Copy a VM in ESXi all versions without vCenter

In this video, I go over how to clone a virtual machine in ESXi without the user of vSphere or vCenter. With the popularity of ESXi being installed on raspberry pi's I thought this could be very helpful to people!
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[@DevOpsJourney]

Thanks for Watching! I hoped this video helped.

[@rowenarrow]

Thank you for making this. It truly helped.

[@sMadaras]

if you are using static IPs, don’t forget to change the cloned vm’s IP before you start the original one

[@be236]

Good explanation of the process.

[@AllahomAnsorGaza]

thank you i hope if you can tell us more about networking

[@brunos5948]

tks dude!

[@zhuanjiachen477]

You cannot change the disk size of the copied vmdisk, if it's thin provision, it will be a few GB, so you will need to add another disk.

[@1AtlantaKid]

if you want to copy it to external SSD for safe keeping, so I have to add the external SSD as a new datastore and do this, if so how do I then disconnect that datastore and keep that SSD in a safe place? When it comes to restoring it, can I import a Datastore as is with its content? -- Thanks

[@AndrzejHPL]

In the esxi 6.5.0, *.vmdk is the Disk DescriptorFile! File sys is *-flat.vmdk

[@rasithrayuthtube7091]

Thanks You👍

[@DevOpsJourney]

No problem 👍

[@petertiagunov5666]

How to copy from 1 ESXi host to another?

[@AndrzejHPL]

Use WinSCP and external PC for example. Connect thru the ssh to esxi file system and copy files.

[@TheDanton1310]

How do i copy a running VM without vcenter or vsphere?

[@kneel1]

having to shut the VM down first could be a dealbreaker for many. Oh well. I have vsphere but VMs with large disks can take forever to transfer clones from ESXi hosts in one part of the world to the other 😢

[@mashfirst]

I tried this and it tells me that it could not lock the file

[@DevOpsJourney]

Might need to stop the VM first

[@TheOfficialOriginalChad]

I’m fairly sure anyone that got this far knows how to copy and paste a file in a UI. That’s also not cloning. Why not export then create clones from the template? Or rsync? Or any of the countless scripts on GitHub?

[@DevOpsJourney]

Thank you for your comment, but I feel that sometimes the simplest solution is the best. I've given this solution to a lot of people in slack/discord and it gave them the results they needed.
There are indeed more ways to perform this action as you mentioned. Thank you for sharing them

[@kayombomdogotv6549]

nipo tayar