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kopseng
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Auto-snapshot on host power-off

My main development environment is an Ubuntu VM guest running on a beefy Windows 10 Pro host (64GB ram, 16 core i9, 1TB SSD, etc). This is the best dev setup I have had so far, with one exception: Windows Update reboots my machine at regular intervals. This means I lose the state of whatever I was doing in the VM, which sucks, in case I left work in the middle of a debugging session.

How can I configure VMWare to automatically take a snapshot when VMWare is instructed to close by the (host) operating system?

I see there are various scripts (seems like Powershell?) floating around in the forums, so I could probably hack something together, if I was presented with an API or a VMWare Powershell SDK, but it would of course be much smoother if this functionality was already built-in. The only settings I found deal with what VMWare does with the snapshot when the guest powers down (Options -> Snapshot), not what to do when the host powers down.

I am thinking that hooking a monitor into the System part of the Windows Event Log would do the trick, but it sounds rather involved ...

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wila
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Hi,

Why not just suspend instead of a snapshot? It is faster and should suffice for the host reboot.

Officially making the VM a shared VM should work, but I've read mixed results about that.

Check out this thread:

VMWare Workstation 12.5 Auto Suspend of Guests when Windows Host Shuts Down

It has a number of workarounds and solutions.

--

Wil

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| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva

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3 Replies
wila
Immortal
Immortal
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Hi,

Why not just suspend instead of a snapshot? It is faster and should suffice for the host reboot.

Officially making the VM a shared VM should work, but I've read mixed results about that.

Check out this thread:

VMWare Workstation 12.5 Auto Suspend of Guests when Windows Host Shuts Down

It has a number of workarounds and solutions.

--

Wil

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Was it helpful? Let us know by completing this short survey here.

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
kopseng
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Thanks! I thought that a suspend was essentially the same as a snapshots, so yes, that seems absolutely what I want!

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kopseng
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