For that purpose, go to Actions and press the appropriate button: ![]() Well, that’s it! Settings say that the target VM uses the right *.vmdk file, so the source VM has been cloned:Įventually, rename the target VM before starting. PLEASE, NEVER REGISTER THE VM AND DON’T START IT UNTIL THE DISK IS COPIED, OTHERWISE YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO START IT!Īfterward, go to Edit Setting and check whether the recently copied *.vmdk is assigned to the target VM: How long will it take? Well, it depends on your hardware and virtual disk volume. Even if you clone the VM within the datastore, you should better have a break as that process may take a while. Please note that cloning always takes some time. ![]() You can check whether copying is over in Recent Tasks (the task must have the Completed successfully status). Next, click Datastore browser to find the disk itself:Ĭopy *.vmdk and *.vmx files from the source VM directory. In particular, find out where the source VM disk is located. In my case, there is only one VM (VM-Main), running on the host so I’ll clone it: Navigate to the Virtual Machines menu and select the VM you need to clone. You’ll need just a web browser and several clicks to have the job done.įirst, type your credentials and access the VMware ESXi server: Thanks to the familiar GUI, this is the easiest way to copy VM if VMware vCenter is unavailable. So, either consolidate them or get rid of them. Hey, where are the snapshots? VMware does not recommend cloning VMs with snapshots. Eventually, the virtual disks are assigned to the target VM, and the clone gets registered and booted up. Next, the source *.vmdk and *.vmx files or disks are copied to the target’s folder. The gist of cloning a source VM in case something happened to your vCenter is creating a target VM with just the same resources assigned to it as the source VM has. I believe this to be essential for understanding what’s exactly going on in my article. Nothing more than that! Let’s break the cloning process without vCenter in detailīefore I go deeper, I want you to understand the stages that cloning process consists of. ![]() Just think through them and learn the right commands if needed. In fact, all operations you usually carry out in your environment via GUI can be performed with either the vSphere Web Client or PowerShell commands. You can view this scribbling as a thing about not only cloning VMs without vCenter but also as a principle in the wide sense. Today, I’ll discuss three workarounds allowing you to clone VMs when running unmanaged ESXi: This is usually done in vCenter but there are several other ways you can go if it becomes unavailable. Great and simple thing allowing you to deploy many identical virtual machines to a group – no need to repeat the same process all over again. One of them is virtual machine cloning provided by VMware vCenter Server. So, I inserted the RHEL 5 cd in the cd-drive.Īfter this, you can install the Linux OS on the VM from the “Console” tab of the virtual machine as shown below.There are various tricks and hints we all use to make our daily system administration routines easier. In this example, the guest OS is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. Once the VM is installed, insert the guest OS CD in the cd-drive. This displays following information about the VM. Once the virtual machine is created, you can view the summary as shown below. The wizard will display your choices in the “Ready to Complete” section as shown below. I’ve allocated 60 GB for the virtual disk of this particular VM. In this example, the available disk-space in the “datastore1” is 130 GB. Create a Disk for VMĬhoose how much disk space you would like to allocated from the datastore for this particular VM. You still have to do it once you’ve created the virtual machine. Please note that creating virtual machine does not install the guest OS for you. In the following example, I choose Linux and “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (32-bit)” from the “Version” drop-down list. Choose Guest OS of the Virtual MachineĬhoose from one of the following guest operating system that you would like to install. In this example, there is only one datastore available with the name “datastore1”. VSphere client will display all the datastore available in the ESXi server. In this example, I gave db-server as the VM name. Specify the name of the VM instance in the “Name and Location” section. Provide the ESXi root username and password.įrom the vSphere client menu, select File -> New -> Virtual Machine, which will launch the create new virtual machien wizard as shown below. Login to the ESXi server using vSphere Client. ![]() Linux, Windows, etc.,) as explained in this article. Once you’ve installed VMware ESXi Server and vSphere client, you can start creating VM instance and install a guest operating system on it ( e.g.
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