I have VMware workstation Pro 15.1.0 on a high-end Dell Precision workstation running Win 10 v1809 in my office.
I want to run guest VMs to do continuous automated product testing overnight. I have my first guest all set up, and running the testing. All's well except for one thing: The host system is scheduled to do a VSS-integrated System Image backup (via wbadmin) at 2am every night, and at that time my automated tests get timeouts.
A video capture of a test running at the time the System Image has just started (i.e., seconds after) shows the VM just hangs for a few minutes. It's as though the system just doesn't give it any time on the CPUs at all. Then things take off again and all's well.
This is great hardware with a lot of cores and RAM and an array of m.2 flash drives. It really should be able to do a volume snapshot and backup to an external USB drive while VMs continue to run. I've seen this kind of guest stall happen before, with another workstation with older VMware versions and older host/guest operating systems. At the time it was just an annoyance. Now it's more important.
Is a VM stalling out for 2 or 3 minutes during a volume snapshot just something that's a given? Can it be worked around (e.g., with configuration)?
I can throw out test results from around 2am, but I'd rather not have to.
Thanks in advance for any wisdom you have on this.
-Noel