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walterwatts
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎10-10-2007 02:27 PM

Shutting Down versus Suspending a Virtual Machine?

I have two VM's in my Fusion library, one Windows XP Pro and one Ubuntu Ultimate 1.4.

I only use either of the VM's occasionally and spend most of my time in OS X on my Intel iMac 24' with 2GB RAM. (Who wouldn't Smiley Wink ?)

My question is:

Is it better to suspend them or shut them down (power down) when they are not in use (which is most of the time)?

I know the suspended VM's start quicker, but that doesn't really concern me as much as overall OS X stability and resource availability.

Could someone please explain the major differences in each of the two methods of "quitting" Fusion and its guests' OS.

Thanks in advance.

Walter

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2 Replies
admin
Immortal
Immortal
‎10-10-2007 02:37 PM

One difference is that when you suspend, a .vmem file sticks around that's the same size as your guest RAM. Other than that, I'd say it's just personal preference. I like to to shut down guests because I don't care about startup times and like knowing that stuff got committed to (virtual) disk, but bgertzfield (for example) prefers to suspend them.

img47
Contributor
Contributor
‎10-10-2007 04:32 PM

Plus there is still a difference in Active memory when supsending vs shutting down:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/680644#680644