Parameter Name

Description

--device-add

Adds a virtual hard disk drive to the virtual machine. By default, the prlctl create command creates a virtual machine with only one disk drive. However, you can use --device-add to add additional virtual disk drives to your virtual machine.

Note: You can connect up to four IDE devices and up to seven SCSI devices to a virtual machine. Any of these devices can be a virtual hard disk or DVD/CD-ROM drive.

--device-set

Used to configure certain settings of the specified VM hard disk drive.

hdd

Informs the prlctl set command that the device to be added to the virtual machine is a hard disk drive. By default, prlctl set creates a virtual disk drive

hdd N

The name of the virtual hard disk drive whose parameters you wish to configure where N denotes the disk drive index number. You can learn this number by running the prlctl list command with the --info option.

--device name

Tells the prlctl set command to connect the specified physical hard disk on the Parallels server to the virtual machine. Using this option allows you to run guest operating systems (e.g. Mac OS X, Linux, or Windows) from existing physical disk partitions on the Parallels server.

When used with --device-set , this parameter configures the properties of the VM disk drive connected the specified physical partition.

You can use the prlctl server command to learn what physical hard disk drives currently exist on the Parallels server.

--image name

The name of the file to be used for emulating the VM virtual disk drive. If this option is omitted and the --device option is not indicated either, a new file is created inside the directory storing all VM-related configuration files and assigned the name of harddisk N .hdd (where N is the index number of the newly added disk drive).

Note: In fact, harddisk N .hdd is a directory keeping a number of disk-related files. However, all these disk-related files are regarded by the prlctl utility as a single entity. So, for the sake of simplicity we designate these directories as files.

--type expand|plain

The type of the virtual disk drive. It can be set to one of the following:

• expanding . Virtual disks of this type are small initially and grow in size as you add data to the disk. By default, all newly created disk drives are ot the 'expanding' type.
• plain . Virtual disks of this type have the fixed size from the moment of their creation. Plain disks provide enhanced performance as compared to expanding disks. Please make sure that you have enough disk space on the Parallels server before creating a plain virtual disk drive.

--size number

The size of the hard disk drive, in megabytes. By default, the size of all newly created disk drives is set to 32 Gb.

--split

Splits the hard disk drive into 2 Gb pieces. For example, you should split your virtual disk if it is stored on a file system that cannot support files larger than 2 Gb (e.g. FAT16).

--iface ide|scsi

The interface type of the VM disk drive. It can be one of the following:

• IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) and
• SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface).

By default, the interface type of the newly added disk drive is set to 'SCSI'.

--position number

The SCSI or IDE device identifier to be used for the disk drive. The allowed ID ranges are the following:

• for IDE devices: 0:0 , 0:1 , 1:0 , 1:1 ;
• for SCSI device: 0:0 , 1:0 , 2:0 , 3:0 , 4:0 , 5:0 , 6:0 .

You can use one of the following formats for specifying IDs: ID : bus , ID - bus , ID . For example, if you specify 3:0 (or 3-0 or 3) as number for a SCSI drive, the guest OS will see the drive as having ID 3 on SCSI bus 0.

--enable

Enables the specified disk drive. All newly added disk drives are enabled by default (provided the --disable option is omitted).

--disable

Temporarily disables the operations with the specified disk drive. The disk drive itself is not removed from the virtual machine configuration.