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KingDruid
Contributor
Contributor

resumeable suspend

I have a vm that is using a non persistent vmdk so every time it shuts down it does not change the vmdk. I also want to start it up when its already booted to cut down on the time that is needed to bring up the vm.

I read that in vmware 4 there was a way to tell the system to resume from a suspend every time you boot, but I don't see that option in esxi. I can modify the vmx file every time before I boot up the machine and just change the checkpoint.vmState to a vmss suspend file I have, but esxi deletes the file after it boots up. Is there a way to have it not delete the file? I could then just modify the vmx before I boot the machine.

I have tried:

Setting the vmss file as read only

Adding resume.repeatable = "true" to the config, but that did nothing.

Creating a link to the file "ln -s" thinking that it would delete the symbolic link, but not the original, but I was wrong and it deleted the link and the original.

I was going to try chattr +i to prevent root from deleting it, but chattr is not in the esxi system.

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suvrobhattachar
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

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KingDruid
Contributor
Contributor

Sorry that is only a guide for vmware workstation. I am asking about ESXI

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Dee006
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Are you referring William Lam blog about killing the PID and resuming the VM?

How To "Pause" (Not Suspend) A Virtual Machine In ESXi? | virtuallyGhetto

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KingDruid
Contributor
Contributor

No sorry:

ESXI allows you to suspend a vm and resume it and it restores exactly where it left off, but you can only resume it once. VMWare had a feature where you can suspend it and it would save that state so whenever you turn on the VM it always resume at that exact point, it was called resumeable suspend.

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KingDruid
Contributor
Contributor

Does anyone else have any more info on this or maybe another virtual server software that is capable of doing this. What I am trying to do is I have a windows machine that starts up and performs some task, but it has to start up the same way every time, which is with a new profile being created. Right now I have the machine start up from the beginning, but if I could save a snapshot that would be right as windows finishes booting, then I could have the VM always resume at that point if this feature was available in ESXI.

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