Moving and managing VMWare VMDKs in OS X
Here’s a rundown of the contents of a typical VMWare machine directory. We’ll assume the name given for this machine is “Windows 2000 Professional”, in which case the following are the basic files we should find:
- Windows 2000 Professional.vmx - this is the text config file which specifies cpu, memory, hard drive, peripheral configuration, etc. for the virtual machine. It is editable (but carefully!)
- Windows 2000 Professional.vmsd - Centralized file for storing information and metadata about snapshots
- Windows 2000 Professional.vmdk - this is the text config file which defines the virtual disk drive and geometry
- Windows 2000 Professional-flat.vmdk - this is the actual virtual disk file with all its contents
- vmware.log - Boot log for virtual machine, these are named in numerical sequence, vmware-X.log
- nvram - This is the non-volatile ram where the virtual machine cmos setting are stored
- *.vmem - This file is created when the virtual machine is running, and is the memory/swap file
For the VMWare Server 1.0 format, you’ll find these neatly contained in a single folder. VMWare Fusion for OS X will read this format, but unlike VMWare Server for Windows, it *does not* allow you EDIT virtual machine parameters from within Fusion directly. You can, however, edit the .vmx or .vmdk (disk definition) file directly, allowing you to add or removes drives or other peripherals, just do so carefully.
When you create snapshots, they are stored as additional “stub” files separate from the base VMDK files. If you had C.vmdk, you’ll usually see C-00001.vmdk, and so on in sequence. I’ve had successful reverting back to original config by simply moving the snapshot vmdks, but this is very likely to break any future reliance on those snapshot images.
VMWare Fusion natively creates virtual machines in the newer format, which is compatible with VMWare Server 2.0 for Windows, but not 1.0, so you have one way compatibility going from Windows to Mac unless you are using VMWare Server 2.0 for Windows, in which case you may move your Mac Fusion VMs *back* to your VMWare Server 2.0 installation.
