Migration Scenarios

Parallels Transporter offers you several typical migration scenarios depending on the purpose of migration. After you make up your mind and choose the scenario, you can refer to Parallels Transporter Help for further instructions on the selected scenario of migration.

Using Parallels Transporter, you can migrate:

• from a remote computer
• from a third-party virtual machine
• from a remote computer locally

Parallels Transporter has two migration modes:

• Express . This mode allows quick migration of one active volume. As a result, you will get a ready-to-use Parallels virtual machine which will have the guest operating system installed and all the applications and data you used on that volume.
• Advanced . This mode allows migration of several volumes at once. In one session of migration, only one active volume (if selected so) can be made bootable. The new virtual machine will be created with this volume as its virtual hard disk. Other volumes will be migrated as data disks if they have file systems supported by Parallels Transporter Agent.

Migrating from a remote computer

In this scenario, you should use Parallels Transporter on the host computer and Parallels Transporter Agent on the PC you want to migrate.

The volume where Parallels Transporter Agent is installed is called the active volume. The operation is supported for the active volumes with the following operating systems:

• Windows 2000
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows XP
• Windows Vista.

Parallels Transporter can apply necessary changes only to the listed operating systems so that the images of active volumes can be bootable in Parallels virtual machines.

If you want to use a migrated disk as a boot volume (system disk) in your virtual machine you must provide an installation disc for the operating system that runs on the active volume of the source computer (you can also use an ISO image of such an installation disc). Parallels Transporter may need to reinstall a few drivers, because hardware on the source computer and default virtual hardware of a virtual machine are different.

Warning: If you migrate a volume with a Windows OS installed on it and want to use its image as a bootable virtual disk, please note that there may be activation problems: a Windows OS migrated to a virtual machine may detect that the hardware has changed and require that you reactivate your copy of Windows.

Parallels Transporter Agent enables you to migrate data from non-active volumes of a source computer and to create images of these volumes. The resulting image can be connected as a data disk to a virtual machine that has an operating system compatible with the file system on this volume. Disk images of non-active volumes with supported operating systems can be made bootable later (in a Parallels virtual machine).

Migrating from a third-party virtual computer

You can use Parallels Transporter for converting a third-party virtual computer into a Parallels virtual machine ( Express and Advanced migration modes), and for converting a third-party virtual disk to a Parallels virtual machine or disk ( Advanced migration mode). If you select to convert the entire third-party virtual computer, the configuration of the resulting Parallels virtual machine will be the similar to the original one. This operation is supported for VMware virtual machines and Microsoft Virtual PC computers.

You can also process an already existing non-bootable Parallels virtual disk image (result of migration from a system volume of a remote PC), so that this image can be used as a bootable volume in a Parallels virtual machine ( Advanced mode only).

Migrating from a remote computer locally

The operation can be useful, when the computer you want to migrate and the host computer are not connected by a network. This scenario can be performed on a remote source computer that has both Parallels Transporter Agent and Parallels Transporter installed.

You should download the proper Parallels Transporter package for PC and install both Parallels Transporter and Transporter Agent on the boot volume of the remote computer. You can migrate one or several volumes during one session ( Advanced mode) or only the active volume ( Express mode). As a destination for storing the resulting image, you can specify an external USB drive connected to the remote computer in case you don't have local network to transfer the image right to the host computer.

Note: After the migration is finished, you are recommended to install Parallels Tools in your new virtual machine before starting to work with it.