About VMWare Virtual Machine Server

Steps of Configure Virtual Machine

1. Right click in right panel of vmware > Add Virtual Machine

2. Select path where you want to store your virtual machine (or space of virtual machine)

3. Select network path

4. Add disk size

5. Add ram

6. Start virtual machine

7. Install operating system

8. Install vmware tools

9. Give computer name

10. Give IP of computer

11. Set firewall off (as per requirement)

12. Add required software

13. Take snapshot

VMWare -Virtual Machine File types

1. Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition-000001.vmdk – Vmware virtual disk file

2. Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.vmsd –VMSD file

3. Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.vmx – vmware configuration file

4. Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition-Snapshot7.vmsn- VMware virtual machine snapshot file

5. vmware.log –vmware log file

VMDK is virtual disk file - virtual partition with data and installed operating system (Micosoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, MS-DOS etc.) and used by VMware to run as a virtual machine (under host operating system).

This is a virtual disk file, which stores the contents of the virtual machine's hard disk drive.
A virtual disk is made up of one or more .vmdk files. If you have specified that the virtual disk should be split into 2GB chunks, the number of .vmdk files depends on the size of the virtual disk. As data is added to a virtual disk, the .vmdk files grow in size, to a maximum of 2GB each. (If you specify that all space should be allocated when you create the disk, these files start at the maximum size and do not grow.) Almost all of a .vmdk file's content is the virtual machine's data, with a small portion allotted to virtual machine overhead.
If the virtual machine is connected directly to a physical disk, rather than to a virtual disk, the .vmdk file stores information about the partitions the virtual machine is allowed to access.
Earlier VMware products used the extension .dsk for virtual disk files.

-.vmdk
This is a redo-log file, created automatically when a virtual machine has one or more snapshots. This file stores changes made to a virtual disk while the virtual machine is running. There may be more than one such file. The e2_# indicates a unique suffix added automatically by VMware Workstation to avoid duplicate file names.

Log files – Log files are just that- a log of virtual server activity for a single virtual server. Log files should be used only when you are having trouble with a virtual machine.

VMEM – A VMEM file is a backup of the virtual machine’s paging file. It will only appear if the virtual machine is running, or if it has crashed.

VMSN & VMSD files – these files are used for VMware snapshots. A VMSN file is used to store the exact state of the virtual machine when the snapshot was taken. Using this snapshot, you can then restore your machine to the same state as when the snapshot was taken. A VMSD file stores information about snapshots (metadata). You’ll notice that the names of these files match the names of the snapshots.

NVRAM files – these files are the BIOS for the virtual machine. The VM must know how many hard drives it has and other common BIOS settings. The NVRAM file is where that BIOS information is stored.

VMX files – a VMX file is the primary configuration file for a virtual machine. When you create a new virtual machine and answer questions about the operating system, disk sizes, and networking, those answers are stored in this file. As you can see from the screenshot below, a VMX file is actually a simple text file that can be edited with Notepad.

What is a VMware Shapshot?

A snapshot is a picture of your system at the time the snapshot is taken. Think of it as an image of your computer’s hard drive. Besides just the data on the hard drive, the VMware configuration for that virtual machine and the BIOS configuration are also saved when you take a snapshot. The snapshot files that are created contain only the changes that have occurred to the virtual machine since the snapshot was taken. Thus, over time, the snapshot files will grow as the machine is used more and more.

What Snapshot files are created?

When a snapshot is created a number of files are created in the directory for that virtual machine.

• -SnapshotX.vmsn (Where X is the number of the snapshot taken) This file stores the state of the virtual machine when the snapshot was taken.
• -SnapshotX.vmem (Where X is the number of the snapshot taken) This file stores the state of the virtual machine memory when the snapshot was taken.
• -nnnnnn.vmdk (where nnnnnn is the number of the disk image, not corresponding to the snapshot number) These are log files which store changes to the virtual machine, since snapshot was taken. There may be many of these files over time.

Snapshots in Workstation vs Server

VMware Workstation has the ability to create multiple snapshots and offers a very nice Snapshot Manager. The Snapshot Manager was introduced in VMware Workstation 5.0. With Snapshot Manager, you can view the snapshot tree. Each snapshot will be represented by a screenshot of what the screen looked like when the snapshot was taken. VMware Server lacks two important features: Snapshot Manager (multiple snapshots) and virtual machine cloning. In other words, in VMware server, you can only take a single snapshot and then revert back to that snapshot.

One alternative to taking snapshots that can be used in VMware Server is to shutdown the virtual machine and copy the vmdk, vmem, vmx, and nvram files. Later you could replace these files and your virtual machine would be back at the point of when that copy was made. This is a manual way of taking snapshots. However, this method takes much more disk space when compared to snapshots.

Summary

VMware snapshots are an extremely valuable feature of VMware. Currently, VMware workstation offers the Snapshot Manager, which offers the possibility of multiple snapshots. Currently, VMware Server offers only the ability to take a single snapshot. With snapshots, you can save the state of your virtual system BEFORE you make risky changes like installing applications, adding a new patch, or making a configuration change. When things go wrong, Snapshots can really save your day