Exporting a running virtual machine

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One of the small features that we added in Windows 8.1 / Windows Server 2012 R2 is the ability to export a virtual machine that is currently running.  Using this feature is simple enough, just select a running virtual machine and choose to export it.  Here you can see that my MineCraft Server is running while being exported, and I can export other running virtual machines too.

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When you export a running virtual machine – you will get a copy of the virtual machine in a saved state, at exactly the point in time that you asked for an export.  You can also export checkpoints from a running virtual machine.

Cheers,
Ben

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2014
    Hi Ben, This is useful. Is it possible to script this and run it on a schedule I wonder?

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2015
    Yes, you can use:

  • Getting list of machines:  Get-VM | Export-VM -Path F:Backup
  • Exporting machine:  Export-VM -Name DC1 -Path F:Backup

  • Anonymous
    May 11, 2015
    Hi Ben, It's worth noting that you can only export running virtual machines if you are going Intel-Intel or AMD-AMD. If you want to go Intel-AMD (or vice-versa) you need to shut down the virtual machine before exporting.  Still, very cool that you can even do that in my opinion.

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2015
    Hi Everyone I created a new guest on Hyper-V but the NIC drivers were not installed, The host server is Dell R710. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you Avi

  • Anonymous
    December 26, 2015
    @Avi did you ever got that resolved?

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2016
    Does the VM configuration file change its location after the VM has been exported?