Virtual Desktops

Parallels RAS VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) enables you to use server virtualization to reduce the number of physical servers required to host published resources. Parallels RAS VDI supports numerous virtualization technologies, including hypervisor and cloud-based platforms.

Parallels RAS VDI also includes the Template functionality, which gives you the ability to create a template from a preconfigured guest VM (virtual machine) and then automatically clone guest VMs and RD Session Host VMs from it.

Please note that at the time of this writing, the VDI functionality in Parallels RAS Management Portal is limited to viewing existing virtual desktops, recreating guest VMs, and performing power operations on them. For other VDI tasks, please use the desktop-based Parallels RAS Console.

Virtual desktop list

To see the list of virtual desktops that exist in the Farm, navigate to Infrastructure > Virtual Desktops.

To add or remove columns to/for the Virtual Desktops table, click the gear icon and select or clear desired columns.

To perform a power operation, select a virtual desktop and then choose one of the following from the ellipsis menu:

Start
Stop
Restart — The Restart operation (graceful) has a 10 min timeout. If not completed during this time, the Reset operation (forced) will be used.
Reset
Suspend
Refresh
Recreate — see more info below.

Recreating a guest VM

If something happens to a template-based guest VM and it becomes unusable, you don't have to delete it and create a new one. Instead, you can recreate it keeping its name and MAC address (to guarantee that VM will get the same IP address from the DHCP server). This way none of the other Site settings, which may rely on a broken guest VM, will be affected. Another reason for recreating a guest VM is to apply changes made to the template (when you exit from maintenance without executing the Recreate command). Please note that keeping the MAC address is supported on ESXi, vCenter, Hyper-v and Hyper-v Failover Cluster only.

Note: If a guest VM was created from an RD Session Host template and was already assigned to an RD Session Host group, it cannot be recreated.

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 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 an external storage.