Traditionally, VMware Fusion has not supported using Time Machine to backup your virtual machines. Although this changed with version 4, I’d rather not enable AutoProtect. Instead, I use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my ‘Virtual Machines’ folder to the root of my Time Machine drive.

Just one catch – if VMware Fusion is open during the copy, eventually CCC will fill up the destination drive, as it’s repeatedly copying data that’s in use. The solution? A preflight script that checks for the VMware Fusion process, and aborts the backup if the program is currently running.

The scripts are available in my GitHub repository.