I have a new Mac Mini Server running Snow Leopard now running critical services. In order to prevent trashing the server by doing something silly, I want to be able to experiment setting up new (non supported) services by running a (temporary) version of the current software via parallels on my laptop. (I'm probably running close to the line here in legality, but it will ever only be very temporary so hope Apple will cut me some slack and not come after me in doing so!). Now installing the OS on Parallels via the Mac Mini disks is a no-go since the software is checking for the type of Mac (which is fair enough). However, creating a copy of the Mac Mini Server HD on an external disk, does allow me to run the OS on an old (backup) non-server Mac Mini if the situation arises. Following this success, I've tried to follow the advice in http://kb.parallels.com/5403 by creating a disk image of the external drive. I've created the disk image successfully. However, when I boot from the image in Parallels 5 or 6 I get a small 'circular barred' icon appearing in the grey boot screen above the Apple icon. Using the same image I can successfully run Mac OS X Server under the FREE VirtualBox software, though it runs somewhat slower than I would like. Anyone got any advice other than paying for another 'clean' Mac OS X server license (which is now even further away since I have just bought the Parallels 6 upgrade which does not fix my problem)
You could try using Disk Utility to make the fixed size disk image. http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=105002
