Copying images - Is there a suggested method?

[bluecollarit]

I am the keeper of a set of 12 images which make up a virtual windows domain. After i get the images the way i want them i make a snapshot of each when all the images are powered down. Then i copy the folder hierarchy up to the network. Then test engineers copy the images down to their test machines. We have just moved to workstation 6 and i have made the copies to the network and engineers also using workstation 6 have copied them down to their test hosts. Some of the images will not open and are asking for a file which does not exist in the folders including my original folders. I can still open the originals without difficulty.

Is there a suggested copy method or ???

[KevinG · Accepted solution]

When moving virtual machine images around, it is best not to have snapshots, since they may contain a reference to a parent disk path.

[bluecollarit]

Interesting suggestion. It might really simplify things. I will have to run that by the powers that be.

[bluecollarit]

I was under the impression that workstation 6 handled file referrences better. We have been using vmware server but just went to WS6.

[KevinG]

From the VM that you moved and fails to power on because it is reporting that it is unable to find files. Post the list of files in the virtual machine directory and list the files sizes. Also post the exact error being reported in the vmware.log file. Include the .vmx file from this VM

Another reason for not moving a VM with snapshot is that the state of the VM is saved. This could be an issue when moving a VM between unlike host CPU's

[bluecollarit]

I am going to try removing the snapshots and then copying the image to the user.

I appreciate your input and will close this ticket when this is tested.

[bluecollarit]

Removing the snapshot made the image available. We will have to discuss if this meets our requirements.

[continuum]

Follow this procedure - to avoid problems.

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=631980&#631980

Not nice - but safe

[mpalermo]

Kevin,

We have been using other VMware products for three years (GSX then Server) we never had any problems copying images with snapshots until we switched to Server v1.0.1 in version 1.0.2 there was a fix that solved the problem of hardcoding paths and when a system had a snapshot taken and was then copied it would fail to open because the path was hardcoded.

Could Workstation 6.0 have the same problem?

[continuum]

Could Workstation 6.0 have the same problem?

Yes - it has. Not always - just sometimes - avoid monolithicSparse disks until more details are known.