I was recently experimenting with Parallels to run some Lion Server VMs and I must have wasted a couple of hours trying to get Lion Server up and running as a Profile Manager host in a VM. Then I had the good sense to complain to Arek Dreyer, who I’m guessing had complained to Andrina Kelly who had, well, answered the riddle. Apparently you need to enable a second core in order to promote to an Open Directory Master in Parallels. To enable said second CPU, open Parallels, go to the configure screen for the VM and then make sure CPUs is set to some number higher than 1. Who knew, right?