Comments on: Cloning a Virtual Machine in VMWare VI3 without Virtual Server

By: mfarney

mfarney — Mon, 31 May 2010 16:02:06 +0000

Lucky for me there are so many dedicated people out here. I had no idea how to exclude the virtual server and after trying out what you suggested I realized things couldn't be any simpler. Thanks for the article and thanks to all who have replied for their hints.
Mathew Farney | UK VPS hosting

By: Allen

Allen — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:04:58 +0000

Nice tutorial – it came in handy. Rather than changing the MAC Address to something else, you can just blank it out.

ethernet0.generatedAddress = “”

I found this by removing the NIC through the GUI and then adding a new one and checking the .vmx file. It will generate a new one when you power it up.

By: darkstar

darkstar — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:25:08 +0000

A template is nothing but a powered down VM, with the .vmx extension of the config file changed to .vmtx. Any .vmtx file will be seen by the esx gui as a template.

The solution given by Henning is nicer because you might be able to save some space also for your templates, but other than the extension a template for Virtual center is the same as a normal VM.

Templates make easier the process of deploying vms and it is equivalent to using vmkfstool -i, ofcourse hostd also changes its inventory.xml file and other files to track the newly created VMs etc.

By: Colin 't Hart

Colin 't Hart — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:15:27 +0000

It’s much easier to do this using VMware Convertor!

By: Henning

Henning — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:36:46 +0000

Just tossing out thoughts here, not tested properly yet.

After making a virtual machine, sysprep it if its linux so it’s ready for template deployment.

Afterwards run the following command on your system disk file (as root):

vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/4725ae82-4e276b80-4c76-001c23c38d80/Source/system.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/4725ae82-4e276b80-4c76-001c23c38d80/Tempalte/system.vmdk -d thin

This will import the disk, but convert it to a thin format that means it only takes up the diskspace of the actual data and not the empty partition space you probably added in.

Repeat for additional disk if required, but I usually prefer to make data disk upon deploying the system.

For deployment for the clone just create a clone directory on the vmfs and run (as root):
vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/4725ae82-4e276b80-4c76-001c23c38d80/Template/system.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/4725ae82-4e276b80-4c76-001c23c38d80/Clone/system.vmdk

It will convert the disk to regular thick format. After it’s done just use the esx gui to make a new virtual machine and opt to use existing disk files. Add the file you just imported.

Feel free to send me a mail telling how it went if you experiement around my solution or simular solutions. Thanks for the post, while not exactly was I was looking for it was educational.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:45:08 +0000

Hey man,

Awesome article Helped me a lot.

There are couple more places where you’ll need to change the name from Template to Clone:

Clone.vmxf (last line, vmxPathName)

Also, scsi0:0.fileName parameter in the .vmx file should point to Clone.vmdk (or whatever the virtual disk config file is)… otherwise it fails to power up the machine.

By: Loren E

Loren E — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:55:11 +0000

Great information, i am looking at doing the same thing.

However, i tought you should be able to browse the datastore with the VI Client and right click the new directory then select “Add to Inventory” in the menu. I think that simplifies editing the Inventory.xml files and maybe others.

Did you try this? It took me a while to figure out it was even possible to do this, so maybe you over looked this? Any comments on this vs. you solution would be great.