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.