How to create snapshot in another location then the VM’s folder

Snaphot of your VM's in Different Location.

By default, the snapshot of your VM's are created in the same folder where the VM exist. Sometimes you need to create a snapshot elsewhere. Why?

– There is not enough space on VMFS volume…
– You are not able to power on a VM because this one cannot create a swap file on the VMFS volume (which is full of course).

What do do?

To change the default location:

01.) Power off the virtual machine.
02.) Add the following line to the VMX configuration file for the virtual machine:

workingDir=””

For example: workingDir=”/vmfs/volumes/46f1225f-552b0069-e03b-00145e808070/vm-snapshots”
03.) You need to reload virtual machine configuration, run the command at the console:

# vimsh -ne “vmsvc/reload “

When you power on the virtual machine, snapshot files and VSWP files are created in the new location.

You might want to have look at this article I wrote some time back which will tells you about how-to change a location for your swap files of your VMs (swap files are the files with extention VSWP).

If you do not want to redirect the virtual machine's swap file (VSWP), add the following line to the VMX configuration file, then reload the configuration:

sched.swap.dir=”<path_to_vm_directory>”

When you power on the virtual machine, the swap file is created in the same directory as virtual machine.

Source: KB1002929