Hi all, I was wondering how to create a Big Sur VM when I'm upgraded to Monterey. Some critical software is not working at all in Monterey and I figured having a Big Sur VM should be possible, but Parallels defaults to "downloading" the current version of MacOS when making a new image. Where/how can I get an install image for Big Sur (11.x) when I'm on 12.x?
You can download Big Sur (and other installers) using the softwareupdate command. This command in terminal will download the Big Sur 11.6.1: softwareupdate --download --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 11.16.1 and this for Monterey softwareupdate --download --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 12.0.1
this doesn't seem to work at all: "Install failed with error: Update not found" on Macbook Air M1. Haven't been able to find any way to make a VM work in Parallels for Big Sur when in Monterey.
Tried also using the instructions here: https://kb.parallels.com/en/125105 I got the .app install file from a terminal method that worked better. But it gives this error when making the Disk image: "Failed to create a bootable disk image file for this version of macOS."
I am having this problem as well. I purchased a second license for my 2021 MacBook Pro 14", and would like to run 11.2.2 in a VM. I have the 11.2.2 "Install macOS Big Sur.app" file from when I first downloaded it in March 2021. I put it in Applications, but Parallels 17.1.0 does not see the installer. It only wants to install macOS 12 via download; and I can't use that for the testing I require. Specifically I also have a group of users that are running 11.2.2 and I need to test software for them on this older OS. Testing software with older OS revisions was a common use case for Parallels in the past; is this no longer supported?
According to Parallels, it's impossible to have an ARM version of macOS VM running prior to macOS Monterey. Monterey is the first ARM release that actually supports virtualization. Currently, only those M1 Macs that shipped with Big Sur can install Big Sur physically on that machine, either in the built-in SSD or on external drive, and have Monterey in PD as VM. Devices such as M1 Pro/M1 Max and later can only install Monterey and have Monterey in PD as VM. There's no way to have Big Sur in VM on a ARM Mac.
