Backup of a VM running on vmWare player

[Superjojo74]

Hello,

In about a month I will be running an IT project for a conference and to do so I will take with me my conference server which is a VM (Windows 2008 r2) usually running on a ESXi. To export it I did a V2V and put it on a laptop. Everything works fine. However by taking this off my ESXi I'm loosing the ability of snapshoting it. This VM will be run by VM Player.

Also, to lower the risks I bought to same laptop in case of crash of the first one. Now I would like to find a way to snapshot or backup my VM without having to turn it off or suspend it which is impossible for me during the time of the conference.

Does anyone of you has an idea on how I could do that?

Thanks for you help!

Superjojo74

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community,

even though a snapshot is NOT a backup, I'd suggest you get a copy of VMware Workstation, which allows you to create snapshots.

André

[Superjojo74]

Hello André,

Many thanks for your answer and responsivness. Yes, I'm a newbie and feel completely welcome now .

I have another question regarding the best practices for the implementation of the snapshoting. I have 2 laptops, 1 will be the master and will run the VM, the second will be in standby in case of the crash of the 1st one.

what should I do to ensure that I will be able to get my VM to work on the second one in case of crash of the first one? Should I put my VM on the local HDD of the 1st laptop and store the snapshots on a external HDD with a copy of the VM before the first snapshot?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Anyhow, I will download and test VMware Workstation now.

Thanks for your help,

Superjojo

[a_p_]

From what you write I assume you are not completely aware how snapshots work in VMware products!?

When you create a snapshot, the base disk (vmdk) is treated as read only and all changes are written to the snapshot vmdk. Maybe the "Disk Chain" image at the end of http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015180 will help to understand this.

What I would probably do is to build the VM and once it is complete, shut down the guest OS and copy the whole folder to the other notebook.

André

[alexas]

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Alex Sørensen

[Superjojo74]

Thanks André for your precious help and for the supporting documentation.

Superjojo74