Control Virtual Machines from Command line
Posted by hsukumar on 20/04/2009
Vmware workstation and vmware server comes with a command called vmrun which can be used from command line to control the virtual machines, without having to use GUI such as vi web access
The vmtool gets installed in the host system as part of vmware workstation/server install on linux the executable is located under /usr/bin/
#vmrun vmrun start /vmware-machines/WinXP-VM2/WinXP-VM2.vmx ( basically you are specifying the vmx file of the virtual machine )
some of the controls are
start: Start VM
Stop: Stop VM
reset: restart or reboot the vm
suspend: suspends the vm based on fast restart via start
Pause: pause the machine
unpause: unpause the machine
And also if you want to control the vm from remote host you can type the following command
vmrun -T server -h https://vmwarehost.address:8333/sdk -u root -p mypassword stop "/vmware-machines/WinXP-VM2/WinXP-VM2.vmx"
