4 quick tips to take snapshots in VMware Workstation 9

The ability to take snapshots is one of the most useful features in VMware Workstation.  It basically consists in saving the exact state of a Virtual Machine (VM) at a determined time.  The correct use of this feature can help in work and in a lot of other situations.  This article explains some very useful tips I recollected in my time working in software testing.

1. Take snapshots ONLY when your VM is off

At first, this did not make sense to me, why would I bother turning the machine off just to take a snapshot? But, when you take a snapshot when the machine is running, the information for the snapshot includes memory, state of the disk and other data.  So, this makes the snapshot so much bigger, taking valuable space from your disk.  So, whenever you take a snapshot, do it with the VM off.

2. Take a snapshot when you have a clean environment 

This is very important when you want to save future time setting your environments.  It is always useful when you have to install some program all over again.  So, every time you finish installing the OS, you should take a clean snapshot.

3. Name your snapshots clearly

Do this if you want to avoid the effort of looking the snapshot one by one, trying to figure out which one has what you need.

4. Add detailed descriptions to the snapshots

Sometimes, when you want to install complex applications, you need:

• A domain.
• A certain IP configuration.
• A certain version of a specific database.
• Etc.

The environment could be so specific and atomic that you need to take everything into account to use it.  The descriptions in the snapshots can help for this.