard.

Each time a new host is created, a name for it is generated automatically based on the pattern that you specify in the Host name field. The complete name format is as follows:

<prefix>%ID:N:S%<ending>

where:

• <prefix> is an alphanumeric string that must begin with a letter (not a digit).

• %ID:N:S% is a numeric pattern used to automatically generate a unique host ID. See the Numeric pattern subsection below.

• <ending> is a free-form alphanumeric string.

Numeric pattern

The numeric pattern in the VM name has the following format:

%ID:N:S%

The elements in the pattern above are:

• ID — Must be included as is.

• N — The number of digits to use, including leading zeros. Use "0" if you don't want to insert leading zeros.

• S — The starting number. This element is optional. If you don't include it, the number will start with 1.

Examples:

• %ID:3% — This pattern will generate 3 digit numbers with leading zeros, such as "001", "002", "003"...."998", "999".

• %ID:3:200% — This example will generate 3 digit numbers starting from 200, such as "200", "201", "202"..."998", "999".

• VDI-R1-%ID:3:100% — This is a complete name with an alphanumeric prefix and a numeric pattern. The resulting names will look like the following: "VDI-R1-100", "VDI-R1-101", etc.

When crating a name pattern, follow the rules listed below. If any of these rules are not observed, you will see an error message and will have to correct it:

• The name must start with a letter. A digit is not allowed as the first character.

• The alphanumeric part of a name can contain letters, digits, and a hyphen. No other characters are allowed.

• The total length of the name must not exceed 15 characters.

• The name can include just one numerical pattern (%ID:N:S%), which must be placed at the end or in the middle of the name.

The pattern that you specify is also validated against the value of the Maximum hosts field. If the pattern doesn't cover the maximum number of hosts, you will get an error and will have to correct it.

Reusing VM numbers in a name

When you delete a host, the number that was assigned to it becomes unused. The next host that is created will be given this number, so there are no gaps in numbering.

Once the agent is installed, and the Status field on the Check Agent wizard page confirms this, click Next. The VM will now be powered off (wait for the power off operation to finish). Once the VM is powered off, the template configuration Step begins.

The subsequent wizard pages are described in the sections that follow this one. Please note that many of the wizard pages inherit the information from Site default settings, but you can override it if needed. To specify your own settings, clear the Inherit default settings option. To see and edit default settings, click the Edit Defaults link. For more information, see Site defaults.

If you need to change the configuration of an existing template, select it in the Templates list and click Tasks > Properties. This opens the Template Properties dialog, which consists of tabs containing the same properties as the wizard pages described in Step 2: Configure the template.

This step only appears if an on-premises Provider is used. It will not appear for Azure Virtual Desktop and cloud providers.

In this step, the wizard will check if the selected VM has the RAS Guest Agent installed. Wait for it to finish and then examine the Status field (closer to the bottom of the page). Depending on the result, do one of the following:

• If the agent is installed, click Next to continue. You may stop reading here and jump to Step 2: Configure the template.

• If the agent is not installed, you need to install it as described below.

To install the agent, first click the Customize Guest Agent deployment settings link and specify the options in the dialog that opens. None of the options are forced, so you can select or clear them depending on your needs. Note that depending on the template type, the options are different, as described below.

Virtual desktop:

• Add firewall rules: Automatically configure firewall rules in the host.

• Allow remote desktop connections: Select to automatically configure remote desktop access in the VM.

• Specify users or groups to be added to the Remote Desktop Users group: Select this option and then click the [+] icon to add specific users to the group.

RD Session Host:

• Add firewall rules: Automatically configure firewall rules in the host.

• Note: Network Discovery UDP port 137 must be enabled for a domain firewall profile in the guest OS as a separate step. This can be done via domain group policies or manually in the guest OS.

• Install RDS role: Install the RDS role in the host.

• Enable Desktop Experience: Enable the Desktop Experience feature in Windows.

• Restart server if required: Restart the VM if required.

• Specify users or groups to be added to the Remote Desktop Users group: Select this option and then click the [+] icon to add specific users to the group.

When done specifying the options, click OK to close the dialog.

Now click the Install button and follow the onscreen instructions to install the agent software.

Once done, verify that the agent is installed by looking at the Status field on the Check Agent wizard page. If so, continue to the next section that describes Step 2: Configure the template.

The Optimization page allows you to specify settings that will be used to optimize Windows running in hosts for best performance in a Parallels RAS environment. You can select Windows components, services, and other options that will be disabled, removed, or optimized to ensure a more efficient, streamlined, and improved delivery of virtual apps and desktops. For the complete description, please see Optimization.

After reading the Optimization section mentioned above, please also note the following VDI specifics:

• Optimization is disabled by default when you create a new template. If you plan to enable it, you should make a backup (create a full clone) of the source host before doing so. You can also create a template with optimization disabled, then create a snapshot, and only then enable optimization. Making a backup is a good idea because once optimization settings are applied, they cannot be rolled back.

• To enable optimization for an existing template, the template must be in maintenance. A template in the "Ready" state has the Optimization tab disabled.

• When optimization is enabled or modified for an existing template and the template exits the maintenance mode, the administrator will be asked to recreate existing hosts, so that optimization settings are applied to them. Note that hosts must be recreated (now or later) to receive optimization settings.

• When optimization is applied to a template, its status changes to Optimization in progress (among others). At this stage, you can select the template in the list and click Tasks > Stop optimization, which will cancel the operation.

The Parallels RAS Test Template Wizard is used to test the health of a template. The wizard allows you to see that all post-prep activities for a template complete correctly. This includes checking DHCP settings, DNS registration, correct VLAN, joining the AD domain, correct target OU, etc.

To open the wizard, right-click a template in the Parallels RAS console and choose Test. The test procedure consists of the following steps:

1. The template is switched temporarily to the "Test" mode designed specifically for this purpose. Please note that while the template is in this mode, all other operations are blocked until the test is finished and the template exits the test mode.

2. A host is cloned from it to be used for testing. The VM is kept on the server for the duration of the test and will be deleted afterwards.

3. A series of tests is then run on the host to test the template from which it was created.

4. Once the test is complete, a report is displayed on the screen showing the test results.

When the wizard starts:

1. The Welcome page opens. Read the info that it contains and click Next when ready.

2. The next page displays the list of individual tests that will be performed, including:

   • Check host Agent: This test tries to communicate with the RAS Guest Agent installed in the VM. If the agent responds, it means that the VM has been created and started successfully.

   • Check domain membership: Checks that the computer has joined the AD domain.

   • Check target OU: Checks that the RDP connection to the computer is possible with domain credentials.

   • Launch Parallels Client: This test launches Parallels Client and establishes a connection with the host.

3. While the test is running, the progress indicator is displayed on the screen. If needed, you can cancel the test at any time by clicking the Cancel button.

4. Once all tests are completed, you will see a page displaying the test results:

   • Success: If all tests complete successfully, the temporary host will be marked for deletion and the template will be switched back to the normal operation mode.

   • Failure: If one or more tests fail, you will see the corresponding info and will be able to download the log file by clicking the Download log file link. You will also have an option to switch the template to maintenance mode, which will prevent creating hosts from it until it is fixed.

5. Click Finish to close the wizard.

Use the Preparation page to select and configure an image preparation tool.

First, select whether you want to use RASprep or Sysprep. The advantages of using RASprep and the differences between the two tools are described below.

RASprep is the Parallels RAS tool for preparing Windows in a VM after cloning it from a base image. RASprep performs the following tasks during the initial startup of each new VM:

• Creates a new computer account in Active Directory for each host.

• Gives the host a new name.

• Joins the host to the Active Directory domain.

Compared to Sysprep, RASprep works much faster because it modifies a lower number of configurable parameters and requires less reboots.

The following table lists the main differences between RASprep and Sysprep:

After selecting the preparation tool, specify the following options:

• Computer name: A name pattern that should be used to assign a computer name. For example, Windows10-RAS-%ID%.

• Owner name: Owner name (optional).

• Organization: Organization name (optional).

• Administrative password: Local Windows administrator password.

• Join domain: A domain name for the VM to join.

• Administrator: Domain account.

• Password: Domain account password.

• Target OU: Full DN of an organizational unit. Click the [...] button to browse Active Directory and select an OU.