) Use vsphere client to clone virtual machines

The free VMware esxi5.0 is very powerful, so esxi replaces esx on the vsphere5.0 platform ., I often encounter this problem when using esxi. I need to create multiple virtual machines, all of which are Windows operating systems. Do I have to install them one by one?

VMware esxi, VMWare vcenter server, and vsphere client are the virtualization layer, management layer, and interface layer of vsphere, respectively. The vsphere client, as the interface layer, does not provide the VM cloning function. You must install vcenter management esxi to perform this function. However, we can do this manually.

The following is how to clone the "win2003" virtual machine:

1. Access the vsphere client and disable the Virtual Machine win2003 to be cloned.

2. Select the esxi server host, click the "configuration" tab on the right, select storage, right-click the storage name on the right, and select "Browse Data Storage"

 

3, new folder win2003-64, enter the win2003 folder, win2003.vmx and win2003.vmdk copy the two files to the folder win2003-64, the copy process is relatively fast, 50 GB disk, about less than 5 minutes.

4. After copying, right-click the win2003.vmx file and select "add to configuration". A prompt is displayed.

5. enter the name of the virtual machine, such as the win2003-64.

6. Return to the vsphere client, right-click the virtual machine, choose-power-> open the power source, and click the summary,

Ask whether the virtual machine is moved or copied. Select "I coyied it" and click OK.

7. Manual cloning is now complete. The cloned virtual machine has the same configuration as the source virtual machine environment, including the IP address and user name and password, which must be changed manually.

 

This is a clone operation on the same esxi server. What if the clone operation is performed between different esxi servers? Then you need to copy the file to different esxi servers. I searched on the Internet and used mobile storage devices and FTP for the replication method, but I think it is most convenient to use the SCP command. The following is my migration procedure:

1. log on to the esxi server through SSH. First, you need to find the source Virtual Machine file. The path is very strange. You can use DF-h to check the file system and space usage.

Find the Mount path of the file system named vmfs3, or determine whether the VM file storage path is/vmfs/volumes/4f4f94-9c9152ca-c226-842b2b1419f1

2. Find the win2003.vmx and win2003.vmdk files in this path and run the SCP command to copy the files to the corresponding directory of the target server. This process is a long one. It took about two hours, of course, if a VM that has made a snapshot still needs to copy the snapshot file,

3. Run "add to configuration" in the vsphere client.