Preparing for Installation from USB Storage Drives

Parallels Cloud Server can be installed from USB storage drives on physical servers with MBR or (U)EFI, given that the server allows booting from USB drives. You will need to make a bootable USB drive using the previously downloaded Parallels Cloud Server distribution image. You will need:

• A 2 GB or more capacious USB drive.
• The Parallels Cloud Server 6.0 distribution ISO image.

To make a bootable USB storage drive, use the mkinst_flash script. The script is located in the root directory of the Parallels Cloud Server installation image and can be executed on any Linux machine or Mac. The installation procedure differs slightly depending on whether the server where you plan to install Parallels Cloud Server has a traditional MBR or (U)EFI.

• To install Parallels Cloud Server on a server with a traditional MBR, run this command:

  # ./mkinst_flash <distribution_image> <destination_USB_drive> --mbr

• To install Parallels Cloud Server on a server with (U)EFI, run this command:

  # ./mkinst_flash <distribution_image> <destination_USB_drive> --efi

Note: Running the script without the --mbr or --efi option will create a "hybrid" bootable drive suitable for both MBR and (U)EFI. However, it may not work on some specific firmware interfaces. In that case, create a bootable drive using an appropriate option as described above.

The following example demonstrates how to create a bootable USB drive mapped to /dev/sdb with the supplied mkinst_flash script:

# ./mkinst_flash parallels-server-6.0.0-786-x86_64.iso /dev/sdb --efi

The --efi option, if specified, tells the script to make a bootable drive for a (U)EFI system. During execution, the mkinst_flash script repartitions the USB drive and transfers the distribution files to its first partition. So if during installation you are asked for the location of the installation image, specify the first partition of the USB drive. For example, if the USB drive is mapped to /dev/sdb , specify /dev/sdb1 .

Note: To make a "hybrid" bootable USB drive on Windows, you can use the Win32 Disk Imager tool ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ ).