Virtual machine pause vs shutdown understanding!

[cutehameed]

Hi folks,

I am new to virtualization and have some doubt in understanding virtual machine pause/suspend vs power shutdown behavior. I have VMWare Workstation 12 with almost all Linux distribution (including Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Kali Linux, window 7, 10 and also window server 2012). This is basically my home practice lab.

I have noticed when I pause (generally I do) it take extra space on my hard disk by creaking another copy but shutdown does not. Please guide so, I can re-arrange all.

[admin]

Suspend writes memory to disk and the Guest OS enters hibernate/sleep state

Shutdown writes nothing to disk and stops the Guest OS completely

Pause is the same as suspend.

Regards,

Randhir

[admin]

Please refer to link below for Understanding Virtual Machine Power States-

http://pubs.vmware.com/vi3/bsa/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=bsa&file=BSA_Managing_V...

If you found my answers useful please consider marking them as Correct OR Helpful

Regards,

Randhir

[SRusev]

I will use the answer provided by Randhir as baseline and will extend it.

Suspend writes image of the guests' RAM memory to the host disk and the Guest OS enters hibernate/sleep state

Power off writes nothing to disk and stops the Guest OS completely - (equal to press and hold the power button and respectively "cold boot" after start) 

Shutdown initiates the shutdown procedure/script of the OS (also called "graceful shutdown")

Pause does exactly what is says. It can be used to reduce the CPU cycles and I/O operations in favour of the Hypervisor. I will enclose non-technical explanation by VMware 

"You can pause a virtual machine multiple times for a few seconds, or up to several minutes. The pause feature is useful when a virtual machine is engaged in an lengthy, processor-intensive activity that prevents you from using the host system to do a more immediate task."

Please also ensure that actual version of vmware tools are installed and running.

Regards,

Stefan