Therefore, you shouldn’t rely on them too much.Įxclude snapshots, here leave 4 ways to backup VMware Workstation VMs properly. However, since they rely on the parent disk completely, you cannot restore a VM using only snapshot files.īesides, VM snapshots require large disk space, and may bring serious performance penalty. Normally, VM snapshots are used as a failsafe to roll back the VM to previous states. Now it is commonly agreed that VM snapshot and backup cannot replace each other. VM snapshot vs backup: They cannot replace each other The reason why I say “properly” is because I found that some are still improperly using VM snapshots as backups. In this way you can also perform P2V migration, or even V2V migration. Backup VM as Physical Machine: By installing a backup agent you can perform file-based backup of VMs just like physical machines. If you create a linked clone, the cloned VM may be unusable if the parent VM fails. There are 2 kinds of clone, a full clone takes long time to create. Clone VMs: Clone is a way to create multiple same VMs. Since OVF files are compressed, you can achieve faster downloads this way. Export VM to OVF Template: Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is a file format that supports exchange of virtual appliances across products and platforms. By manually copying the workstation VM files, you can restore the VM by opening them directly on workstation. Manually Copy VM Disk Files: The most direct way to back up a VM. You can click the anchor text to go to the interested part.

So how can you back up virtual machines? How to back up VMware Workstation VMs? In fact, according to the 2 types of virtual machine backup, there are 4 ways available to perform VMware Workstation backup properly. The same is also true for VMware vSphere, the most popular type-1 hypervisor for large enterprises. However, you may find that VMware Workstation, the most popular type-2 hypervisor for individual users and small businesses, does not have a built-in backup option.

The same is true for virtual machines (VMs). No matter when, the ultimate goal of backup is to protect important data. How Can You Backup VMware Workstation Virtual Machine?

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