11.0

Table Of Contents
n Use Shared and Mirrored Folders If You Back Up Your Mac With Time Machine
To use Time Machine to back up data and documents from your virtual machines, keep those files
on the Mac.
Exclude a Virtual Machine From Time Machine
To prevent problems with your virtual machines and to save space on your backup media, you should not
back up virtual machines with Time Machine.
If you do not exclude virtual machines from Time Machine backups, Time Machine can back up a virtual
machine while it is running. Restoring from this kind of backup would overwrite your current virtual
machines with versions that are incomplete and potentially damaged. For the recommended method of
backing up virtual machines, see Copy a Virtual Machine to External Media.
Procedure
1 Open the Mac's System Preferences and click Time Machine.
2 Click Options.
3 Click the add (+) button at the bottom of the Do not back up list.
4 Browse to your Documents folder on the Mac, select the Virtual Machines folder, and click
Exclude.
The Virtual Machine folder appears in the Do not back up list, and displays the total memory used by
all your virtual machines.
5 Click Done, and close the Time Machine window.
Use Shared and Mirrored Folders If You Back Up Your Mac With
Time Machine
To use Time Machine to back up data and documents from your virtual machines, keep those files on the
Mac.
When you use Shared Folders and Mirrored Folders in your virtual machines, you save your documents
and data as files on the host, not in the guests. This means that although you exclude virtual machines
from Time Machine backups, Time Machine can back up the files in the Shared and Mirrored folders
because they do not reside in the virtual machines. See Enable Shared Folders or Mirrored Folders for a
Virtual Machine
Prerequisites
Exclude your virtual machines from Time Machine.
Procedure
u Enable Shared or Mirrored folders.
Using VMware Fusion
VMware, Inc. 114