On Windows:
How to autostart a virtual machine in VMware Workstation
Create a batch file with this line:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmrun.exe" -T ws start E:\VMs\wxp-a\wxp-a.vmx nogui
Replace wxp-a with the name of your virtual machine.
Call this batch from your windows startup menu.
On Linux:
I was looking for a method that allowed me to SSH to my Linux machine running VMWare Workstation 7 and execute a file that automatically starts all my VMWare virtual machines without having to use the GUI. This could also be used as a startup script as well.
In my case I am running several Cisco Unified Communications servers. I also have a Windows 2008 VM to integrate LDAP with CUCM. I used vi to create a file called ciscostart.sh and made it executable. By executing this file I am able to start all VM’s without having to use the GUI.
#!/bin/bash
#
#Init file for starting Cisco virtual machines
vmrun start ~/vmware/CUCM_8_PUB/CUCM_8_PUB.vmx nogui
vmrun start ~/vmware/CUCM_8_SUB/CUCM_8_SUB.vmx nogui
vmrun start ~/vmware/UNITY_CONNECTION_8/UNITY_CONNECTION_8.vmx nogui
vmrun start ~/vmware/CUPS_8/CUPS_8.vmx nogui
vmrun start ~/vmware/EMERGENCY_RESPONDER_8/EMERGENCY_RESPONDER_8.vmx nogui
vmrun start ~/vmware/MEETING_PLACE_8/MEETING_PLACE_8.vmx nogui
vmrun start ~/vmware/UCCX8/UCCX8.vmx nogui
vmrun start ~/vmware/Win2008_Server_Primary_AD/Win2008_Server_Primary_AD.vmx nogui
To gracefully stop theese VM’s I created another file called ciscostop.sh and the arguments are very similar.
#!/bin/bash
#
#Init file for stopping Cisco virtual machines
vmrun stop ~/vmware/CUCM_8_PUB/CUCM_8_PUB.vmx soft
vmrun stop ~/vmware/CUCM_8_SUB/CUCM_8_SUB.vmx soft
vmrun stop ~/vmware/UNITY_CONNECTION_8/UNITY_CONNECTION_8.vmx soft
vmrun stop ~/vmware/CUPS_8/CUPS_8.vmx soft
vmrun stop ~/vmware/EMERGENCY_RESPONDER_8/EMERGENCY_RESPONDER_8.vmx soft
vmrun stop ~/vmware/MEETING_PLACE_8/MEETING_PLACE_8.vmx soft
vmrun stop ~/vmware/UCCX8/UCCX8.vmx soft
vmrun stop ~/vmware/Win2008_Server_Primary_AD/Win2008_Server_Primary_AD.vmx soft
With the Linux version of VMWare you can execute vmware instead of vmrun and it launches a new instance of vmware with the specific guest OS you specify. In fact, this was the default behavior and I wrote this blog post to work around that. I do not run vmware on Windows but I would like to think the same is achievable. You could most likely make a .BAT script that launches vmware from a DOS prompt and loads the vmware guest OS you want. Create a .BAT for each VM or maybe try combining all the commands into one .BAT if you always want to launch the same guests each time.