Suspending and Resuming Virtual Machines

Suspending and Resuming Virtual Machines Suspending and Resuming Virtual Machines

The suspend and resume feature is most useful when you want to save the current state of your virtual machine, then pick up work later with the virtual machine in the same state it was when you stopped.

Once you resume and do additional work in the virtual machine, you cannot return to the state the virtual machine was in at the time you suspended unless you took a snapshot when you suspended.

To preserve the state of the virtual machine so you can return to the same state repeatedly, take a snapshot. For details, see Taking Snapshots.

The speed of the suspend and resume operations depends on how much data has changed while the virtual machine has been running. In general, the first suspend operation takes a bit longer than subsequent suspend operations do.

When you suspend a virtual machine, a file with a .vmss extension is created. This file contains the entire state of the virtual machine. When you resume the virtual machine, its state is restored from the .vmss file. The .vmss file cannot be used to resume a virtual machine again from the original suspended state.

Note: You should not change a configuration file after you suspend a virtual machine, since the virtual machine does not resume properly if the configuration file is inconsistent with the suspended virtual machine. Also, you should not move any physical (raw) disks that the virtual machine uses. If you do, the virtual machine cannot access its virtual disks when it resumes.

1. If your virtual machine is running in full screen mode, return to window mode by pressing the Ctrl-Alt key combination.

3. When GSX Server has completed suspending the virtual machine, it is safe to close the console.

1. Launch the VMware Virtual Machine Console and choose a virtual machine you have suspended.

Note that any applications you were running at the time you suspended the virtual machine are running and the content is the same as it was when you suspended the virtual machine.

You can suspend and resume a virtual machine with the management interface. See Changing a Virtual Machine's Power State from the Management Interface.

You can also set the configuration of each virtual machine so the file that stores information on the suspended state is saved in a location of your choice.

Recall that when a virtual machine is suspended, its state is written to a file with a .vmss extension. By default, the .vmss file is stored in the directory in which the virtual machine's configuration file (.vmx) resides. Similarly, when a virtual machine is being resumed, GSX Server looks for the .vmss file in the same directory.

To change the directory where the suspended state file for a virtual machine is stored, you must power off the virtual machine. You can specify this directory from the console's virtual machine settings editor or the VMware Management Interface.

Note: Changing the working directory also changes where you store the virtual machine's snapshot and redo log files.

1. Connect to the virtual machine with a console, make sure the virtual machine is powered off, then choose Edit virtual machine settings.

3. Under Working Directory, enter the name of a directory to use, or click Browse to select a directory.

1. Log on to the VMware Management Interface, then click the arrow to the right of the terminal icon (

) for the virtual machine you want to change and choose Configure Options.

For fastest suspend and restore operations, type the path to the appropriate directory in the Suspend File Location field. GSX Server automatically adds a suffix to the name of the suspended state file to ensure that one virtual machine does not overwrite the suspended state file of another.