Q: Should I backup a VMware virtual machine?

• Are virtual machine files (.dsk or .vmdk) are important enough to backup?
• Can the virtual machine be recreated without a backup of these files?

Context

• VMware fusion on Mac
• Typically these files are huge, 60GB or even more.
• Without these files you would need to reinstall everything OS and apps. Also, if there are files stored in the virtual environment you would need a backup copy of those files.

Answer

• There are a number of approaches that can work depending on your situation.
• One solution is: Advise users that virtual machines are not backed up. They should save any files stored there to a "shared" folder that their native (Mac) operating system can read. Then, exclude the entire virtual machine disk file from backups, saving gigabytes of space.