A system administrator opened a technical support trouble ticket and was asked to provide the suspended virtual machine's memory contents.
Which file from the virtual machine directory will the system administrator need to upload to technical support?
To provide the suspended virtual machine's memory contents, the system administrator needs to upload the vm.vmss file. The .vmss file stores the state of the virtual machine's memory at the time of suspension, including all the content in RAM, allowing the system to resume accurately from where it left off.
For me C
https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc/GUID-CEFF6D89-8C19-4143-8C26-4B6D6734D2CB.html
When you suspend a virtual machine, Workstation Pro creates a virtual machine suspended state (.vmss or .vmem) file set in the working directory. How quickly the resume operation performs depends on how active the virtual machine is. The more active the virtual machine is, the longer it will take to resume. It also depends on whether the virtual machine suspended state (.vmss or .vmem) file set is already in the physical memory of the host system. If it is, the virtual machine will resume much faster. https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/17/com.vmware.ws.using.doc/GUID-A4536112-10A6-4574-ADE5-60D9BBAE1F02.html
Pretty sure it's C based on this KB, but I can't find anything conclusive for vSphere 7: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2005831
To provide the suspended virtual machine's memory contents to technical support, the system administrator will need to upload the file: C. vm.vmss The .vmss file is the file that contains the saved state of a suspended virtual machine's memory. It stores the contents of the virtual machine's memory at the time of suspension. Uploading this file will provide technical support with the necessary memory contents to assist in troubleshooting or diagnosing issues related to the suspended virtual machine.
VMX files contain the configuration information of the VM and are issued to add the VM to the inventory. VMSS files relate to memory like VMDK relate to hard disks.
8 In pause mode, the VM is not actually suspended--rather, processor execution is literally stopped at whatever point it was in. So the machine itself is still in memory, and the allocated resources are still allocated to the VM process on the host. This is entirely on the VM side--this isn't handled by the guest OS. In suspend mode, the contents of the RAM (as used by the VM) are copied to disk on the host, and the machine itself is suspended--which means that except for the additional disk space caused by the storing of the RAM to disk, there's absolutely no additional resource usage. Any temporary resources requested by the VM while running are stored to disk and will be re-allocated when the machine is restored.
I think your reference still supports answer C here is why. In suspend mode, the contents of the RAM (as used by the VM) are copied to disk on the host, and the machine itself is suspended. So, if they are copied to the host's hard disk and under which file name extension do you find them? it must be .vmss as .vmdk doesn't save suspended state. The question is asking "to provide the suspended virtual machine's memory contents." they can only be stored on the hard disk!