You can install Trueimage inside of the guest, just like you would any other machine. Alternatively, you can have a scheduled task to shutdown the guest and backup the flat files that way. Take a look at this post .It's not for a Mac but you may have any idea how to convert it to Appliescript (or whatever OSX uses now.) Time Machine, like any other backup app, has to be "aware" of the particular app in order to backup a running app. (e.g.: Exchange, SQL.) So since Time Machine is almost certainly not VMWware aware, you'll want to either shut down the VM or run Trueimage inside the guest.