I am an IT pro and tend to need virtual environments for opsdev, infrastructure and development type activities that require non-functional facets like backup. A lot of my work gets done on trains so I cant very well use amazon etc.
where should I address these questions if not server fault. i refer to: https://serverfault.com/questions/529113/backing-up-multiple-vmware-vms-from-a-mac
First off, thank you for posting your issue in the correct place.
This puts you several miles ahead of most folks who complain about their question being placed on hold, but never take the proper steps to deal with why that happened.
I personally see two problems with your question (and please understand I'm not saying this to be mean, just honest):
The first is that your tags are... not great.
mac is the most relevant one, and honestly osx would probably be a better choice backup would be appropriate too.
I don't understand how ssd is relevant (yes you have an SSD in the machine, but that's not really relevant to what you're trying to do), and the others I can take or leave (they may or may not be relevant to the ultimate solution - you might be told not to use the tools you're using).
The second is that, as asked, it is indistinguishable from a developer or end user asking a question that should be directed to their IT staff "I need a backup of my workstation, how can I do that?", or a home use case (which is the province of SuperUser).
Part of that has to do with your choice of hardware and software, which is an unfortunate bias on Server Fault. "Desktop grade tools" often lead to the conclusion that we're dealing with a "desktop grade question". In your particular case I can't tell if that's true or not, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt to some extent.
Both of these leave me in a position where I can't see my way clear to overriding 5 users who decided to put the question on hold. (I personally don't think it's a terrible question, but I don't think it's a great question either - so while I wouldn't close it myself I'm also not willing to say it absolutely should be reopened.)
Both problems are also REALLY EASY to fix:
For the first one, take a minute and browse the tags list, or type a few out and see which are most appropriate. Ask yourself "What is my question about?", and list the most relevant things.
(Tagging is hard. Usually I just fix questionable tags, but you seem smart enough to be able to do it right.)
For the second you can clarify your question to show the professional context.
Simply saying you "have a prototyping environment" doesn't quite cut it, because Server Fault's target audience is not every IT professional (a scope which includes developers, who frequently have "prototyping environments" on their laptops, who should talk to local IT about backups), it is professional IT admins - and in fact really a subset of those.
It's hard for me to reconcile your question as it stands with our target audience - it's on the fence and leaning toward "Not really our bailiwick", but it's entirely possible that a little word smithing will knock it clearly into the "in scope and on topic" category.
home in it ("closing by regex"). Many of us have home environments that are better managed than some of the production environments I've worked in, and a question about configuration management in those environment could be very relevant on Server Fault. By contrast asking how to get Port 80 working on my ISP's network, or getting DD-WRT working on my LinkCyst? Not so much with the relevance.
s/home//g -- Closing By Regex is just as bad as Stack Overflow's "Migrating by Regex".
I am an IT pro...
This is it right here.
There's a lot of disagreement about the target audience of ServerFault. I and I think many of the participating high-rep ServerFault users believe that the target audience of ServerFault should be professional systems and network administrators (i.e., Operations) whereas the StackOverflow crowd (which greatly outnumbers us) seem to believe that the target audience should be IT professionals in general.
Here's why this distinction is really important. As a developer (or someone in DevOps, or someone in a home lab environment), a good quality question/answer about how to backup your VMware Fusion-based development environment on your laptop is probably very useful. To me, a systems administrator, your question is unfortunately pretty useless. I work in the world of SANs and VMware vCenter and ESXi not VMware Fusion. The answers to your question will most likely, and in similar questions historically have not, contained information, solutions, or tools that are relevant or suitable to my profession. Consequently, questions like these often get closed as either more appropriate for SuperUser or more appropriate for StackOverflow (because they're related to developer tools).
Compare these two questions:
The second question is very relevant to people in operations such as myself and touches on a number of centralized management and enterprise-y technologies that allow a single person to manage, control, and ensure the consistency and safety of a development environment for a large number of people. The first question, well, is just not as relevant.
It's unfortunate that this disagreement about the target audience leads to these situations. Your question isn't very helpful to me and getting it closed in one day isn't very helpful to you. I also think it leads to ServerFault getting a bad rap for "excluding people based on who they are". I'm not advocating that we do that. I'm advocating that topicality on ServerFault is for people working in the problem domain of the second question and not the first. If your question happens to be in that problem domain it's certainly welcome. If not, there's plenty of other great places for it on the SE network (SuperUser, SO, or maybe Programmers).