Stage 1: Check and Install the Agent Software

To begin creating a RAS Template:

1. In the RAS Console, navigate to Farm / <site> / VDI .
2. Select the RAS Templates tab in the right pane.
3. In the Tasks drop-down menu, click Add .
4. In the dialog that opens, select a guest VM from which you would like to create a RAS Template and click OK .
5. The Create Parallels RAS Template Wizard opens. Each wizard page is described below in the order they appear on the screen.

Select Type

On the first page of the wizard, select a template type to create: Virtual desktop or RD Session Host. For details, see Template Types .

Check Agent

On the Check Agent page, the wizard will check if the selected VM has the agent software installed. Wait for it to finish and then examine the Status field (closer to the bottom of the page). Depending on the result, do one of the following:

• If the agent software is installed, click Next to continue. You may stop reading here and jump to Stage 2: Configure the RAS Template .
• If the software is not installed, you need to install it as described below.

To install the agent software, first click the Customize Guest Agent deployment settings link and specify the options in the dialog that opens. None of the options are forced, so you can select or clear them depending on your needs. Note that depending on the RAS Template type, the options are different, as described below.

Virtual desktop:

• Add firewall rules: Automatically configure firewall rules in the guest VM.
• Allow remote desktop connections: Select to automatically configure remote desktop access in the VM.
• Specify users or groups to be added to the Remote Desktop Users group: Select this option and then click the [+] icon to add specific users to the group.

RD Session Host:

• Add firewall rules: Automatically configure firewall rules in the guest VM.

  Note: Network Discovery UDP port 137 must be enabled for a domain firewall profile in the guest OS as a separate step. This can be done via domain group policies or manually in the guest OS.

• Install RDS role: Install the RDS role in the guest VM.
• Enable Desktop Experience: Enable the Desktop Experience feature in Windows.
• Restart server if required: Restart the VM if required.
• Specify users or groups to be added to the Remote Desktop Users group: Select this option and then click the [+] icon to add specific users to the group.

When done specifying the options, click OK to close the dialog.

Now click the Install button and follow the onscreen instructions to install the agent software.

Hint: If the guest VM cannot be reached by its name specified as a hostname, double-click the guest VM name and change it to the correct IP address.

Once done, verify that the agent software is installed by looking at the Status field on the Check Agent wizard page. If so, continue to the next section that describes Stage 2: Configure the RAS Template .

Known Windows Server guest OS support issue

If a VM is running a Windows Server as the guest OS and you see the error that "RAS Guest OS Agent not supported", you can fix that using Parallels RAS PowerShell. If you haven't installed RAS PowerShell, run the Parallels RAS installer and install it.

1. Once RAS PowerShell is installed, do the following:
2. Exit the Parallels RAS Console.
3. Open the Windows PowerShell console.
4. Import the RAS module by executing the following commands:

   Import-Module PSAdmin

5. Connect to your Parallels RAS farm (substitute the server name with your RAS Licensing Server name or IP address and type a password when prompted):

   New-RASSession -Server "server.company.dom"

6. Execute the following command:

   Get-VDISettings

   See if the output contains EnableServerGuests = false

7. Execute another command to change the settings:

   Set-VDISettings -EnableServerGuests $true

8. Execute Get-VDISettings again and make sure that EnableServerGuests = true