VMware Fusion Tips and Tricks

This post documents strategies for managing virtual machines on VMware Fusion through automation. I wanted to enable automatic VM startup and shutdown on a schedule while allowing the host laptop to enter sleep mode during off-hours.

The solution involves two key components: the vmrun command-line tool and macOS's LaunchD scheduler.

VMware Fusion Command Line Tool

The vmrun command provides command-line control over virtual machines. Basic syntax requires three elements:

• The -T fusion flag to specify VMware Fusion
• An action such as start or stop
• The full path to the VM file

Example commands:

vmrun -T fusion start /Users/davidpacold/Virtual\ Machines.localized/Windows\ 10\ x64.vmwarevm
vmrun -T fusion stop /Users/davidpacold/Virtual\ Machines.localized/Windows\ 10\ x64.vmwarevm

LaunchD Implementation

I created shell scripts containing sequential vmrun commands with sleep intervals between VM startups to stagger boot sequences.

A property list (plist) file configures LaunchD to execute scripts on a schedule. The example configuration runs a startup script daily at 7:00 AM:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
  "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
 <dict>
   <key>Label</key>
   <string>com.davidpacold.vm.start</string>
   <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
   <dict>
     <key>Hour</key>
     <integer>7</integer>
     <key>Minute</key>
     <integer>0</integer>
   </dict>
   <key>ProgramArguments</key>
   <array>
     <string>/Users/davidpacold/documents/startvm.bashrc</string>
   </array>
 </dict>
</plist>

The plist file is saved to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ and loaded with:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.davidpacold.start.vm.plist

Verification uses:

launchctl list | grep com.davidpacold