DanNorris.com - Latest Comments in Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Chris — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:22:12 -0000

Thanks, this worked perfectly. It is perplexing that they wouldn't add the clone VM feature in the free version of ESX. Either way, I will just script up this process and call it a day. Thanks again.

Chris
BlueCava.com

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

okgo — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:48:39 -0000

vmware-cmd -s register

doesn't work on 3.5

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Jose Fernandez — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:43:03 -0000

You can also copy and manually edit the VMX file to reconfigure the new server.

Also note that if you have snapshots this clone process will not clone the data that came after the snapshots. You have to merge the snapshots first - at least as far as I can tell

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

munavar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:55:22 -0000

this article is very useful and very helpful to me thanks for posting this article. Thanks a lot

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Ivan Stoev — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:00:03 -0000

Perfect. The VMware Infrastrcture Client Clone operation kept timing out. You saved my weekend! Thank you.

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Jayant — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 01:01:54 -0000

Good Stuff - good article leading to interesting and very useful comments & thoughts.
Thank you

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Dan Norris — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:01:53 -0000

Glad you enjoyed it. At this point, I think the comments are possibly more useful than the original article!

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Satbir — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:26:21 -0000

Very helpful article

Thanks

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Dan Norris — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:43:44 -0000

I don't think so and there's no reason why I would expect your source to become slow. You can read the clone scripts too and I don't think you'll find anything in there that would be a cause for slowness. There's nothing you have to delete, but if you want to clean up, I think the files that the pre-clone step create are in $OH/clone somewhere.

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

szulfi — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:43:46 -0000

Hi,
I cloned the source OAS to target using perl scripts provided in clone/bin on OAS. After cloning my source OAS became very slow.

Please let me know if i need to remove any files after cloning on source?

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Dan Norris — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 08:59:08 -0000

I forwarded your note/question to the admin that's tested it. I'm not sure he's done much with backup and restore, but if he has, he should respond with an email pretty soon.

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

HercuLeeZ — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:06:14 -0000

Hi Dan,

I wonder if you can provide me with your (colleagues) backup and restore process with VM Explorer?
I have been able to backup and restore but, I've not been able to get the restored VM to detect the operating system.

If you can help, I would very much appreciate it!

Thanks!
Herc

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Tom — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:50:58 -0000

btw, latest version supports now ESX 3i

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Dan Norris — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:38:13 -0000

Tom,

Thanks for the tip. One of the admins here installed the tool to try it out and says it's awesome and can't believe that he gets exactly the types of things he needs for free. There is a pay-for version, but the free version does all he needs, so he's quite pleased. You've made someone's life easier--thanks!

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Tom — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:38:05 -0000

the VM Explorer tool let's you clone or move your vm's from one server to the other, btw for most features it's free
http://www.trilead.com/Prod...

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Dan Norris — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:29:12 -0000

That looks relatively easy compared to what I tried to do originally.
We've upgraded our ESX server now, so I'm not sure if this method works
on 3.0.1 or not, but next time we need to clone, I'll give it a try on
our current version.

Thanks!

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

wmz — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:33:49 -0000

If you would like to clone virtual machine on esx server without the help of virtual center here is the instruction to do so

log into esx server

su to root and type the following command

$ vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/datastore/sourcevm/sourcevm.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/datastore/destvm/destvm.vmdk

this will clone the virtual machine from source to destination

once you have finished cloning

go to vi client and run file->new virtual machine

use custom instead of typical

give the same name as the destination virtual machine name

use next next until you get to point where it ask’s you for select disk change it to use an existing virtual disk and specify the path to .vmdk file

and click next and next and finish this job

Now you should be able to turn on the machine with out any issues

Hope this works for you ;)

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Dan Norris — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:51:31 -0000

Thanks for the update and confirmation that the method works in more
than one specific case.

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

mutante — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:40:10 -0000

The method proposed by Gavin worked for me with a Debian VM. Like Ryan described above for Ubuntu, here i needed to delete /etc/udev/rules.d/25-persistent-net.rules and reboot to get the NIC back up.

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Dan — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:04:10 -0000

@Gavin: That sounds like it might work--I haven't tried it though. Have you tried it and was it successful? Unfortunately, my ESX environment isn't available for testing any longer, so I can't test it out.

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Gavin Hill — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:24:52 -0000

Couldn't you simply perform the following successfully?

1. Create a new machine using VM Infrastructure Client choosing the same base OS that you want to clone.
2. Once the machine is created, you log into the ESX server as root through SSH and locate the new VM machine (VMnew).
3. Now what you can do is copy the “VMoriginal-flat.vmdk” file that you want to clone and replace the new VM “VMnewflat.vmdk” file with “VMoriginal-flat.vmdk”, making sure you change the name.
4. Start the new VM from the VM Infrastructure Client.

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Dan — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:57:34 -0000

@Ryan Thanks for the extra tip!

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Ryan Lanham — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:02:50 -0000

We own 3 ESX Servers and this is the method that we use ever time to copy our Master Linux Clone. Please keep in mind that if you are copying a striped version of Unix based OS you may need to some extra work to get the NIC/ETH0 online. We use Ubuntu 7.10 LTS and one you clone you must delete the: /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and reboot in order for the server to detect the new NIC/ETH0 that it thinks it has.

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

Dan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:08:38 -0000

The reason I developed this procedure was because I didn't have access to Virtual Centre. This is the "manual" way--if you have VC, you're right, it's a lot easier. However, last I checked, VC isn't free, so not everyone will have it configured.

Re: Cloning a VM on ESX Server 3.0.1

sycomsimon — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:00:09 -0000

Why not just right click the virtual server that you have shutdown and want to clone in Virtual Centre. Once you right click, choose clone.