Rsync backups and VMWare binary blobs

[John Abreau]

I'm in the process of setting up a new backup server using rsync
snapshots, and I'm trying to figure out how to address my VMWare
guest systems. By default, rsync will see the VMware folders as
opaque binary blobs that change with every backup, and these
binary blobs will quickly chew up all the disk space on the backup
server.

I've disabled them for now by including the rsync option
"exclude=VMWare/" when it backs up my workstation's  /home,
but that means the VMware guest systems won't get backed up
at all.

How do others back up their VMware guests? I'm using
VMWare Workstation, and I generally leave the guest systems
in a suspended state when I'm not actively using them.


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