How to acquire memory dump from virtual machine

If you think you need to use third-party tools to acquire a memory dump from a virtual machine, you are wrong. Here is the step-by-step guide on how to do it better and faster.

Guide

Create a virtual machine snapshot.
Do not forget to choose the “snapshot the VM memory” option. When you create a snapshot with the “Snapshot the virtual machine’s memory” option enabled, vSphere creates a .vmem file containing the memory state and a .vmsn file with metadata.
After creating the snapshot, you will see two files: .vmem and .vmsn.Acquire two files with .vmem and .vmsn extensions. File with .vmem extenstion should have almost the same size as your virtual machine memory. On the other hand, .vmsn file is a snapshot file and it is much smaller.

Important tips

Check the size of the .vmem file (should approximately equal the VM RAM size)