There are a couple of ways to copy or clone existing virtual machine. I will talk about two methods to clone virtual machines. If you have vCenter server in you environment, you can clone virtual machine with vCenter management console. But if you have just vSphere client then you can simply copy and paste virtual machine files and rename it. Here, I will show you how to create copy of existing virtual machine in ESXi server via vSphere client.
Create Copy of Existing Virtual Machine in ESXi Server
At first, log on to ESXi server with vSphere client. Then, select the host machine where your virtual machine is. In the summary tab, right-click the data store and click browse option.
After browsing the data store you will see a list of virtual machine files as shown below.
Now create a new folder (NewVM) in the data store.
After creating the new folder, open the VM folder that you want to copy. Here I will open the DB01 VM’s folder. Now copy all the contents of the folder.
Paste the copied files to the newVM folder.
After finishing copying the files, right-click the VMX file and click add to inventory.
Now, new dialog box appears. Complete the steps to add the copied virtual machine to the inventory. Type the name of the new virtual machine and click next.
Now select the resource pool, the physical host where the new virtual machine will live.
Now click next button. You are now ready to complete the clone of virtual machine. Click finish button to finish the process.
You have now successfully cloned a virtual machine. In this way you can do clone of virtual machine via vSphere client.
