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Restricting User Actions in Parallels Desktop with a Custom Password

As an administrator of Parallels Desktop Business Edition, you have the ability to restrict the following user actions in Parallels Desktop:

  • Creating a new virtual machine.
  • Adding an existing virtual machine.
  • Removing a virtual machine.
  • Cloning a virtual machine or converting it to a template.
  • Opening the Parallels Desktop Preferences dialog.

You can set a custom password (i.e. it can be different from the local Mac administrator password) and specify which user actions from the list above should require it. Once you apply these settings, even the local Mac administrator will not be able to perform these actions without specifying the password that you set.

To set the password and specify the actions:

  1. In the Parallels Desktop menu bar, click Parallels Desktop > Preferences .
  2. Click the Security tab.
  3. Click the Custom password: Turn On... button.
  4. In the dialog that opens, type a password. This becomes the custom password that will be required to perform actions that you will select in the next step. Click OK .
  5. Back in the Security dialog, select the user action(s) you want to restrict.
  6. Close the dialog to apply the settings.

If a Mac user now tries to perform any of the actions that were password-protected (e.g. creating a virtual machine, etc.), they will be required to enter this custom password. To select or deselect an action in the Parallels Desktop Preferences dialog will also require the password.

The steps described above allow you to set the password and restrict user actions in Parallels Desktop on a particular Mac. If you want to apply these settings on multiple Mac computers in your organization, you can do it using the mass deployment process. For more information, please see Mass Deployment of Parallels Desktop and Virtual Machines . Specifically, these options are set in the Security section of the deploy.cfg file, as described in Configure Deployment Configuration Options .

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