WS Pro 15.5 "Failed to suspend the virtual machine"

[cniggeler]

Hi, I just had to upgrade from 15.0 to 15.5 due to Windows 10 update, now my CentOS 7 VM will not suspend. A dialog with the subject message appears; there is no "sub-message" like internal error or disk space or anything mentioned in other, similar posts.

This occurs on both my HP laptop as well as my HP workstation, and both were able to suspend their copies of the CentOS 7 VM just fine in 15.0. There have been NO changes to the VM since having to update to 15.5, so I doubt it's an issue with the guest OS.

Prior posts talk about settings in vmx files but they were for version 8 and the titles are not the same.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

[bonnie201110141]

Will you please upload the ui log (the location can be obtained from Help > About VMware Workstation) and vmware.log from your VM directory? Thanks a lot!

[cniggeler]

The most recent of the two requested files are attached. Thanks!

[bonnie201110141]

Are you using soft suspend (Suspend guest) or hard suspend (Suspend)?

[cniggeler]

I am using the "soft" option, since all I do is click the "Pause" icon in the menubar, and "soft" seems to be VMWare's the default for a Linux/CentOS guest (in other words, I didn't modify the default power option on the Options menu). In version 15, "soft" suspending CentOS 7 took several seconds - perhaps longer than shutting down the system completely! In 15.5, as mentioned, it doesn't work at all.

However, selecting just "Suspend", which I guess is the "hard" option, the CentOS 7 VM suspends almost immediately, which is great!

I'm confused as to the difference between "soft" and "hard" suspends. I read the online info, but the names seem reversed: the "soft" option does more than the "hard" option, namely, it disconnects the VM from the network on suspend. So while "hard" suspend has the desired outcome (fast suspend), I'd appreciate your responses and recommendations to the following:

1. Can you explain the rationale behind the terms soft and hard?

2a. What does it mean, to "leave the VM connected to the network"? For instance, I can't ping it - it's suspended.

2b. Are there any performance implications to leaving the VM connected to the network?

2c. If the VM is on my laptop, does leaving the VM connected to the network make suspending my laptop more difficult or impossible?

3. Are there any consequences if I use "hard" suspend and "soft" resume? In other words, am I expected to remember the suspend method and choose the "correct" resume method perhaps a day or two later?

4. What defaults do you recommend in Options - Power for the four controls (shutdown, suspend, startup, and restart)?

Thanks!

[bonnie201110141 · Accepted solution]

Usually "soft" power operation will trigger the tools to run a script in guest operating system before doing the power operation. For "hard" power operation, no script in guest will be run. You can check the script in tools installation path. I am not sure if you are using VMware tools or open-vm-tools. By default, you should be using open-vm-tools. And you

You can modify or customize the script to do anything you want. For suspend, by default the script in soft operation in Linux guest is stopping networking for the virtual machine. When resume, networking restarts. You can take a look at the script.

I guess the problem you ran into might be with tools in CentOS guest.

Anyway, I would recommend using hard suspend, i.e. VM > Power > Suspend, unless you have specific requirement in which case you can customize the script.

Whether the button in Workstation UI is doing hard or soft depends on vm settings > Options > Power > Power controls.

Hope this helps.