You can set the power options so that a virtual machine is suspended or remains powered on if the guest operating system is placed on standby. Some desktop-based guests, such as Windows 7, have standby enabled by default, so that the guest goes into standby after a predetermined time.

The following conditions apply:
  • Power Management options are not available on every guest operating system.
  • Wake on LAN supports only Windows guest operating systems and is not available on Vlance NICs or when a Flexible NIC is operating in Vlance mode. That is, the current VMware Tools are not installed on the guest operating system.
  • Wake on LAN can resume virtual machines that are in an S1 sleep state only. It cannot resume suspended, hibernated, or powered off virtual machines.
  • NICs that support Wake on LAN include Flexible (VMware Tools required), vmxnet, Enhanced vmxnet, and vmxnet 3.
Note: To avoid having the guest operating system go into standby mode unintentionally, verify the settings before you deploy the virtual machine.

Procedure

  1. Right-click a virtual machine in the inventory and select Edit Settings.
  2. Click the VM Options tab and expand Power Management.
  3. Select a power option.
    Option Description
    Suspend the virtual machine Stops all processes, which saves resources, and copies the contents of the virtual machine's memory to the virtual machine's .vmss file. Writing the memory to the .vmss file is useful if you need to copy the file to help with a troubleshooting scenario.
    Put the guest operating system in standby mode and leave the virtual machine powered on All processes stop running, but virtual devices remain connected.
  4. (Optional) Select Wake on LAN for virtual machine traffic on and select the virtual NICs to trigger this action.
    Unsupported NICs might be listed, but are unavailable to connect.
  5. Click OK to save your changes.