Thanks DoubleCloud for the post on Really Easy Ways to Capture VM Screenshot.
It also works for VMware ESXi, and by default is enabled: browse to https://esxi-machine/screen?id=# to get a PNG screenshot of the VM with ID=#.
I’m not sure yet how to get the ID of a running VM, so usually this is a bit of trial and error on a busy system (:
Later: I found out you can get the ID through MOB; see a couple of these links.
For my ESXi the URLs are these:
You can even add parameters to modify this PNG, as per [Archive.is] Capturing Virtual Machine Screenshots in vSphere – VMware vSphere Blog:
w = the pixel width of the scaled image
h = the pixel height of the scaled image
x0 = the left side of the bounding box to select the image
y0 = the top side of the bounding box to select the image
x1 = the right side of the bounding box to select the image
y1 = the bottom of the bounding box to select the image
Example: https://10.24.145.65/screen?id=vm-162&h=600&w=800
Turn of screen blanking
- In Windows, look at the Power options, then turn off the screen saver.
- On Linux text consoles e.g. you can do this with the command “setterm -blank 0”.
VMware Workstation
There is no way to take screenshots using URLs in VMware Workstation. But as of VMware Workstation 6.5, you can use Ctrl+Alt+PrtSc both in Windows and Full Screen mode. Like the ESXi screenshots, captures only the screen itself (so not the borders/toolbar/tabs in Windowed mode).
Note that form the vSphere client, you can take a movie as well: Creating a Screen Shot or a Movie of a Virtual Machine.
URLs on your ESXi machine
The above leads us to a couple of URLs on your ESXi machine: Read the rest of this entry »