Create and Configure a VM Share

This guide will show you how to configure a directory on your hard drive to act as a shared folder for your VMs in VMware Workstation, which allows you to easily share bots between VMs. 

What you will need:

• Identify where you want to create the share

  1. • Chose a directory that is easy to find

     • Try to keep as close to the root of the drive as possible -  do not make it too "nested"

• VMware Workstation installed

• 1 or more VMs created and bootable to Windows

• Latest version of RiD Genesis

• Some bots to share!

For the sake of this demo, my VM share will be on my H:\ drive at - 

• H:\DemoVMShare

Now that file sharing is configured and our VMs are standardized, lets do some automating!

• I have already created and tested a script to do this for us , so all we need to do is download the script from Github and make a quick edit and its ready to go. 😄 

• The script will examine the directories on both the vm and share (from earlier) and copy files between so that all folders exist in both locations.  

• If you have the directories properly standardized across multiple vms, you can simply open the terminal on any vm and run the script from the share. 

• This makes the sharing across vms simple and consistent.

Here is the link below to a Github repo I created, which has the actual script viewable in plain-text so you can scrutinize it before you use it

https://github.com/iStokee/sync-scripts

If you click on that link, along the top-right of the script editor this is an option to Download the raw file

• Save the .ps1 to the share we created (not in the scripts folder) 

• Inside of your VM right-click the Sync-Scripts.ps1 file and choose edit

• The very top of the script is a function declaration - ignore that

• Below the Synchronize-Folder function locate the following lines of code, and update the variables with the information we gathered earlier - 

# Define the paths

$vmDirectoryPath = "C:\Temp\RID"

$sharedFolderPath = "G:\VM Share\RiDSharedScripts"

####################

RiD environment folder / folder we want to keep syncronized - the goal is to have this the same on each VM

• C:\RiD\Environment\RS3-Retro

• this goes into $vmDirectoryPath 

RS3 scripts folder on the share

• \\vmware-host\Shared Folders\DemoVMShare\RS3_Scripts

  • this goes into $sharedFolderPath 

• BE SURE TO SAVE!

• Close the editor once you have made the changes

• Inside of File explorer, right click the Sync-Scripts.ps1 file and click Run with PowerShell

• The script will pop up a blue PowerShell box while the RiD script folders are copying

  • The box will be blank the entire time...

  • I may add some visual feedback to the script while it is copying, so you know what is happening 😅

4.1 PowerShell Examples

Copy from Share -> VM

• This example shows copying from the share -> client or vm

Copy from VM -> Share

• The script also automatically and seamlessly works in the reverse direction: to copy files from client/vm -> share as it runs