.vmem files in ESXi 5

[aminf13]

  Hello,

  In VMware Workstation, taking a snapshot of a running VM would generate a .vmem file that was the image of that VMs memory. With ESX 5, I do not see a .vmem file. Insteat I see a .vmsn file that is slightly larger than my VMs memory. How can I get ESX to generate the same .vmem file? I need the exact content of VM's physical memory in a file, without any extra meta-data

  Thanks,

  Amin

[jkovba]

Hey Amin!

As you pointed out, .vmem files are only generated when the VM is powered on or the VM crashes.  The .vmsn file is a "VM Snapshot" files (as I'm sure you guessed) and stores the running [memory] state of the VM at the time it was snapshot'ed.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Since the .vmem files are just a backup of your VM's paging file, maybe your VM is content on memory and hasn't needed to page anything to disk yet.  So since your VM isn't using a paging file, no .vmem is getting created at the time of your snapshot.

[aminf13]

  Hi,

  Thanks for the reply. I guess my question really is how I can extract the content of the VM's memory out of the .vmsn file after snapshot is taken. It seems to have some more information in it, in addition to the state of the memory. For example, a .vmsn that is created when snapshotting a VM with 12GB of memory has an additional 5MB of information. I want that exact 12GB and I'm looking to how I can either:

  - Tell it to write this 5MB in a different file

  - Or throw it away after .vmsn is created.

  Thanks.

[aminf13]

  Hello,

  I was wondering if anyone can provide any help regarding this issue. The issue again is this:

  The generated .vmsn file seems to have some extra information in it, in addition to the VMs memory dump. I need to know how to filter this extra informaion out and acquire just the memory dump. VMware Workstation used to generate .vmem files which were exactly what I needed, but I don't see them generated by ESX.

  Thanks,

  Amin