Running Windows version of Matlab via Parallels Desktop 11 on a Mac?

I am collaborating with a colleague that runs Matlab on a PC, and he uses the xlsread function in his code for file reads. We are cross-pollinating our work and that function doesn't work on a Mac. I'm contemplating using Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac to set up a Windows-based operating environment on my MacBook Pro and then run a PC version of Matlab within that Windows environment. Certainly suboptimal from the standpoint of dealing with the overhead of 2 operating systems, but it will hopefully solve my cross-platform problems. Is there any reason to expect why such a configuration would or wouldn't work? Does anyone have any proof points? Thanks.

[Bo]

Are there any further updates on this? Thanks.

[Qingjie Yang]

firstly, I could not install matlab in the Windows from my mac having Parallels Desktop. Double-click setup will give me an error: Cannot find appropriate setup.exe file. And it is similar if I install Matlab in Ubuntu of Parallels Desktop. I don't know why.

[Jay]

@Qingjie Yang I am having the same problem as well. Did you have any solutions on this? Thanks

[Emmanuel Guizar Rosales]

I ran into the same problems but I was able to install Matlab R2022a on Parallels Desktop 17 on a M1 Pro MacBook Pro by following the instructions on the following page of Parallels. Essetially, I had to disable the feature "shared profiles", which allows Windows to access folder on macOS.

https://kb.parallels.com/en/122615

Hope this helps anyone :)

[Jay]

@Emmanuel Guizar Rosales thank you for this. it worked for me!

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

The above works with Os-x El Capitan, and probably the previous Os-x as well. However, for Os-x Sierra you might need Parallels 12 rather than 11. I have personally tested using 12 on El Capitan and Windows 10 running in Bootcamp mode on a MacBook Pro, with both R2016b and a much earlier release (I do not remember which one.)

The bad news: Microsoft software licensing for Windows and for Office is not friendly to virtual machines. Each virtual machine instance that you ever create (even as an experiment to double check how to describe something to someone) requires its own Windows license, and each virtual machine that you install Office in requires its own Office license.

Note that I do not mean each simultaneous one you wish to have executing: I mean that if you install in a virtual machine then you have permanently burned up the license, even if you destroy the virtual machine after 20 minutes.

If you were doing this for home or family use, you would be eligible for the 5 license Office family pack, once. (and each Office install would burn through a license permanently.)

The circumstances under which you can transfer those licenses are very restricted.

After 5 Windows individual licenses or 5 Office individual licenses burned through, and in any case for business use, you need to purchase as business licenses, at roughly $US 350 per Windows license and not much different for Office licenses, under the same burn-your-money rules.

Until, that is, you agree to sign up for Microsoft's business license programs that lease you yearly licenses, and you pay for Software Assurance Service. At that point the rules change, and each Windows license can be used for four virtual machines, provided that the virtual desktops are roughly VGA resolution (I would have to look up the specs again; it was in the 768 or 1024 pixel range.) Higher resolution is not covered by those rules. I would need to recheck whether you get a break on Office in virtual machines or not.

My use of Office on virtual machines is to test out different operating system and version combinations for people, including different orders of installing software (it makes a difference for Windows!) That's a bundle of virtual machines that sit idle most of the time. But it would cost me $US 700 per variation to do the licensing right.

This is a Microsoft licensing issue.

On the Mathworks side, running both on the Mac desktop and in any number of virtual machines is fine, as long as you are not using a Home license or Student Version license. The Standard/Commercial license and Academic licenses allow you to install on multiple machines simultaneously. The trick is to that when you generate the virtual machine in Parallels, before you install MATLAB, go to the virtual hardware configuration panel and configure the Ethernet MAC Address (Media Access Control, nothing to do with Macintosh) to something consistent. You can install any number of virtual machines that all use the same MAC address. (Parallels will only allow you to run one of them at a time with the same MAC.)

Parallels also gives you the option to share the MacBook Pro's Ethernet; I have not tested that much.

Note: when you use MATLAB under Parallels, MATLAB cannot directly access the graphics card, and cannot access your GPU at all. Virtual machine access to GPUs is possible only through an experimental package out of an Italian university; the site has been down whenever I happen to look at it. This is a restriction on all virtual machine software packages as best I could determine, not just Parallels.