What do I need to know about Parallels on macOS Sierra

D

DavidS13

Member
I'm running Parallels version as shown:

Screen Shot 2016-09-20 at 12.53.03 PM.png
The host OS is El Capitan. The guest OS is also El Capitan. What do I need to know about running Parallels on macOS Sierra?
I turned off Parallels automatic updates a while back because they were becoming too frequent. Presumably the first thing I'll do is update Parallels to the latest version. Then I'll make sure all guest OSs are shutdown and backup everything. From there, shall I update the host machine to Sierra first, or shall I update the guest OS to Sierra first? Are there any special caveats I need to know about running Sierra on host and/or guest ?

Thank you, my friend.
 
Parallels 12 is described as "Optimized and ready for macOS Sierra". I do not know if Sierra works or not on 11, I suppose you could try. But probably best to upgrade to 12. May be free upgrade depending on your purchase/subscription details.

As for installing Sierra, it has been hit-and-miss in my experience with Parallels 12.0.0, 12.0.1, and 12.0.2 and with the various pre-releases of Sierra. In some Sierra pre-release versions I could create a new VM by pointing at the Sierra `.app` app. But in some releases it would fail outright or seem like working but would not finish after waiting hours. In some pre-release versions of Sierra I had to create a bootable installer volume on a USB 3.0 flash drive, as described by Apple on their page:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

Unfortunately, today's official release of the Sierra installer does *not* work simply by pointing the Parallels Wizard to the "Install macOS Sierra.app" application. I get an error message when trying to create the "OS X image file.dmg": Failed to create a bootable disk image for this version of OS X.

The second and last GM seed did install easily by pointing Parallels Wizard to the "Install macOS Sierra.app" application under Parallels 12.0.1. So either Apple changed something with the installer last-minute, or Parallels company changed something with this weeks new Parallels 12.0.2 update.
 
Wow man, that sounds absolutely horrible. Glad I asked. Guess I'll put this off for a while until the bugs get straightened out.

What about upgrading just my host OS to Sierra, and leaving the the guest VMs on ElCapitan instead of running the Sierra upgrade via the App Store? Does that stand a better chance of working? All in all, I'm thinking it's probably best to just wait it out.
 
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