Parallels on a network

[MacDonaldsd]

Could I use a single XP install on a networked hard drive and access from two separate macs in Parallels?

Im not talking about at the same time but as I use both a desktop and a laptop it would be nice to have the same environment on both.

 

[sotl]

i could definitely see that working if you had windows in a .hdd file sitting on the network drive. Then you could tell parallels to use that as the hard drive image. Don't see how else it could be done if you have windows installed on the drive itself. I'd imagine the access times would be horrible, though, unless your network is running on a gigabit connection. Windows can take a while to load from my external hard drive. An alternative is to set parallels to bootcamp to load off a usb hard drive instead this way you could take windows anywhere with your laptop. That's what I do.

 

[plinden]

Yes, you can run a Parallels VM over a network drive, but I've only tried for SMB (aka samba) and NFS network drives.

It does not work over samba (what you get when you enable Windows sharing on your Mac), at all. But it works on NFS drives, albeit slowly.

I haven't tried it over AFP (i.e. Apple's "Personal File Sharing")

 

[thicke]

I don't see why it wouldn't work. You would just need two different *.pvs files. The only problem I could see would be in starting both VM's. I don't know how Parallels would react to trying to start a VM using a *.hdd that's in use by a VM on a another machine. It could cause real trouble. You might also see problems with performance since the throughput on a networked drive won't be as much as a local drive.

I have moved *.hdd files back and forth between two machines, which is in effect what you are wanting to do. You're just going to have the have it in a location that both can access.

 

[sotl]

If by chance you have windows installed on the network drive I was looking over parallels rc3 features which has a "transporter". Not sure exactly how it works, but it can apparently make a virtual drive from your existing windows installation. Might be worth checking out.