Managing Guest VMs

Viewing guest VMs created from a RAS Template

To view the list of guest VMs created from a RAS Template, select a template on the RAS Templates tab page and click Tasks > Show guest VMs . The Template Guest VMs List dialog opens listing guest VMs.

The buttons on the right side of the dialog perform the following actions:

• Refresh . Refreshes the list.
• Delete . Deletes a selected guest VM (see the Deleting a guest VM subsection below).
• Send message . Allows you to send a message to the user who is currently connected to a guest VM. For example, when you apply updates to the parent RAS Template, you need all users to be logged off, so you can use this button to send an appropriate message to connected users.
• Log off . Logs off the current session from a selected guest VM.

Performing Guest VM Power Operations

The power operations icons at the bottom of the dialog allow you to start, stop, suspend, and reset a guest VM. To perform an action, select a guest VM and click a icon corresponding to the desired action.

Note: If you are using Nutanix Acropolis as the hypervisor, the suspend operation is not available (the Suspend icon is disabled). The reason for this is Nutanix Acropolis does not support the suspend operation on its virtual machines.

Checking the RAS Guest Agent status

A guest VM should have the RAS Guest Agent installed in it. The agent is installed by default when a guest VM is created from a RAS Template. If a guest VM was created outside the RAS Console using the native hypervisor tools, it may not have the agent installed in it. In such a case, the guest VM will be able to serve only the desktop, but no applications or documents.

To check if the RAS Guest Agent is installed in a guest VM:

1. Select a guest VM in the list and then click Tasks > Check Agent .
2. The Guest VM Agent Information dialog opens displaying the information about the RAS Guest Agent.
3. If  the agent is not installed, click the Install button and follow the instructions. The agent will be push installed in Windows running inside the guest VM.

Configuring guest VM properties

To view and modify properties of a guest VM, select a guest VM and click Tasks > Properties . The Guest VM Advanced Settings dialog opens. In the dialog, configure the following properties:

• Do not use this guest VM . If selected, the guest VM will not be used to serve published resources to end users.
• Computer name . Specifies the guest VM network name (domain name or IP address) used to connect to this guest VM.
• Port . Specifies the port number through which Parallels RAS communicates with this guest VM.
• Override default settings . Allows you to specify your own VM settings. By default, this option is cleared and a VM is configured using default settings. To specify custom settings, select this option and then choose your own values for Connection timeout , Protocol , If session disconnects , and End a disconnected session options. For the descriptions of these options, please see the Configuring Default Guest VM Properties subsection below (the options are exactly the same in both places).

Configuring default guest VM properties

By default, all guest VMs in a site are configured using the default VM settings. The defaults are defined on a site level and are automatically applied to all newly created VMs regardless of which VDI Host or VM pool they belong to.

To view and modify the default settings, in the Template Guest VMs dialog, click Tasks > Default settings (or click the gear icon). The Default Guest VM Advanced Settings dialog opens allowing you to view and modify the following settings:

• Connection timeout . If a connection with the guest VM cannot be established in this time period, Parallels RAS will cancel the connection attempt.
• Protocol . Specifies a protocol that Parallels RAS uses to communicate with the guest VM.
• If session disconnects . Specifies the action that should be taken if a user disconnects from a session. Actions include Suspend , Reset , Keep Current State , Stop . Use the after field to specify the amount of time that has to pass before the selected action is executed.

  Note for Nutanix Acropolis users: Nutanix Acropolis does NOT support the suspend operation for its VMs. If Suspend is selected in this field, no action will be applied to a Nutanix Acropolis VM when a session disconnect event occurs (a corresponding error will be recorded in the VDI Agent log). Since Suspend is the default action, you should consider selecting a different one if you are using Nutanix Acropolis.

Any modifications you make to default VM settings are immediately applied to all VMs in the current site that use them.

Deleting a guest VM

To delete a guest VM, select it and then click the Delete button on the right side of the window.

Important: If you are using VMware ESXi, you should ONLY delete a guest VM from the Template Guest VMs dialog in the Parallels RAS Console. You should NOT try to delete a guest VM using the VMware native client or web interface. If you do, the VMware tools will delete not only the VM but its parent RAS Template as well (which will also invalidate all other guest VMs created as linked clones from this template). The reason for this is ESXi client interface treats linked clones as standalone VMs. Parallels RAS uses a different approach when creating or deleting linked clones, which allows it to treat linked clones as what they are.

Managing guest VMs that failed preparation

If a guest VM encounters a problem during the preparation stage (for any reason), it remains on the server but cannot be used. You can identify such VMs in the Template Guest VMs List dialog (described above) by the "Preparation failed" value in the Status column. Unless a VM like this is repaired, it will be automatically removed after the time period specified in the Auto remove guest VMs which failed preparation after field on the RAS Templates tab page. You can set any of the available time periods by selecting it from the drop-down list or you can type a desired value, such as "8 days" or "12 hours".

Recreating a guest VM

If something happens to a guest VM and it becomes unusable, you don't have to delete it and create a new one. Instead, you can recreated it keeping its name and MAC address. This way none of the other site settings, which may rely on a broken guest VM, will be affected. Examples of such settings may include publishing from VDI desktops (i.e. specific guest VMs selected), desktop persistence, AD policies filtered via computer groups. Another reason for recreating a guest VM is to apply changes made to the RAS Template (when you exit from maintenance without executing the Recreate command).

To recreate one or more guest VMs:

1. In the Parallels RAS Console, navigate to Farm \ Site \ VDI Hosts \ RAS Templates .
2. To recreate all deployed guest VMs, click the Tasks drop-down menu and choose Recreate All Guest VMs .
3. To recreate a specific guest VM (or multiple guest VMs), click Tasks > Show Guests VMs .
4. In the Template Guest VMs dialog, select one or more guest VMs and then click the Recreate button.

When you recreate a guest VM:

• The procedure deletes a VM and creates a new one from the same template.
• The new guest VM retains the same computer name and MAC address as the one it replaces.
• If a guest VM is running, all unsaved data in its memory will be lost. For this reason, an important data should be saved to a disk.