This is a short script that can be used for automated backup of VMWare virtual machines without having to shut them down or quit VMWare first. Tested on OS X 10.6 - 10.8, in Ruby 1.8.7 and 2.0.0 I don't see why this wouldn't work on other platforms as long as there's no major syntax changes for the vmrun command on other platforms or anything. Usage: Scroll through the script and edit the paths and variables as appropriate. Things that need to be changed are between angle brackets, e.g. <change this>. Once the appropriate edits have been made to the script for your system you can run the script manually or automate a recurring run with the tool of your choice. Included here is an example launchd XML .plist to run the script every night at 9 PM on OS X. See the launchd documentation for details on what you can do with launchd, it's a good bit more flexible than cron. The .plist should go into "/Library/LaunchDaemons". Make sure the script is 775.