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Sunday, August 28, 2011

Clone VM in ESX without vCenter



Login to the ESX/ESXi console to clone vm1 datastore to vm2. 


$ cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore/
$ mkdir vm2
$ vmkfstools -i vm1/vm1.vmdk vm2/vm2.vmdk


Next, create vm2 from the client GUI and choose existing disk option pointing to the newly created vm2.vmdk. 


More details available in the excellent article here.


To read how to access the hidden ESXi console, refer to this article.
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4 comments:

  1. cheer-upOctober 5, 2011 at 4:23 PM

    Please leave a comment if this post helped you. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousNovember 15, 2012 at 7:36 PM

    Can't you just browse the datastore using the vSphere client and copy the file that way using the console copy/paste option?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. cheer-upNovember 15, 2012 at 10:54 PM

      Yes you can, but you can't script it. Tasks can be scripted and automated to some extent by using the ESXi console. This post provides an alternate to using vSphere client, so that it can be used as seen fit.

      Delete
  3. AnonymousApril 9, 2013 at 6:50 AM

    Great Article, very useful. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

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