How to change the snapshot directory of a VM


 * 1) The first step is to power off the VM which you wish to alter the snapshot path for.
 * 2) Once powered down you need to remove the VM from the Inventory. You do this by right clicking the VM and selecting Remove from Inventory
 * [[File:VMSnapshotChange1.jpg]]Figure 1
 * 1) Once the VM is removed we then want to download its .vmx file from the datastore.
 * 2) You do this by navigating to the datastore where the VM is located and clicking on the .vmx file (in this case Win7ProSP1.vmx). Then clicking the download button circled in red in Fig2.
 * [[File:VMSnapshotChange2.jpg]]Figure 2
 * 1) Once downloaded you can use a text editor like Notepad++ to add the lines in the configuration which are required to redirect the snapshots.
 * 2) Now that we have downloaded the .vmx file it is time to create the directory where we want our snapshots to be located. I created the directory in the same datastore however this works identically for another datastore as well.
 * [[File:VMSnapshotChange3.jpg]]Figure 3
 * 1) Now we need to open our .vmx config file, (I use Notepad++) and add two lines to the end.
 * 2) *workingDir = "/vmfs/volumes/51c150cc-f918cb6c-b0f2-001e0b785750/Snapshots"
 * 3) **The 51c150cc-f918cb6c-b0f2-001e0b785750 is the label for the datastore which can be located by looking at the circled area in Fig4 followed by the folder directory you created for Snapshots.
 * 4) *snapshot.redoNotWithParent = "true"


 * [[File:VMSnapshotChange4.jpg]]Figure 4
 * [[File:VMSnapshotChange5.jpg]]Figure 5
 * 1) Now that we have the snapshot redirect lines added to the .vmx file we upload the file back into the VM’s directory overwriting the current .vmx file.
 * [[File:VMSnapshotChange6.jpg]]Figure 6
 * 1) Once the upload has been completed we register the VM by right clicking the .vmx file and clicking Add to Inventory.
 * [[File:VMSnapshotChange7.jpg]]Figure 7
 * 1) You can now restart your VM and any snapshots from this point onwards will be created in your chosen directory. (See Fig3 for a snapshot created in the custom directory.)

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