How to download files from WMware?

Question

Server equipment

Good afternoon. The bottom line is this: There is a server on which vmware esxi 5.5 is installed and a virtual machine is created. There is a need to download several large files from the created machine. I do this: I create a snapshot, connect via Trilead VM Explorer over the network to the server and download files. When creating a snapshot, the server automatically stops, access to it from the outside is interrupted, and this is very bad. If you do not take a snapshot, then the server does not allow you to download the files, it gives an error. Tell me how to get out of this situation? And maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Answer 1

In order to download files FROM the guest system, you need to connect directly to it, over the network, for example, and not to the host system.
In order to download the .vmdk files of the guest ITSELF, you must shut down the guest, connect, for example, with a vShpere client to the ESXi host, and download the files.
But it’s more logical to use some kind of backup system like Veeam Backup, it will allow you to make hot backups without turning off the guest system and access files after that.
Snapshots should not be used manually. This is unorthodox.