schedule AutoProtect snapshot?

[Steely1]

How can I schedule the AutoProtect snapshot to occur late at night, rather than right when I'm trying to switch back to my VM to test something? This is taking a very frustrating 20 or 30 minutes out of my workday...

If it's not possible to schedule these snapshots, how do I disable them completely?

(Workstation 6.5 on Ubuntu 8.10)

[Noel]

How can I schedule the AutoProtect snapshot to occur late at night

I'm not sure about "AutoProtect", but you can easily schedule snapshots to happen whenever you want.

Download https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vix160_vmrun_command.pdf and take a look at the vmrun snapshot command. You can schedule that command to run using your operating specific scheduler (e.g., cron).

[RDPetruska]

What is this "Auto-protect snapshot" feature? I'm looking through all UI options, as well as searching the help/user manual and find nothing regarding it.

[Noel]

What is this "Auto-protect snapshot" feature? I'm looking through all UI options, as well as searching the help/user manual and find nothing regarding it.

It is a VMware Fusion feature. As far as I know, it is not an option for VMware Workstation. If it is -- and I don't believe that it is -- I cannot find it, even in string form, in any of the linux code.

But if anyone wants automatic snapshots, just use the cron task I mentioned. You could even write a more sophisticated script to manage how many snapshots would be maintained that way.

[Steely1]

Ah, I think I understand what might be going on. This is a VM I had

been running under VMWare Fusion 2.0, and I copied its entire folder

over to a new Linux partition. Somehow it's still running these snapshots and I believe the GUI status message calls them "AutoProtect." I will check ps or top the next time one runs, and see if "vmrun snapshot" is actually the process at work under the covers. If so, I think the cron rescheduling will work; if not, I'm not sure what to do.

[RDPetruska]

I think there'd be some setting in the vmx file of the guest, then. Post one that does this and we can look to see if there's anything that looks like it.

[Steely1]

OK, here is the VMX file. Any ideas?

[Noel]

Ah ... I'll bet that those rollingTier entries are responsible. And those are present in the linux vmware-vmx binary, so I suspect that it is something we have support for but no GUI as yet.

I also suspect that if you remove them, the behavior will cease.

[Steely1]

Thanks, Noel, I tried removing the rollingTierX lines and changed snapshot.numRollingTiers to 0 rather than 3 (I backed up my VMX file first, just in case). Now my guest OS is running glacially slowly -- maybe 10 or 15 minutes to bring up the ctrl-alt-delete login prompt, and keystrokes take forever to register. Any suggestions?

[Noel]

Thanks, Noel, I tried removing the rollingTierX lines and changed snapshot.numRollingTiers to 0 rather than 3

Now my guest OS is running glacially slowly -- maybe 10 or 15 minutes to bring up the ctrl-alt-delete login prompt, and keystrokes take forever to register.

Any suggestions?

I might have removed all of the entries related to rollingTiers and/or snapshots. At this point, you might consider creating a nice clean VM, and then move (a copy of) the VMDK over. Mind you, I'd cleanup the state of the VMDK first, e.g., remove snapshots, after backing it up.

[Steely1]

I'll try this, but I'm not optimistic. My vmwarevm folder is littered with all sorts of vmk files, each (I take it) representing sectors of the dynamically resizing virtual disk and then the sequential snapshots of each sector. So I have not only "windows.vmdk" but "windows-000001.vmdk" through "windows-000006.vmdk", and each of those, in turn, has (currently) 46 snapshots, e.g. "windows-000001-s001.vmdk" through "windows-000001-s049.vmdk".

When I was porting this VM over from VMWare Fusion, I tried discarding the sXXX.vmdk files and the VM wouldn't start at all. Is there a procedure anyone knows of to somehow consolidate snapshots?

[ksc]

Ah ... I'll bet that those rollingTier entries are responsible. And those are present in the linux vmware-vmx binary, so I suspect that it is something we have support for but no GUI as yet.

I also suspect that if you remove them, the behavior will cease.

Yes, the rollingTier entries are the "Autoprotect" implementation. It's used in Workstation for automatic snapshots while in record/replay mode, but the implementation is the same as for Fusion.

We don't say something is "supported" until it is hooked up into the UI

[ksc · Accepted solution]

I'll try this, but I'm not optimistic. My vmwarevm folder is littered with all sorts of vmk files, each (I take it) representing sectors of the dynamically resizing virtual disk and then the sequential snapshots of each sector. So I have not only "windows.vmdk" but "windows-000001.vmdk" through "windows-000006.vmdk", and each of those, in turn, has (currently) 46 snapshots, e.g. "windows-000001-s001.vmdk" through "windows-000001-s049.vmdk".

When I was porting this VM over from VMWare Fusion, I tried discarding the sXXX.vmdk files and the VM wouldn't start at all. Is there a procedure anyone knows of to somehow consolidate snapshots?

Create a full clone (VM->Clone...). A full clone creates a copy of the VM (including all disk files, but with no snapshots) in a different directory. Once the full clone is created, you no longer need the original files (though you should keep a backup).