Using Configuration Profiles
Overview
A configuration profile in Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition is a set of parameters that can be applied remotely to a Parallels Desktop installation and modify the appearance or behavior of Parallels Desktop according to organization policies. Configuration profiles are created in an organization's Parallels business account. You must be the administrator of the account to create and manage configuration profiles. License administrators (admins who are allowed to manage specific licenses) cannot manage configuration profiles.
At the time of this writing, configuration profiles can be used to enable and configure the following functionality in Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition:
- Provisioning a corporate virtual machine image
- Enabling major version upgrades
We'll talk in detail about the functionality listed above later in this part of the guide. This and the following two sections talk about configuration profiles in general and describe how to create and apply them.
Configuration profile payloads
Payloads in a configuration profile contain settings specific to a particular functionality. For example, the VM for M-series Mac and VM for Intel Mac payloads allow you to configure virtual machine image provisioning, while Product Updates payload allows you to manage Parallels Desktop updates. The configuration profile itself is created and configured the same way regardless of which of its payloads are configured and enabled.
A configuration profile can have one or more payloads configured and enabled. For example, you can configure and enable a particular payload in one profile and a different payload in another profile. This allows you to enable one functionality for one group of users and another functionality for a different group (see below how configuration profiles are applied to Mac computers). You can create as many profiles as necessary.
Applying configuration profiles to Mac computers
Configuration profiles are applied to registered Mac computers based on a license or sublicense key that computers are using to run Parallels Desktop. After you create a configuration profile, you need to apply it to one or more license or sublicense keys in your subscription. By doing so, you are essentially applying the profile to Mac computers on which Parallels Desktop was activated using that license key.
The rest of this part of the guide describes how to:
- Create a configuration profile
- Apply the configuration profile to a license or sublicense key
- Configure individual payloads