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Sharing a Virtual Machine

You can share and reuse virtual machines between computers and users. To do so, you migrate the virtual disk file to a shared network server. Once a virtual machine is created and configured it can be accessed by any computer that can run VMware GSX Server. You simply migrate the files that are needed by the virtual machine to the shared network location. >>More on migrating a virtual machine

Sharing a virtual machine is very useful and can enable a variety of activities including:

• Deploying new operating systems to users. IT can use virtual machine sharing to deploy new environments to corporate users via a virtual disk file with the operating system configuration stored on a shared network drive.
• Freeing up disk space locally by moving virtual disk files to a shared network drive and deleting them from the local hard drives.
• Reusing a template virtual machine for various purposes such as installing a pre-configured computing environment into a template virtual machine, then copying the virtual machine to use it for various testing purposes.

If you intend to have other users access your virtual machines, you should consider the following points:

• Permissions for the virtual machine files — especially the configuration file (.cfg) and virtual disks (.vmdk) — should be set for other users according to how you want them to use the virtual machine. For instance, if you want users to run a virtual machine but not be able to modify its configuration, do not make the configuration file writable.
• If your virtual machine uses disks in nonpersistent mode, you should consider changing the location of the redo-log file, since by default it is placed in your temp directory, to which other users may not have access (redo logs for disks in undoable mode are placed in the same directory as the virtual machine’s configuration file). To change the location of the redo log, complete the following steps.
  1. With the virtual machine powered off, open the Configuration Editor. Choose Settings > Configuration Editor.
  2. Click the Misc panel.
  3. Click Browse and select a directory that is shared with other users.
  4. Click OK to save the change and close the Configuration Editor.

  Note: Virtual machines with disks in nonpersistent mode perform better when the redo log is located in the system’s temp directory.

Related Topics:

• Migrating a virtual machine

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