Mounting Virtual Machines

In Parallels Server Bare Metal, you can mount virtual machines using the pctl mount command. Once you mount a virtual machine, its contents appears in the /vz/mnt/ VM_ID directory on the Parallels server. You can then explore this directory and manage the necessary files and subdirectories. Let us assume that you want to mount the MyVM virtual machine that

• runs Windows XP
• has the ID of {36ecc3c5-ec50-6044-8c59-241ea5d7183d}
• contains two disks ( C: and D: )

To mount the MyVM virtual machine, run the following command:

# pctl mount MyVM

Mounting the VM...

The VM has been successfully mounted.

Once the virtual machine is successfully mounted, the directory /vz/mnt/{36ecc3c5-ec50-6044-8c59-241ea5d7183d} appears on the Parallels server. As the MyVM virtual machine has two disks, this directory contains two subdirectories: volume_1 corresponding to the C: disk of the virtual machine and volume_2 corresponding to the D: disk. By default, the disks are mounted in the read-write mode; so you can go to any of the directories and view or change their contents as necessary. You can also mount the disks in the read-only mode by using the -o option:

# pctl mount MyVM -o ro

Mounting the VM...

The VM has been successfully mounted.

You can use the --info option of the pctl mount command to view the information about the mounted disks:

# pctl mount MyVM --info

Volume 1: /vz/vmprivate/MyVM.pvm/config.pvs

filesystem NTFS

size 63 G

free space 61 G

ID: /vz/mnt/{36ecc3c5-ec50-6044-8c59-241ea5d7183d}/volume_1

Volume 2: ...

This command outputs the following information for each mounted disk:

• full path to the virtual machine configuration file
• file system on the disk
• free space available on the disk
• full path to the mounted disk

Note: To start a mounted virtual machine, you need to unmount it first.